The 80S

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I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a collection of 80s compilation albums. All on CD too. Yes, as a generation X-er I am old school and proud. If you were there (like Wham) then you know how great the 80s years were. Those born into generations Y and Z might not have been around then, but their parents sure were. Just as my mum and dad’s musical tastes fuelled my love of bands from The Beatles to Dire Straits, millennials and even younger kids might well wish to add one of the best 80s complication albums to their collection.

Your Ultimate 80s Album Vote - BBC - Home Your Ultimate 80s Album Vote - BBC - Home

George Michael entered the music scene with a bang in 1987 with his debut album Faith.The album was an instant success, cementing his reputation as a dynamic performer and a sex symbol. It broke records in its first year, staying in the Top 10 for 51 weeks non-consecutively and putting four singles on the No. 1 spot. It won Album of The Year at the Grammy Awards as well as a host of MTV Awards, making it one of the most successful debut albums of all time. The shotgun marriage worked out in the end, but it was a shaky trip to the altar. The band felt uncomfortable recording in Los Angeles, Asher's home turf. The Maniacs were also unhappy with many of Asher's additions to their sound, including computerized drums. Asher insists he was merely "cajoling" the band into doing its best work.Having taught herself guitar at the age of eleven, Vega began writing her own songs when she entered her teens. After graduating from Barnard College in 1982, she began playing small coffeehouses in Greenwich Village — the same area of New York City where nearly every Sixties folkie first tuned up his Gibson. But Vega, a child of the Eighties, hardly fit the protest-singer mold. Even though she carried an acoustic guitar, her hero wasn't folk icon Bob Dylan but punk godfather Lou Reed. There were other differences as well. After years on the Northeastern club circuit, she had developed a direct, emotionally tempered style that she has said was inspired as much by novelist Carson McCullers and painter Edward Hopper as by romantic balladeers Leonard Cohen and Laura Nyro. Second Edition also features three instrumentals, including the beautiful "Radio 4." But according to Levene, dropping vocals wasn't a conceptual statement. "Nobody was around," he says, "and I had to do something with the bloody studio time." That she was able to integrate her zaniness into She's So Unusual without sacrificing the underlying seriousness of the songs or her vocal delivery also meant something to Lauper's career. Few solo artists have been able to balance such a delicate dichotomy the first time around. Fewer still have made it seem so easy — and so much fun. When it came time to cut Scarecrow, the band members employed the lessons they learned from their Sixties studies. The idea, according to producer Don Gehman, was "to learn all these devices from the past and then use them in a new way with John's arrangements." Mellencamp would make comments like "I want this to be like an Animals record…. And I want the overall record to have this kind of a tone, like maybe it was a modern-day Dylan record." Indeed, Dylan himself hadn't been that bitingly topical in years. "You've gotta stand for somethin'/Or you're gonna fall for anything," Mellencamp sings, and on Scarecrow, he dug in and made a stand. John Hiatt made his best album, the brilliant and skillful Bring the Family, in record time — four days in February 1987, to be exact.

80s Albums: 20 Classics That Defined A Decade - Dig! Best 80s Albums: 20 Classics That Defined A Decade - Dig!

A warmer, more open Bowie was evident at every turn on Let's Dance, whose bright, upbeat exterior and approachable lyrics celebrate "modern love" and sensual romance beneath "serious moonlight." After a personnel shake-up in 1980 that left Oakey and Philip Adrian Wright the only surviving members of the original Human League (Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware went on to form the British Electric Foundation and then Heaven 17), the band was revamped with newcomers Ian Burden and Jo Callis on synthesizers and Joanne Catherall and Susanne Sulley on vocals. It's easy to be a genius in your twenties," says Robbie Robertson. "In your forties, it's difficult." De La Soul released their debut album in 1989, sliding in at the end of the decade. Nevertheless, the album made a significant impact, setting the course for hip hop throughout the 1990s. It has been called one of the most influential rap albums of all time. If 1982’s 1999was Prince’s breakthrough, 1985’s Purple Rain cemented his superstar status. It also established his reputation as a flamboyant but androgynous sex symbol, particularly due to his sultry music video for the single When Doves Cry. The album was both controversial and widely acclaimed, having been called one of the most influential and skillful albums of all time. It was also seen as the work that established Prince’s signature style of over-the-top, musically complex performances.With Fiyo on the Bayou, the Neville Brothers — singer Aaron, keyboardist and singer Art, saxophonist Charles and percussionist Cyril — set out to capture their undisciplined sound, descended from New Orleans Mardi Gras music, while commercializing it enough to reach a broad audience. In retrospect, Sign o' the Times looks more and more like Prince's Exile on Main Street, one of the few two-disc sets by any artist that holds up through all four sides. "There was a refreshing feeling about making his own music unencumbered [by the band] again," says Leeds. "I think it showed an artist who had really grown." Byrne sang nonsense lyrics, which he later refined. "I sang all the words in gibberish first," he says, "and then made words to fit later. I'd done that a little bit before, but it was the first time I'd done it for a whole record." Born In The USA had come along right on the heels of a dark period in both Springsteen’s own life and for Americans in general. Springsteen, who was susceptible to his own depressions, had for his part sunk into an existential crisis following the tour to promote his fifth album, The River. He articulated as much on his next record, 1982’s Nebraska, a stark, solemn collection of songs that sounded like whispered moans in the dead of night. I probably would have chosen fewer country songs and weighted it more toward the blues-oriented stuff," Lovett says today. "But it ended up being more representative of my songwriting." And as a homespun sampler of a rookie off the street, it has few peers.

Rolling Stone Best 1980s Albums - Rolling Stone

It seems amazing to think about it now, but Guns N’ Roses released the 1987 album Appetite For Destructionalmost without notice. It wasn’t until a year later that the album became popular after the band had gone on tour. At that time, the songs Welcome To The Jungle, Sweet Child O’ Mine, and Paradise Citybecame more widely known. Subsequently, Appetite For Destructionpeaked at No. 1 on the charts. It remains one of the band’s most famous albums.It wasn't until the release of her second album that Suzanne Vega achieved fame, scoring an unlikely Top Forty hit with "Luka," a song about child abuse. But the singer's 1985 debut album, Suzanne Vega, had already awakened listeners to a fresh new voice, reviving the folk-music genre after nearly two decades of dormancy. For Vega, who was then twenty-five years old, the album was cause for uncertainty and isolation as much as triumph. "I felt a little bit like a novelty act," she says of her auspicious introduction.