The 80S

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and 90s music has been created to share my of music. Though much of it is British and from the 1980s or 1990s, that isn’t completely the case. The following survey of the 100 best albums of the Eighties, as selected by the editors of Rolling Stone, shows that the music and the values it stands for have been richer for the struggle. Punks got older and more articulate in their frustration and rage, while many veteran artists responded to that movement’s challenge with their most vital work in years. And rap transformed the face — and voice — of popular music. We wanted to have a Number One record — like the Beatles,” Oakey said. With “Don’t You Want Me,” the Human League achieved its goal. Robertson sees the album as just the start of a new kind of songwriting and record making. "I was proud to rip open my chest and bare my soul," he says. "I'm not embarrassed to talk about these things anymore. Do you know what a skin walker is? It's a thing in Indian mythology. There are certain people born with this gift, and they're able to actually get inside you and mess with your feelings and with your mind. And if a skin walker chooses to get a hold of you, there's not much you can do. I want a song to get inside me, to feel it did the old skin walker on me. I was kind of discovering that on this album, and now I'm pursuing it." Through a convoluted string of events, "Red Red Wine"— written by Neil Diamond, covered by Tony Tribe and rediscovered by UB40 — became a Number One hit in 1988, four years after its first appearance on Labour of Love. The album also reentered the charts, doing better the second time around and outselling the band's then-current release, simply titled UB40."I think it's purely the fact that American radio is now prepared to play reggae, whereas before it wasn't," Campbell says of UB40's long-overdue recognition in the States.

The 50 best albums of the 80s | Louder The 50 best albums of the 80s | Louder

On Power, Corruption & Lies— originally released by the British Factory Records in 1983 and reissued in this country on Qwest/Warner Bros. two years later — the band members produced themselves, upgrading from home-built synthesizers and sequencers to state-of-the-art models in the process. "We got the machines two weeks before we went into the studio, and we didn't really know how to work them," Morris says.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." 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. Music can be like therapy," he says. "It's like getting parts of yourself out, which I used to do all the time. But I was at a point in my life where I really closed off my emotions about a lot of things I didn't understand. I just shut down the whole program and did things that were more on the surface level, because it was safer. Now I feel time has healed whatever was bothering me so much. I feel more open, and I can write songs that are more directly involved with what I'm thinking."

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

The album's opener, "I Can't Live Without My Radio," became a B-boy anthem. Now that LL has reached the advanced age of twenty-two, he says he is still unable to live without his radio. "But now it's in my car — know what I mean?"The reclusive Franklin had spent many of the preceding years in her hometown of Detroit, looking after her seriously ill father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin. According to Walden, Aretha hadn't sung seriously in two or three years. After her father died in 1984, the singer began thinking about returning to the music scene. I think we cross a lot of boundaries and I think our fans are very open-minded.” Ne Obliviscaris and the making of Urn Charlie Watts's arrival on the scene also bolstered Richards's sense of possibility for Steel Wheels."I drove up to the rehearsal place, and I heard him playing," says Richards. "I just sat in the car for five minutes and listened, and I said, 'Yeah, no problem. This year's made.'"

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

At the time, Eddie was in the process of building his own studio with Don Landee, the band's longtime engineer (and now its producer). While boards and tape machines were being installed, the guitarist began fiddling around on synthesizers to pass the time. "There were no presets," says Templeman. "He would just twist off until it sounded right." For many, Van Halen just wasn’t Van Halen without Diamond Dave. Eddie saw it differently. “We lost a frontman,” he said, “but we gained a singer.” And with Sammy Hagar on board, the band’s career arc continued upwards. 5150, the first ‘Van Hagar’ album, was also the band’s first US number one. Though many have their gripes with the Morrissey of the 21st century, he was a unique frontman partially responsible for some of the best 80s albums. The Smiths were at their peak when they released the now-iconic The Queen Is Dead, with the whole band coming together as a unit, and a real balance being cemented between the fantastic guitar work of Johnny Marr and the Morrissey’s beautiful lyrics. 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. Aside from some remixing and minor overdubbing, the tapes were virtually released as is. Brown helped Lovett select ten songs (the rest have appeared on subsequent albums) with an ear to country radio. Four made the C&W Top Twenty.

Luther Vandross, ‘The Night I Fell in Love’

If I Was Your Girlfriend" features a very personal lyric, directed at Susannah Melvoin, who had been Prince's girlfriend. "Being Wendy's twin sister, she's very close to Wendy," says Rogers. "It was a way of asking, 'Why can't I have the closeness you have with your sister? Why can't we be friends too?'" Nor are many of the songs selected for She's So Unusual conventional. "She Bop," a seductive account of female masturbation, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," an uncut statement about sexual freedom, and "He's So Unusual," a short but sweet taste of a 1929 tune that recalls comedienne Gracie Allen, weren't the kinds of songs that typically add up to a hit album. But that's precisely what She's So Unusual became. The multiplatinum disc and its four Top Five singles made Lauper an instant star. Before embarking on a solo career, Lauper sang with Blue Angel, a group she cofounded in 1978. The band's debut album, released in 1980, bombed, and Blue Angel broke up. Guitar Town tells simple stories of people living in hard times, such as the cautionary "Good Ol' Boy (Gettin' Tough)." It also relates the autobiographical tale of a country singer rolling down the road, from "Guitar Town" to "Hillbilly Highway," trying to outrun the blues. "It's important to me to make sure the average person can understand what I'm trying to say," says Earle. "Songwriting at its best is very rarely poetry; it's usually narrative and practically journalism. It is a form of literature, but one you can consume while you're driving your car." 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.