Now this is how it started: THE ILX 1980s ALBUM POLL RESULTS!!

are these the 11 albums left?

The Queen is Dead
Remain in Light
Sign of the Times
Hounds of Love
Thriller
Daydream Nation
Purple Rain
Murmur
Doolittle
it takes a nation of millions
Master of Puppets - is in the top 11 or something else?

An 80s poll with absolutely NO Housemartins would be fucking ridiculous.

Don't blame me, I had them at #7.

(but yeah, that album had about 50 hit singles... surprised it didn't at least scrape the bottom quarter of the poll.) xxxp

Have the Housemartins aged particularly well? I find myself listening to The Beautiful South much more often these days.

if the eurythmics dont make it i am going to be really angry at u all

― NAKES HAVE THE STAPLES IN THEM (jjjusten), Monday, November 30, 2009

request special anger dispensation on account of i voted the fuck out of sweet dreams (edging out touch on the strength of "i could give you (a mirror)"

Why's everybody so sure Remain in Light is in? I've got two Talking Heads albums on my ballot and neither of them is this. I always thought of "Stop Making Sense" as the canonical "if you have one TH record" record, but I don't see even it (much less the superior Name of This Band..) placing this high. Remain in Light edged Fear of Music to win the ILM studio albums poll, it's true, but note well this caveat at the beginning: "I've purposefully taken off live albums for fear of landsliding (admit they were a lot better live)"

Hmmm... Discipline you guys, it could happen. It's the only 80s KC anyone would even consider voting for and it does have quite a following...?

Yes ppl who have never hear Double Nickels, go forth and do so! That album is my I Ching. Be aware that there are a few tracks that were left off the CD version, but you can find them on the internet as vinyl rips and stick them back in where they belong.

I stopped caring about King Crimson when I was 20, and that's more than most people ever did. I don't see them making the top 10 at all.

Have the Housemartins aged particularly well?

tbh not really.

Remain In Light is arguably TH's canonical album and easily their canonical 80s album, it's not even up for debate that it'll be here. Personally I think it's overrated and didn't vote for it, but that's how it is.

"Remain in Light" is considered the key Talking Heads 80s album as indicated by the high placing on friends and favourites custom chart at number 3

also re: Talk Talk: if Spirit of Eden can't the crack the top 10 then i am ruling out Colour of spring

I didn't vote for Discipline myself-- maybe I'm wrong in my notion of how much people like it.

King Crimson no chance in the top 11 this ain't Progressive Ears message board

Progressive Ears
http://www.progressiveears.com

Have the Housemartins aged particularly well?

Do we stil like fancy singing and do the rich still stick it to the poor?

GET UP OFF OUR KNEES!

I love the Housemartins but they're sadly not in my top 30 for the 80s, in part b/c I'm not sure which album to vote for (I have both albums but I have a comp. called Now That's What I Call Quite Good that I listen to much more often). I'd probably have voted for The People Who Grinned... in my top 50, though.

This Heat - Deceit is 15 on my friends & favourites 80s custom chart - do This Heat have enough fans on ILM?

Those last two entries are probably my two favourite 'wandering around town aimlessly on a sunny day' albums ever - two sprawling records with a carefree, sort of goofy feel to them.

And there goes my #1. Double Nickels On The Dime. Just typing it gives me chills.

A lot of the best punk rock makes it sound easy, like anyone can do it. And that's a big part of the appeal. But when you play Double Nickels, you think, Those guys are way better than me. I could never do that.

Even the Central American references have aged well.

Do the Housemartins have a proper best-of album? I'd consider throwing it a vote if so, but their as-is albums never hung together really well for me.

im relieved the minutemen made it. Was beginning to think it missed out along with black flag, bad brains etc

btw i voted crimson so im not giving up hope just yet

the Housemartins had better tunes than the Smiths, I shocked myself by realising recently

youre crazy

That comp. I listed above works as a good best-of, though it's somewhat long for that.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju for the top 11? will they got the goth block vote

Propaganda - A Secret Wish - are the popists going to spring a big surprise?

the goths on ilm dont admit to being goths so they might not want to blow their cover

I voted Crimson & This Heat, got no hope for either of them charting.

not with PSBs so low xp2

The Housemartins do have a 14 track 'Best Of', though I'd say Quite Good or the Live at the BBC are better buys.

the Housemartins are NME endorsed vermin Rodents

Q: which Melody Maker scribe would have said such a thing?

how many Prince albums to come?

People Who Grinned is hit or miss for me, but London 0 Hull 4 is close to perfect and represents the high point of the "pretty" side of 80s college rock for me. It's ABSOLUTELY UNABASHED about striving for effect, maybe because it believes itself in the service of a higher political aim...? L0H4, the Now That's While... comp (which grabs the best off both LPs but has too much filler) and maybe even their amazing demo tape Themes for the Well-Dressed Man would have made my top 100 album list.

Crim's in my top 10, but I don't see it happening at this point.

