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

I'm wondering about Rock 'n' Roll - The Mekons. It seems unlikely it will place high enough to get mentioned now, but I thought it would have been higher than Fear & Whiskey.

Fear & Whiskey seems to be the de facto Mekons album when it comes to consensus lists. Fewer people like Rock 'n' Roll, but are more passionate about it. More people like Fear & Whiskey, but not as passionately, and thus it ends up somewhere in the middle. I guess if more than 14 or 15 people voted Rock 'n' Roll really high on their ballots it could still appear here, but I don't see it happening.

maybe because it's all over grosse point blank? i think violent femmes have been enduringly pretty popular in the uk in a cult-y as opposed to music press sense. looking at the list now that it's starting to turn predictable, the real anomalies are 2 x appearances by both foetus and meat puppets.

Thirlwell love on ILM is strong, so the Foetus double shot isn't surprising. Didn't ever realize people cared that much about Meat Puppets, though. (I like 'em fine, but they probably wouldn't even crack my personal '80s list even if I expanded it to 200.)

I'm surprised The Cure are placing at all. I suspect I may be using ILM in a different way to everyone else.

Does a day ever go by where there's not some new or revived Cure thread on the front page?

I'm surprised The Cure are placing at all.

― Ismael Klata, Monday, November 30, 2009 2:14 AM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark

that's way more surprising than the cure's landing a few records on the list.

me, i was wtf surprised by the associates' sulk and manuel gottsching's e2-e4 (neither of which meant a thing to me), and pleasantly surprised by the relatively high placement of arvo part's tabula rasa. everything else seems pretty reasonable, if not exactly predictable.

Cure, fantastic singles band, albums a bit meh. (Ducks brickbats from ILX Cure massive)

xpost I expected Sulk to be top 50, but they're like the Violent Femmes in that they meant nowt, apart from the usual Anglophiles, in America.

One name that hasn't come up so far on predictions (on this thread anyway) for the top of the list (not the very top, certainly) is Siouxsie & the Banshees. Hard to see how they wouldn't make it, but maybe vote-splitting would cause that (especially since there's a lot of overlap between the Cure contingent and the Siouxsie contingent).

i've always thought of sulk as a pretty big ilm record. yeh the cure are behemoths, i don't think their presence here is at all surprising, disintegration is a big 'un for their fans though so maybe thats the last for fat bob? i'm wondering how more arena-y staples like jamc & the bunnymen are going to do now, i assumed they'd have a couple each but now....

I'd make the argument for Siouxsie that Dods did for The Cure. Great singles band, and I probably should've voted for Once Upon a Time, but I probably wouldn't toss a vote in the direction of any of their albums proper (okay, maybe Peepshow, but even there the first half totally dominates the second half).

The Cure were consistent hitmakers, and got to be fairly regularly top ten, until "Friday I'm in Love", and that was the end of it!

Would never have guessed.

23. The Human League - Dare [1981] (219 points, 17 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://991.com/newGallery/Human-League-Dare-230383.jpg

The story behind this album and how the label were just about to write off the League as a failure, given that Marsh and Ware had left Oakey to the contract on his own is far more fascinating than even the going to the bar to find the two female singers story. Basically, Oakey being super-crazy and persistent, and Martin Rushent being a producer god allowed Dare to be what it is.

― System Jr. (Mackro Mackro), 22. helmikuuta 2009 6:21

it's always been 'things that dreams are made of' for me. Those sawing noises in the middle eight that power up into the reedy mock-tudor squall of the chorus! that alien elegance-inelegance, the huge distance between his voice and the synths, the storybook hopefulness of the lyrics. A bunch of remixes of it were released in 2007 and none of them could satisfy, i think because they all somehow smoothed out the edges of the weirdness, made it either screechy or too dreamy.

though the lightness of touch in 'don't you want me' never fails to astonish: i think it wasn't until i heard the 12" dance mix that i even noticed how bright the chorus is.

god i love this album so much.

