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

I didn't vote for some reason (did I know about it?), but just want to say, this has been engrossing reading all day. Big ups to Tuomas for doing this.

'70s (re)poll nominations begin in a couple days. Make sure you're all on board for the process at the beginning.

Can't wait! I also can't stand the suspense with this poll -- WHICH LP WILL REIGN?

predictions

9

Sign o’ The Times
Remain In Light
Hounds Of Love
Doolittle
Daydream Nation
Murmur
Thriller
Purple Rain
Nation Of Millions

but was will be the 10th?

― djmartian, Tuesday, December 1, 2009 5:57 PM

Computer World, Straight Outta Compton or Peter Gabriel (3) are my guesses. Tango in the Night as a long shot shockah.

i kinda have doubts about thriller tbh. not saying it won't make it, and if i was a bookie, i'd say the odds are in its favor, but i still got my doubts...

rest seem otm. computer world seems like it's got about as good a chance as thriller, especially given that a number of people seem super concerned about it. (assuming they voted, but who knows?)

would love to see reign in blood or master of puppets take up the slack, but i'm not holding my breath.

i might be naive but i still hope 'colour of spring' has a chance

yeah, that's another one that lots of posters seem concerned with, so it seems reasonable to hope. plus ilm talk talk cru pretty dedicated in general.

So which of these would people be most disappointed to see NOT place (at all)?

i can assure you that Murmur would be the least-missed one

If Murmur ends up highly ranked, wouldn't it by definition NOT be the least-missed one?

the question was if it failed!

anyway if hounds of love didn't show i think there'd be blood on the streets - KB kroo be hardcore

I guess if it failed it would by definition be the least-missed one.

xpost Yeah, Hounds Of Love for me: not necessarily blood in the streets, but tears certainly... although I'm now resigned to no Gun Club in the list and am already dejected.*

*Hmmm, hounds, fire, what's the difference?

yeah, i kinda agree on murmur. i voted for it (relatively high on the list too iirc), but it wouldn't hurt my butt to see it fail. don't see that as a possibility tho...

won't be surprised if straight outta compton is omitted. it takes a nation... seems a lot more rock-critic friendly, and i much prefer the production on efil4zaggin.

top 5 will be Remain in Light, Daydream, Nation of Millions, and Sign O' the Times. Computer World? hell nah lol

Computer World definitely has a shot.

Given Arvo P made it, I had expected Tehillim to show up somehwere in the 100, but I doubt it could have mustered 300+ points.

I have to confess that five of Arvo's points were tactical, designed to push The Queen Is Dead down a slot in my rankings. I'd never heard of him.

10. Pixies – Doolittle [1989] (323 points, 31 votes)

http://afgmustrock.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/doolittle-by-pixies_i47h1bxwskmx_full.jpg

I don't want to disappoint Vic Funk so I'll offer my two cents, for whatever that's worth (two cents, I guess).

I think the Pixies made good records, though I can't listen to them anymore. For about a year (in the mid-90's, when I was a teenager, and the band was long broken up) I couldn't imagine a better rock band existing and now, six years later, I think the only Pixies record I still own is a 12" promo of live recordings. And I only kept that because I think it's kinda rare. I got rid of everything else. The Pixies are old hat for me now, but I don't hold it against them.

If a young kid likes loud catchy guitar music and hasn't gotten into much rock beyond what's on the radio, I think the Pixies can be a nice thing to hear. I know that Doolittle made me lose interest in the Eddie Vedder/Kurt Cobain angst-rock that I was listening to on the radio at the time. They're a nice "training wheels" band and I think they'll continue to be that for awhile.

― Oliver, 29. marraskuuta 2001 3:00

Pixies are the best and most important band of my life, so, CLASSIC of course.
I'll argue Surfer Rosa and Doolittle as two of the best rock albums ever. "Hey" might be the best song ever.

― Shaun (shaun), 7. marraskuuta 2003 0:20

I'm not saying their goth in the bauhaus sense, Alex. But Doolittle could easily be described as "goth bubblegum."

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), 6. tammikuuta 2004 20:44

i just recently gave a copy of this to my 13 year old niece. she had never heard of them. i saw her the other day and she said that's about the only CD that her and her friends have been listening to.

― carne asada, 3. elokuuta 2007 23:36

i dont think any of the other albums can hope to end as well as doolittle does. the "silver"/"gouge away" ending is perfect. i think this lends a lot to my opinion that doolittle is much better as an album than any of the others. that said, i should really give the ones after doolittle more of a chance. ive heard them each a few times, but wasnt really wowed...

― peter smith (plsmith), 24. elokuuta 2004 17:07

love doolittle more than my own mother tbh

She's not a fan?

I think the Pixies can be a nice thing to hear. I know that Doolittle made me lose interest in the Eddie Vedder/Kurt Cobain angst-rock that I was listening to on the radio at the time. They're a nice "training wheels" band and I think they'll continue to be that for awhile.

one has to be impressed by this level of condescension.

What are Pixies meant to be training wheels FOR? One thing that makes this record still sound fresh, twenty years later, is that it didn't really have successors -- what the Pixies did ended with them, whatever K Cobain may say.

