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
A little harder this time, but based on the poll (still up ’til the end of November 2013) over at Slicing Up Eyeballs, here’s my Top 10 Albums of 1989:
Energy – Operation Ivy
The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste – Ministry
Indigo Girls
The Real Thing – Faith No More
Disintegration – The Cure
Allroy’s Revenge – ALL
Mother’s Milk – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Doolittle – Pixies
Paul’s Boutique – Beastie Boys
Pretty Hate Machine – Nine Inch Nails
It was hard to decide on this one, but there are several runners-up:
Pure – Primitives
Peace and Love – The Pogues
3 Feet High and Rising – De La Soul
Start Today – Gorilla Biscuits
Rabies – Skinny Puppy
UAIOE – KMFDM
Bleach – Nirvana
“Lorelei” alone puts Peace and Love on this list, though the rest of the album (often without Shane’s vocals) doesn’t quite make the grade. It’s too bad it took Gorilla Biscuits this long to get their act together. Hardcore like this was pretty much done by the end of the 90s, and Start Today is polished in a way the older songs weren’t, but lacks some of their punch and gusto. Rabies has some excellent songs, among them one of my favorites, “Tin Omen.” But the album as a whole is tainted by Uncle Al (Jourgenson, of Ministry) sinking his fingers into everything in this genre at this time. Bleach would usually make the list, but what it came down to is this: though I hardly ever listen to it, I can tell immediately that Paul’s Boutique is a better album than Nirvana’s freshman effort.
This is the first list, since I started doing this, where I own all the albums in the actual top 10 list.
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”
Slicing Up Eyeballs has a survey – pick ten out of 150 albums released in 1983.
My list:
Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes
Suicidal Tendencies – Suicidal Tendencies
R.E.M. – Murmur
New Order – Power Corruption & Lies
Stray Cats – Rant N’ Rave with the Stray Cats
Misfits – Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood
Billy Idol – Rebel Yell
Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams (are Made of This)
Duran Duran – Seven and the Ragged Tiger
Police – Synchronicity
Slicing Up Eyeballsis a website dedicated to 80s Alt.Rock music. Lots of coverage/nostalgia for MTV 120 Minutes. Great graphics of cassette cover spines. I got into this genre (these genres?) late, but I still had, saw, skipped over in the bins, or browsed through friends’ copies of all the tapes in the header photo. Excellent choices. Taking Kevin Seal seriously is a little weird.
I watched the Lonely Is an Eyesore clip and was interested in the quotations from the 4AD founder. Also found a link to a weird encounter between Dave Kindle (Kendall? Ken Doll? huh?) and Matt Pinfield. Bored by all the Morrissey hype, but that’s just my taste. Music blogging since 2009, online radio weekly for the last 2 years. In what I hope is just a bit of silliness, they cite the Pixies’ “Debaser” as the source for the title of their blog, but fail to mention that “Debaser” uses the phrase to refer to The Andalusian Dog/Un Chien Andalou, a film by Dali and Bunuel. Cool feature: monthly (?) mixtape downloads. I dig that they’re broken into 45 minute “sides.” This month’s features Depeche Mode, BAD, Oingo Boingo, the Femmes, R.E.M., The Mighty Lemon Drops, and Midge Ure (of Ultravox, etc.) doing a live version of “Dear God.” Awesome.
The Conversation