The 80S

Product Information

It also introduced many of the musical elements that would influence the development of later hip-hop. This is early Monk at her best, with catchy piano motifs working as the ground beneath her vocal acrobatics.

80s Compilation Albums [2023] - 80s and 90s music 10 Best 80s Compilation Albums [2023] - 80s and 90s music

It was a time when disco and punk were in tatters, its artists rebuilding from the rubble with new innovations to birth hardcore and new wave. The album was a huge success and has been widely recognized as one of the most influential works of the post-punk and gothic rock genres. This is a record about being a woman in a boys’ club and blowing up the spot with uncompromising attitude.The album featured many of Lauper’s most famous songs, such as Time After Timeand Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Cowpunk thrashes like “Split Myself in Two” and “New Gods” suggested the trio hadn’t entirely outgrown its hardcore roots, but the moments that linger are the pretty ones, like the shimmering guitar instrumental “Aurora Borealis,” a beautiful acid trip amid the cacti. Like a batch of brown acid spiking the American underground, no ’80s band was as hallucinatory and psychosis-inducing as Texas’ Butthole Surfers. Here, their pop is so unbelievably well crafted—from the triumphal synth hook on the title track to the subtly waltzing drums on “Soldiers”—that it always feels like there is some kind of hope behind the tears, the sublime melodies picking you up even as the words knock you down. Instead of augmenting traditional, jangling psych-pop with dance rhythms, the group started at the other end of the spectrum—rough, squelching acid house—and used it as a base for their wildest impulses.

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

In their clattering, cyclical post punk grooves peppered with nonsense chants and horse-like whinnies, it's clear how they exerted a lopsided influence on generations of DIY punk who followed. For the earliest generation of rock bands, making records required a modicum of professional ambition.

But for all the album’s overall quality, the deceptively uplifting title track’s tale of a shafted Vietnam veteran is the one that most people recognise. The Police’s final album was 1983’s Synchronicity, and there is no doubt that they ended their career with a bang. It’s easy to imagine Daniel Johnston pounding away on a cheap keyboard on “Big Business Monkey” or fiddling with a kids’ toy on “Walking the Cow. The lyrics, too, showed growth, shading Costello’s earlier vitriol with greater perspective, while also allowing for far more enigmatic imagery.

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

Underscoring the seething despair in his lyrics, Picciotto sang as if choking on a Brillo pad, punishing his larynx until all that remained was a tattered rasp.

Ancodia” tosses a chugging breakbeat, lounge-lizard synths, and kooky vocal samples into a blender; “Cobra Bora” is an acid-funk odyssey that opens with a disco sample before twisting like a corkscrew and whacking you over the head with a cowbell. Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland stood out from the crowd in many ways, most notably because of its use of South African street music.

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

Their lurching beats, heavy bass lines, and sloshing guitars sounded like punk with a hangover, or maybe the Stooges chugging codeine. He sings about housing discrimination, peace in Zimbabwe, and on “Happy Birthday,” he crusades to make Martin Luther King Jr.The breezy yet sinewy record further solidified King Sunny’s reign across oceans and continents, showing Africans how their traditional rhythms could mingle with modern technology to make world-conquering music. But Lyte’s stepfather presented the two acts as a package deal, and soon enough, production began on Lyte as a Rock. But nobody remembers it that way, because for all the musicianship hidden under the hood, it's hard to register anything other than the fury and agony at the surface. The album gained attention across the music industry for its unique folk rock content and focus on political and social issues. If anyone still gets sentimental about the Lower East Side of the ’80s, a fantasy land where Madonna and Fab Five Freddy partied with the graffiti artists Futura and Keith Haring, we probably have perfect records like Tom Tom Club to blame.