I think I cut a class to go buy Doolittle the day it came out. I was hugely disappointed. The production job defanged them, and what the f is this "La La Love You"? Or the Stones soundalike "Hey"? Even "Gouge Away" seemed contrived. I sold it soon after in disgust. I was hard to please back then. While it still baffles me why anyone could think it's better than Surfer Rosa, it's grown on me some. Still too flawed to be top 10 though.

Back in the day, Doolittle helped to re-ignite my interest in guitar bands, after two or three years where I took next to no notice. Never heard Surfer Rosa, other than tracks on the Death To... comp.

I didn't vote or nominate or anything and only started lurking at number 40 or so, but it's been thought-provoking and fun.

My friend made me a C90 of come on pilgrim, surfer rosa (but with the single versions of gigantic and river euphrates instead) and the best of doolittle round about when doolittle came out, and i thought it was astonishing, the best thing ever. I think of them all as one album though, really, and was never entirely sure what was actually on what.

Regardless, I still can't think of it as the 10th best album of the decade. I think this has a lot to do with a mental separation between "the 80s" and the 80s as I experienced them, which musically meant v mainstream stuff absorbed through TOTP, square things like Genesis (and Peter Gabriel) and Dire Straits, and then a Melody Maker/NME led explosion of MBV/Pixies/Sugarcubes/Dinosaur Jr/Mudhoney/Sonic Youth and er the Wonder Stuff and the Cult ... in 89. None of which I now think of as the "80s" records I like.

9. Michael Jackson - Thriller [1982] (331 points, 35 votes)

http://robertsravings.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/michaeljackson_thriller.jpg

Fuck people who don't like Michael Jackson's music. That basically how I break it down to an extent.

cosign

Alex is a dude for whom I will rep any day all day & puts up with being given shit better than pretty much anybody I know, but we will never see eye to eye on the question of MJ. Prince is a genius but between the Jackson 5 & Off the Wall and Thriller & even a few of the later singles it's gotta be Michael Jackson for the permanent win. people should talk about him in the same way they talk about Stevie Wonder, because at his best that is the level of genius we are talking about.

― Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter (J0hn D.), 26. huhtikuuta 2009 1:50

the thing is, those vocal performance that kid Michael did for the Jackson 5 - no herd mentality told anybody to love those. they're just possessed of an energy so pure & electric that they are irresistible. and this energy carries on all the way through much of Thriller, though that's the point at which that sound - the sound of pure engagement, total involvement with the song at every level (melodic, rhythmic, lyrical) - starts to fray, and things start to go to pieces.

when I saw the Billie Jean video in, what, '82, I had no idea he even still existed as an artist. I was only listening to Lou Reed and David Bowie. there was no herd to tell me "this is good." but me & my two friends with whom I talked about music could not stop discussing that video, airing not on MTV but on the meaningless zero-cultural-pull SoCal show MV3. the effect was natural, there was no hype for us. his power as a performer is and was legit. I don't side with pure popists who'll decry any claims of game-rigging as misinformed rockism (I think Britney's a real example of "we're going to make this one famous somehow, and people will learn to love it"), but in the case of Michael Jackson, any such claims are 100% bullshit that can't be backed up by anything other than "that's how it seems to me." his talent is truly incredible, and the tragedy of its total dissolution is terrible.

― Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter (J0hn D.), 26. huhtikuuta 2009 3:27

Thriller. I cannot separate it from my childhood, it being my first exposure to popular music and, as such, pretty fucking monumental. Somewhere I still have a cassette that my one sisters made for me of singles recorded from the radio (I was not allowed to own the actual record for some reason) on which I recorded snippets of myself, at age 5, singing along to the choruses.

― SORCEROUSES..roll on stage! (Pillbox), 26. huhtikuuta 2009 5:11

yeah so... i consider him my favorite vocalist ever because during the late 70's and early 80's he did guest singing and featured vocals on lots of songs that were crappy to begin with but suddenly got good when he sang on them (ie Torture, Somebody's Watching Me, that song from Captain EO), and in some cases ok songs that suddenly became kinda awesome (Say Say Say, State Of Shock) .. and similarly in the case of his own songs, a song like "Man In The Mirror" would probably be unlistenable if sung by anyone else..

I can't think of anyone else who did anything like that as many times as Michael, although this streak obviously didn't maintain itself forever since he was unable to save that terrible Eddie Murphy song from 1992 and most of the songs he sang on after 1987.

― billstevejim, 26. huhtikuuta 2009 7:39

I love Purple Rain but Thriller easily wins this for me. Yeah, 'The Girl Is Mine' is terrible but everything else on there is classic. I really think there's this joyful head-rush quality to Jackson's performance which makes the whole thing so compelling (although the material is obviously great too) - the sound of an artist at their absolute peak really getting carried away. I mean Prince does that too but Purple Rain feels more like a snapshot of someone still developing and working things out (which is still fascinating, and in a way this is sort of unfair to Prince; "Oh, just another great Prince record").

