It confirms my belief that sophistication, or intended sophistication, is not the kiss of death," he said proudly. "As long as you're grounded somewhere in common sense." We wanted it to be like the first Clash album," said bassist Horace Panter shortly after the album's U.S. release in 1980. "Not necessarily produced, just recorded. Costello was more of an observer, if you like. Suggesting things that we were too involved in to see ourselves."

80s (Top 1980s Albums) - Music Grotto 51 Best Albums Of The 80s (Top 1980s Albums) - Music Grotto

Neil Tennant was a music journalist before he formed Pet Shop Boys, so it’s little wonder he was adept at melding acid social commentary with pop. There are some particularly clever lyrical turns on this album, especially on “Rent”: “I love you, you pay my rent.” Actually, the duo’s second record, did not shrink from the enormous success of its predecessor, Please. The synths this time are even more over-the-top as they match Tennant’s immediately recognizable vocals, somehow dry and impassioned at once. At the time, he was especially pissed off with Margaret Thatcher’s government and the likelihood of her re-election, and he explores his malaise with privatization and capitalism on “Shopping” and “King’s Cross.” The record even resurrected Dusty Springfield's career after she featured on the wry single “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” On Actually, Pet Shop Boys mastered the art of dealing with the decade's socio-political stresses without sacrificing the need for dance and laughter. –Eve Barlow A cynical tour de force, Trouble in Paradise sets several of Newman's nastiest portraits of prejudice, greed, ego and small-mindedness against some of the most striking music of his career. "It came to be about places and situations that could be ideal," says Newman, "but are somehow messed up." 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.This is definitely an album of the Eighties," says Lyle Lovett, "because it took almost the whole of the Eighties to do it." The line is typical of the dry wit that Lovett employs in his offbeat country and blues songs — and also accurate. Some of the songs on Lyle Lovett were written as early as 1979. In 1984, he spent his life savings as well as a loan from his parents to record eighteen demos; ten of these were finally remixed and released in 1986. Guitar Town boasts everything from a rich, orchestral twelve-string to some deep, twangy solos on the Danelectro six-string bass. It was recorded at an all-digital studio in Nashville. By embracing the latest technology, Earle hoped his hometown would receive its due as an up-to-date music metropolis. "I want to see Nashville become a place to make records, and not just country records," says Earle. I wanted to come in touch with the common factor and not seem to be some sort of alien freak," David Bowie told writer Lisa Robinson shortly after the release of Let's Dance, his most accessible — and commercially successful — album. "I don't want to seem detached and cold, because I'm not." They hadn't really decided what they wanted the record to sound like," says Froom. "Even the broadest terms — like, should there be a lot of synthesizers, or should it be more of a natural thing? — weren't sorted out. We just tried different things as we went along, and it seemed to take on a character of its own as it went along."

200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s | Pitchfork

But it turns out that the album wasn't so easy to make after all. "It's remarkable to me that it sounds like a really simple, easygoing album," says Crowded House leader Neil Finn, "because there was quite a large amount of angst involved in making that record." The Stop Making Sense album also feels immersive, and there’s a mounting energy throughout the set that translates the live experience into a sit-through listen. This was a band that sang euphorically about architecture and philosophy, making such nerdy topics sound fun. The synths and programmed drums flit between zany and chilling, kitschy and funky, as Byrne’s breathless delivery compliments the anxious isolation of his lyrics; even before a roomful of adoring fans, the singer knew how to sound alone. –Jay Balfour

Crowded House, ‘Crowded House’

Critics loved the album, and it sold well. Crenshaw's single of "Someday, Someway" briefly hit the Top Forty, peaking at Number Thirty-six. Robertson wrote passionately about saving the planet ("Showdown at Big Sky"), the price of fame ("American Roulette") and romance ("Broken Arrow"). "I never wrote about the environment before," says Robertson. "I feel very strongly about this stuff, but [in the past] I felt like I'd be jumping on the bandwagon. Now I felt like I couldn't help it." It's real obvious to me," says producer Ted Templeman when asked why 1984 won Van Halen a broader and larger audience. "Eddie Van Halen discovered the synthesizer."

The best album covers of the 1980s - Radio X The best album covers of the 1980s - Radio X

On Empty Glass, his second solo album, Pete Townshend chronicled the personal tumult he was experiencing and initiated an adult style of songwriting that helped reenergize the singer-songwriter tradition in the Eighties. Not yet an accomplished songwriter (although she co-wrote "She Bop" and the touching ballad "Time After Time"), Lauper looked outside for material. She interpreted the Brains'"Money Changes Everything," Prince's "When You Were Mine" and Robert Hazard's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" with wit and conviction. Lange's obsessiveness with the smallest sonic details had a big downside: It was hard to tell, from day to day, whether any progress at all was being made on the record. After an all-night session, Lange would often play work tapes for Leppard comanager Peter Mensch, who lived a short drive from Battery Studios. "Mutt would come in and say, 'Listen to what we did tonight'— and three more words would be added to a vocal," says Mensch. "It got to a point where I'd keep listening to these tapes and I couldn't tell what was there and what was missing." The Specials found a happy medium between the aggression of punk and the more danceable, upbeat rhythms of ska. Sporting porkpie hats and two-tone suits, the racially mixed seven-member band from Coventry, in Britain, spearheaded a ska renaissance. The Specials' debut album, produced by Elvis Costello, also launched the briefly successful 2-Tone Record label. One of the most fervent and forceful political statements to emerge from Eighties pop music, Sun City didn't achieve the sales or wide radio airplay of other "cause" records like We Are the World. Nevertheless, the single and the accompanying album managed to achieve their primary goals: to draw attention to South Africa's racist policy of apartheid and to support a cultural boycott of the country.Such was the trepidation with which the former Band guitarist and songwriter approached making his long-put-off solo album. But he needn't have fretted so much: Robbie Robertson— released in 1987, a full decade after the Band broke up — is ample proof that Robertson's abilities are still very much intact. An alloy of several tribal styles as well as jazz and reggae, mbaqanga shares a number of similarities with the blues, and not just because it is a music born of oppression. Like modern blues, mbaqanga came about when workers flooded into major cities, bringing their local music with them. And like the blues, mbaqanga got electrified when it came to the city. 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. In fact, for the song "Nite Club," the band even brought in an audience. "We had roadies, Chrissie Hynde and a few other friends," says Staples. "It was a laugh, because we had a little drink to get the pub atmosphere going." Sting's record company initially questioned the wisdom of his musical expeditions on … Nothing Like the Sun."It wasn't simple enough or directed toward the charts," says Sting. "I said, 'Why underestimate the record-buying public?'" In fact, the album was a commercial success, spawning a hit single in the jaunty "We Will Be Together."

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

George Michael was never satisfied. He shot to prominence as a tanned, toothy teen idol who sought nothing less than the highest echelon of pop stardom, and by the time he reached that rarefied air, he was thoroughly disillusioned with celebrity. Michael made Faith, his crowning achievement, just as his hunger for recognition began to overlap with his artistic maturity; it was the last moment he believed he’d be gratified by becoming bigger and better than his peers. The band's first two albums had achieved critical raves but miserable sales. Things became so dismal after its second album stiffed that the band came dangerously close to permanent not-was status. With the group in complete disarray, Weiss says he was doing "lamentable" home-video scores, while Fagenson produced "sexual deviants" like transvestite singer Marilyn. Bowen worked with the O'Jays, and Atkinson was "probably watching the soaps and pimping," Weiss says jokingly.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. 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.