I hadn’t finished up the whole decade yet, so without further ado, the 10 best albums of 1981:
The Police – Ghost in the Machine
Stiff Little Fingers – Go For It
Prince – Controversy
Agent Orange – Living in Darkness
Men at Work – Business As Usual
The Go-Go’s – Beauty and the Beat
U2 – October
Black Flag – Damaged
Stray Cats – Stray Cats
Psychedelic Furs – Talk Talk Talk
I missed voting on this one again, but here’s what Slicing Up Eyeballs wound up with as best of 1987.
My list:
Appetite for Destruction – Guns N’ Roses
Joshua Tree – U2
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me – The Cure
Floodland – Sisters of Mercy
Kick – INXS
Document – R.E.M.
The Lion and the Cobra – Sinead O’Connor
Cleanse Fold Manipulate – Skinny Puppy
ALL – Descendents
Bucky Fellini – Dead Milkmen
If I had to pick a top 5 – GNR, Sinead, SP, ALL, Cure
Honorable Mentions:
Some Kind of Wonderful Soundtrack (I actually listen to this, still, more than any one of the above albums)
That Total Age – Nitzer Ebb
Songs About Fucking – Big Black (not because I listen to it that much… because it exists.)
Surprised myself by including the INXS album on this list, but there are so many good songs on that record and the fact that they were popular in the mainstream is weird and cool. Add to that senior dances to “Never Tear Us Apart” and projects based on “Mediate” and the like… I dig some INXS. (Hutchence R.I.P.)
Lots of other good tunes and such, but not so many whole albums. I could listen to any of the above albums start to finish, though, and sing along with most of the tunes, never wanting to switch to something else.
Slicing-up Eyeballs has been running an on-going series of polls, asking readers to vote to rank the top 100 albums each year in the 80s. They’re up to 1986 now.
I’ve gone back to their lists and compiled my own Top 10 for 1980:
- U2 – Boy
- The Police – Zenyatta Mondatta
- Peter Gabriel (“Melt”)
- Psychedelic Furs
- Killing Joke – Killing Joke
- Blondie – Autoamerican
- The Human League – Travelogue
- Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
- Stiff Little Fingers – Nobody’s Heroes
- Prince – Dirty Mind
Honorable Mentions:
- Circle Jerks – Group Sex
- Residents – Commercial Album
- Motorhead – Ace of Spades
- Ramones – End of the Century
screw Joy Division. New Order has a much better singer and the best thing to come out of Closer is the Therapy? cover of “Isolation”
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