― c sharp major, 22. helmikuuta 2009 14:35

If Seconds (my vote) wins this, I'll be delighted. But really: it's almost a perfect album, isn't it? Much weirder, way more unsettling and far less obviously of its time than -- I think -- received wisdom has it. I've read countless articles about how it came about, and I'll not deny the genius-level input of Martin Rushent -- but I think the key thing is that the departure of Ian C-M and Martin, and the arrival of Ian B and Jo, got rid of a lot of the self-consciousness and simply gave rise to an eight-legged tune-making machine. I still prefer the MkI League, but Dare is the sound of a slightly unlikely collection of songwriters absolutely nailing the moment; music-box melodies with no musicianship.

given that Marsh and Ware had left Oakey to the contract on his own

Adrian Wright's lack of recognition saddens me enormously!

― Special topics: Disco, The Common Market (grimly fiendish), 22. helmikuuta 2009 20:59

Well, sure, but maybe people are avoiding that one the better to rave about the lesser known equally good ones. The two that really got me back then were 'Sound of the Crowd' and 'The Things That Dreams Are Made Of'. I liked their tough, strident rhythms and highly musical use of sound effects. Phil's voice has always had a slightly cold, brutal quality that went with the music. But fundamentally, yeah, great rhythms and sounds. 'Seconds' - soppy, slightly unchallenging chords, cliched lyrics and perspective (not as weak as Dolores O'Riordan Cranberry's effort on the same subject, good song compared to a lot of synth pop at the same time though, and a big warm production. Hmm yeah, but Do Or Die, a modernist classic of early techno. Melodically so obvious as to be oddly not obvious, especially when carved in the blaknk grey slate sounds of that big System 700 or whatever it was. In 1981 I found that track a bit of a challenge, but nowadays it's just a kickass piece of modernist synthpop. I'm with you Geir! Except I am a little surprised you like it, being as how it's not exactly brimming with melodic invention, relying more on subtle textural, arrangement and rhythmic shifts to hold interest. I mean, basically, it's a groove, once Phil's alarming/alarmed and thrusting vocal section ends. Hilarious lyric - 'Alsatians fall unconscious at the shadow of your call'. How does he come up with this stuff?

― moley, 23. helmikuuta 2009 7:20

Was just listening to this not three hours ago. I figured it was coming, just didn't know how soon.

Apparently this album was called "Dare" in the UK and "Dare!" (with an exclamation mark) in the US. I wonder what's the story behind that?

Oh wow, I'd never noticed.

i always wondered about that too.

booming album.

Reverend, if you're still reading, I'd be interested in seeing how a poll for strictly '80s rap & r&b would turn out if you're up to organzing such an undertaking. Not to marginalize it in any way, but you're always going to get the same few strong contenders from particular genres that show up in a poll like this where the only parameters are release dates and nothing more.

I can sorta see where Rev is coming from: this poll seems to be more dominated by "white" guitar rock than either the 70s or the 90s poll, where other genres than rock had a better representation. I'm not sure what the exact reasons for this are, but to me it seems in the 80s the division between "black" and "white" music was bigger than either in the 70s or the 90s, and this poll might reflect that (especially among voters who were actively listening to popular music in the 80s). It was only towards the end of the decade that this division began to get narrower, with the rising popularity of rap and house/techno.

I was just looking for the 90s poll. How is it titled? I didn't turn up much in the search.

And, of course, the fact that for the better part of the decade rap and dance music were single-oriented rather than album-oriented genres doesn't help them in an album poll.

Anyway, I think part of it is due to the fact rap was a singles-driven genre until at least the middle of the '80s...so we're basically working off of five years here instead of ten. On top of that, a lot of popular-then r&b hasn't really dated as well as material from the '70s has and the sound of r&b in the '90s wasn't significantly different going into the '00s (until recent years) that it hardly seemed dated at all. For whatever reason, '80s r&b seems preserved in some kind of impenetrable amber that is nostalgic for some and cringe-inducing for others.

xp (Tuomas and I on the same path here re: rab being singles-driven.)

rab=rap

I was just looking for the 90s poll. How is it titled?

I think you have to search under "1990s" (or that's how the singles poll was titled anyway).

I was starting to think Dare might be forgotten so really happy to see that so high, it was my number one.

When were the 70s and 90s polls held btw?

ILX 70s album poll - results (nominations in '04, results in '05)

Still haven't located the nineties poll.

because i am bored i just looked them both up

ILX 70s album poll - results
no.1 = there's a riot

THE 1990s POLL RESULTS - THE ALBUMS
no.1 = loveless

So, both those polls were 5-ish years ago. I'd suggest the demographic of ILM has changed in those 5 years too, which wd also account for some of the differences in emphasis between this poll and those.