Sign of the Times
Purple Rain

anymore?

BTW I'm listening to Alphaville right now and I'd laugh really hard if they placed

Ha King Crimson is now 'Crim.'

11. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead [1986] (307 points, 26 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://littlepatchofyellowwall.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/thequeenisdead.jpg

This really is a great question -- and it is, oddly, something I was thinking about last night. I've just recently procured a car with only a tape deck, and therefore went rummaging through all of my old tapes for something decent; given that most of my tape-buying comes from the high-school period, I found myself pretty well stocked on the Smiths' back catalog. Thus it was that I was driving around last night listening to The Queen is Dead and thinking about how, despite their presence and influence and normalization over the years, the Smiths really are a very weird band, even by today's standards.

The duality you point out is an apt one, but I'd even add a few things to that. First is the fact that while Marr is overshadowed by Moz as the source of oddity, it's worth noting that Marr was pretty interesting as well. He tends to get defined as some sort of godfather of indie jangle, but listening back through those records, you realize how all-over-the-place he tended to be, from those funky little instrumentals he'd play live (funky in the sense that, say, "Rubber Ring" is funky) to the occasional rockabilly turn ("Vicar in a Tutu") -- leave alone the wide swath of pop/rock he cut through.

And then you pair that with Morrissey, whose inclinations were even more unusual and in a completely different fashion. This is what fascinates me about Morrissey -- the fact that he seems to be essentially a social deviant, the sort of person who would be sitting creepily in a flophouse or hanging around libraries scaring people had he not been given a near-magical opportunity to be odd for a living. The fact that his pre-Smiths life was allegedly so creepily sheltered explains quite a bit -- the camp mentioned above seems a direct result of the only two musical influences he claims from his youth, those being (a) sixties British pop of the Lulu / Twinkle / Sandy Shaw variety, and (b) glam, e.g. his New York Dolls obsession. (That background also explains his least appealing traits: (a) his gynophobia, common to pretty much all sheltered, awkward, creepy boys, and (b) his homoerotic attraction to hypermasculinity in the form of hooliganism. This all makes so much sense if we believe the stereotypical accounts of his youth that have him basically sitting home reading Wilde and being terribly, debilitatingly awkward and sickly and etc.)

Add to that the funkiness of Andy Rourke and the perpetually shuffly drumming of Mike Joyce. It's hard to tell, though, how much of this was Marr's doing, as both of those traits seem to be intended to work with his funky/shuffly guitar leanings.

But maybe someone who is older than me and was living in the U.K. in the early 80s can offer a better take on exactly how odd they sounded at the time. Surely "Hand in Glove" was a big surprise when it first hit the radio?

― [nabisco], 24. syyskuuta 2001 3:00

Beyond classic. I was just listening to The Queen Is Dead last night, actually, and it hadn't lost its luster. I don't feel the lyrics as much as I did when I was young (they were life savers back then), but the craftsmanship is still there. Brilliant, they were.

― Mark Richardson, 18. maaliskuuta 2001 3:00

YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS!!! THE QUEEN IS DEAD IS THE BEST ALBUM EVER AND THE BOY WITH THE THORN IN HIS SIDE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SONG EVER !!!

― ivan mandic, 10. elokuuta 2001 3:00

i think the album needs SGABTO, it's somewhere between a raspberry and a sigh. it's "forget it, this is chinatown england" after the preceding moment of almost transendence. i know you can't really blame them but you can see the worst paraochial tenedencies of the next twent years of brit rock formenting here. it's an album about decline and stasis that doesn't point a way forward, it leaves you there with moz. that's what the scott walker docu got me thinking about, eno complaining about bands just imitating talking heads and so on and never going as far out as nite flites and then you have all these bands jus refining what was said, what was done in 1986. the smiths couldn't say anymore really and morrissey only had things to say about himself afterwards.

― acrobat, 23. toukokuuta 2007 12:57

Sign is a lock. Wouldn't be altogether surprised if Purple Rain is overlooked in ILMSHOCKA.

The TOP 10 is upon us (tomorrow)!

I Know it's Over

no11? shocked how low

would say the lex will be happy its not top 10 but i dont think hes interested in an 80s poll.

Remain In Light is arguably TH's canonical album and easily their canonical 80s album, it's not even up for debate that it'll be here.

For what it's worth, last.fm has 1.3m plays for Remain In Light vs. 1.2m for Stop Making Sense (vs. 900k plays for Fear of Music) so I don't think it's totally clear cut. Plus Stop Making Sense has the better version of "Once in A Lifetime" and is better generally.

does the lex remember the 1980s?

Nah, that placement seems about right. I love it, but only put one Smiths album on my ballot (Louder than Bombs). If anyone else voted like I did, spreading votes around and not going to heavily on any one artist, it could easily have slipped to 11.

controversial! hoping it would make top 5

Hounds of Love is top 10!

I think we can safely say Master Of Puppets, Back In Black, Number Of The Beast and Reign In Blood wont be placing now.