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." Amid the turmoil, Townshend resolved to make a solo album. "In a way, I've got the punk explosion to thank for making that decision," he said at the time. "It freed me. It allowed me to be myself. It dignified me, in a way, to be cast to one side. I felt uneasy with the way the Who were inevitably on the road to mega-stardom. . . . [It] was the most important thing I've ever done for me — to allow me to have a new beginning, to actually grow."

80s (The Ultimate Collection) (2020, CD) - Discogs

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. 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. 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." Let's Dance grafts brassy, big-band swing onto a solid, contemporary R&B foundation. Bowie tapped Nile Rodgers, guitarist for the stylish New York dance band Chic, to produce Let's Dance. Excluding Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was Bowie's suggestion, the musicians were drawn from Rodgers's circle. "Except for Bernard Edwards, no person had influenced me more," Rodgers says of Bowie. Yet the collaboration was nothing like what he had had in mind. People say we're obviously a message band," Reid adds. "But we're just trying to chronicle a certain thing that was happening with us. That thing about messages — well, really, the record was about the way we feel."And Gang of Four's revolutionary pop rhetoric not only infiltrated the dance floor — it also invaded the corporate world, as the band was one of the few early postpunk outfits to sign to a major label. It was a situation some found hypocritical, but as Burnham says, "If you've got something to say, and you want people to hear it, what's the best thing to do? Make as many people hear it as possible." Discover the current price of The Best 80s Album in the World Ever HERE The Hits Album – The 80s Album Newman is clearly one of pop music's preeminent songwriters. But with Trouble in Paradise, he also mastered the art of great record making. Today it stands as one of the best albums of his career, a fully realized collection of story-songs in which Newman's dark take on the world is fully fleshed out. We started out as rank amateurs with a belief that you could use technology to make up for the fact that you hadn’t acquired any skill, that you could use computers to make up for the fact that you hadn’t any keyboard players, that you could use sequencers to do rhythms rather than employ a drummer,” Human League vocalist and songwriter Phil Oakey told Musician magazine in 1982. Most radio stations were just as puzzled by the Nevilles' style, which didn't fit easily into any programming format. "We just couldn't get any airplay," says Dorn. "It was the kind of record where I wished I could have gone door-to-door and said, 'Here — listen to this record!'"

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

It’s hard to imagine a more wrenching cri de coeur than the one that pours from Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville. His countertenor pierces through every song on the British synth-pop band’s unflinching debut, conveying pain, anger, righteousness, and freedom all at once. His howls exorcised the vexing truths of gay life at the time, while finding release in the liberating rhythms of dance music. While many artists of the British synth-pop movement were gay, from Soft Cell’s Marc Almond to Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Holly Johnson, none were nearly as political or outspoken as Bronski Beat. By the time Philip Glass released Solo Piano in 1989, he was probably the most famous composer alive. He had a big deal with a major label; he’d collaborated with Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt; he’d played live on “ Late Night With David Letterman.” Solo Piano represented Glass at his most ruminative and stripped-down—beginning-of-the-morning music, or end-of-the-night. It ambles, digresses and—as Glass does—repeats. At times it almost seems to pour out of him like thought, or conversation. You wonder how something so simple could inspire such hatred (and Glass did—and still does—inspire hatred). It may have something to do with the collective delusion that entertainment should feel easy but art should feel hard. Glass wasn’t even a great pianist in the conventional sense—he flubs notes, he muddies phrasing. Where his ensemble pieces had a seamless, ecstatic quality, Solo Piano sounds mostly like what it is: A man alone at the piano. We were out of town, so the band wasn't looking at their watches, having a 4:30 Pepsi-Cola jingle they had to go do," says Vandross. "Once you get someone away from that New York session mentality, their whole countenance relaxes and their guard comes down. They take off that bulletproof vest they've been wearing and give you the best that they've got.

I was expecting the album to be big, but I wasn't expecting anything like the success it had," says Michael. "There was a fair amount of pressure on me to carve a different niche as a solo artist without actually having to force it. The progression had to be natural, but I also knew there had to be a progression."

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

The group chose material ranging from the well known (Jimmy Cliff's classic "Many Rivers to Cross") to the unknown (Winston Groovey's "Please Don't Make Me Cry"). UB40's lilting rhythms, uncluttered arrangements and sweet, soulful vocals proved irresistible, and Labour of Love helped break UB40, which had been famous in Europe since 1980, in the U.S. 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. 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.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. Shying away from his persona as a preening dandy who sang drivel like "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," Michael cultivated a new approach that was seriously sexy. With torn jeans, perfectly coifed hair and stubble that would make Don Johnson envious, he became the leading progenitor of a style that all but redefined late-Eighties fashion. Sting's sources ranged from German composer Hans Eisler and Jimi Hendrix (a jazz reading of "Little Wing") to a traditional Chilean courting dance in "They Dance Alone," a haunting tribute to the families of Chile's "disappeared," opponents of the government who are believed to have been murdered. In his lyrics, Sting juxtaposed meditations on death and rebirth — his mother died during the making of the record — with observations on religion, history and, in "Englishman in New York," spiritual and cultural exile. He sent the tape around to record companies. They liked the material but wanted him to re-record it, which he refused to do. Finally, the tape found its way to singer-songwriter Guy Clark, who recommended him to Tony Brown at MCA. "When I first heard the demos," says Brown, "I thought, 'How could this tape have been around for more than a week without somebody putting it out?' This guy was so developed, so focused." 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.