There's a Riot might win the 70s again, but I doubt Loveless would win the 90s again.

Also, for the record, Tuomas has created the nicest, most organized and well-structured poll out of all of them. Good job!

why so many "white" indie rock in 80s?

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/80sMilhouse.jpg

he's more yellow i guess

For whatever reason, '80s r&b seems preserved in some kind of impenetrable amber that is nostalgic for some and cringe-inducing for others.

I'm no booster of 80s R&B (and don't know much about it), but to point out the obvious, the same could be said of much of the music in this poll. ABC?

agree. i don't think the emphasis on white music here is an artifact of 80s r&b and rap being a singles game. maybe true of r&b, not of rap. retrospectively, "classic" rap is now seen in album terms in much the same fashion as rock.

tons of worthy rap contenders will go unmentioned in this list due only to the vagaries of ilm's taste. which does seem to skew white & indie (much like mine), not that there's anything wrong with that. metal and mainstream hard rock will get the short end of the stick for similar reasons.

hey, wait. on second thought, let's not have this discussion again...

Glad to see Sandinista! got three #1 votes; I thought I was the only one on here who loved it so completely. It'll be interesting to see if anything places higher with fewer ballots.

Sandinista! was my number 2. Like others, I'm surprised that Disintegration and Dare are as low as they are. Anyway, great list, and am hoping to track down E2-E4 based on the thread talk.

sort of hilarious and indicative that london calling wasn't even on the nominations list. (not tuomas' fault, but i don't like the whole nominations system for these polls -- i think if you want to survey a particular period, people should just be able to vote for whatever came out during that period. otherwise you end up with these weird lists where people nominate strategically and some major, obvious stuff gets left off. otoh maybe the restrictions make for more interesting results.)

although i guess it's debatable whether london calling is '79 or '80, it depends on what side of the ocean you're on.

London Calling was definitely 1979 - it's always there-or-thereabouts in 70s polls

it also shows up on '80s lists. but yeah, maybe not the best example. it's just that the nominations list in general ended up looking very restrictive to me. (no i didn't nominate anything, i wasn't really paying attention. i just think a survey of an era should be a survey of an era.)

holy hell that 70's poll is awful

I sort of agree with what tm is saying, but I can't really think of anything much that got excluded that would definitely have placed. The Go-Betweens' Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express maybe, that was joint winner in the Go-Betweens album poll after all.

probably true that it doesn't affect the top 100 that much.

I first heard of e2-e4 on a number of ambient music mailing lists in the mid-90s. Ie, krautelectronica fans postulating roots for Aphex etc.

It got its mainstream dance press props too in 90s UK, or at least the sample would be mentioned whenever "Sueno Latino" got dug up for Acknowledge Yr Classicks Of Bygone (Balearic/Chillout/Trance/whatever current genre we can fit it into this week) nostalgia pieces. V glad to see it place so well though.

And, of course, the fact that for the better part of the decade rap and dance music were single-oriented rather than album-oriented genres doesn't help them in an album poll.

Yeah, I'd wanted to nominate some house/techno/rave albums cz obviously it was an important time for those, but couldn't think of any full-length albums (only Inner City - "Big Fun" which to be honest I don't much care for) or found that they'd been released just into the 90s. So I was glad that somebody nominated an early techno compilation, one I hadn't previously heard but knew the tracks from so I felt justified in voting for it. Bit late for that to place now, though.

I was hoping Voivod would make it into the 70-somethings of this chart and Cardiacs might scrape in, but alas. Still, considering I keep seeing stuff I love and going "shit, I didn't vote for that and it's awesome" I can't be too surprised.

The Soft Boys Underwater Moonlight was one of the oversights; of course, I didn't pay any attention to the nominating process so can only blame myself.

Yeah as I mentioned in an earlier post I voted for Liberty Belle just assuming it was in the list of four Go-Betweens albums nominated, easily their strongest album for me.

This Heat are going top 5, right guys? Right? Anyone?

holy hell that 70's poll is awful

I think the thing that strikes me about the 70s poll is that the albums seem to have been chosen through an 80s (college radio?) prism, but of course, if true, that makes sense given that so many ILMers weren't around in the 70s. My own picks for the 70s (and only for the 70s) might actually turn out more pop than ILM's.