Also I don't know how much of it is down to the mastering on the CD version I've got (the 2001 remaster one, I'd only ever heard the songs on tape/the radio previously) but the production on Thriller really shines through, so many little details in the mix, it's almost like they're taking the piss with how good it all sounds.

― Gavin in Leeds, 28. huhtikuuta 2009 0:32

c'mon. Thriller was THE pop event of our (mostly) era; choosing anything else is pretty much tantamount to hating the time in which you live.

― \m/ anger on stick \m/ (Ioannis), 27. huhtikuuta 2009 16:07

the mysterious 10th record is proving to be a very interesting matter indeed

I'm still holding hope out for Stump's "A Fierce Pancake"

I dunno, I sorta gave it up at about #16.

Dawnrazor's a shoo-in for top 3 tbh

I have to agree with Gavin in Leeds up there. I was listening to "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" a while ago, and I have to say it must be the best arranged and produced pop song of all time. The sound is simply amazing in its brightness! Sometime a perfectionist attention to sound can make a song too smooth and over-produced, but with that song the way it sounds is simply so immaculate and flawless it wins you over with its sheer perfection.

It's certainly hard to get over...

it's true the 80s we reconstruct here have nothing to do with the real eighties. the 80s without dire straits, depeche mode, tears for fears, madonna, sade, peter gabriel etc. are not the decade i lived in. at least michael jackson made it into the top ten. it's an irony, his highly artificial music injects some realness into this album list.

Thriller came out at around the time (a little before, actually) I was coming out of my college radio fixation and period of at least partial knee-jerk rejection of anything pop (a period that ended, ironically, as I was starting college). I remember the girl on the train talking about all these Michael Jackson songs before I had heard them, and I was happy that I agreed with her once I heard them myself. (She was cute and friendly. I wonder if I had a chance with her and didn't realize it? Probably not.)

And I'm not saying this is merely thanks to Quincy Jones: his own The Dude, which came out around the same time as Thriller, is exactly the sort of smooth but bland r&b album Thriller might've been if it wasn't a MJ record.

(xxx-post)

it's true the 80s we reconstruct here have nothing to do with the real eighties. the 80s without dire straits, depeche mode, tears for fears, madonna, sade, peter gabriel etc. are not the decade i lived in.

Remember that the poll was not about what we think are the most representative 80s albums, but what we think are the best.

"The real eighties"? Pish. Ubiquity ≠ quality, though I'd love to see Sade on here. For many of us things like the Minutemen of Husker Dü or the 'Mats were "the real eighties", a breath of fresh air from product like Madonna and the rest of the monoculture. The eighties as you see it should also have things like Motley Crüe and Posion and Aerosmith - all much bigger than Tears For Fears or Gabriel ever were.

...

must we burn sade?

it's true the 80s we reconstruct here have nothing to do with the real eighties

Agreed. This makes the poll all the more fascinating.

i was alive for 19 months of the eighties, so my music of the decade was nursery rhymes

An incredible record in an incredible phenomenon, but it felt weird voting for it. It's like loving water.

When talking about this mystery 10th album has anyone mentioned Brian Eno's Ambient 4: On Land? I just noticed it came out on top of a previous poll for best albums of 1982 beating Thriller, Hex Enduction Hour, The Dreaming, The Lexicon Of Love, Pornography etc.

I still really want it to be Computer World.

I want it to be Kings of the Wild Frontier but I don't see it happening.

It's SO going to be Computer World.

Pointless predictions:

1 sign o the times
2 nation of millions
3 hounds of love
4 purple rain
5 computer world
6 daydream nation
7 murmur
8 remain in light

Wild cards: back in black, straight outta compton

There are several different 80s for me. I was 6½ at the start of the 80s and 16½ at the end.

80sA = The stuff I liked and bought at the time (which was mostly pop music). Some of it I still like now(e.g. Madness and The Jam) even if I hardly ever listen to it, some of it is great but not in an albums poll (e.g. 'Jack Your Body' or 'S-Express'), and quite a lot of it is just rubbish (e.g. Wet Wet Wet or Madonna). I don't recognise this 80s in the poll.

80sB = The other mainstream stuff that was around at the time, but which I didn't like. (Bon Jovi, Kylie and Jason, Rick Astley, Guns N Roses*, Michael Jackson**)

80sC = the 'alternative' indie/country stuff that my Dad bought (e.g. The Pogues, REM, The Mekons, The Triffids, Tom Waits, Husker Du...)

80sD = the indie stuff from the late 80s that I got into in the early 90s (Spacemen 3, Sonic Youth, Pixies, My Bloody Valentine...)

This poll is interesting for me because there's a whole load of stuff that doesn't fit into any of these categories. Some groups I've heard of and vaguely remember but don't really know their music (e.g. Talk Talk, The The), others I've never even heard of (Young Marble Giants, The Chills, Meat Puppets), so if nothing else I've got a lot of stuff to check out on spotify.

*or any other metal or hard rock

**yeah, crucify me, but if we're only looking at the 80s then the number of Jackson tracks I hate easily outweighs the number I like

I was going to say WHERE OH WHERE IS S-EXPRESS?

Among all the other outraged of Tunbridge Wells comments that one could make.

xpost - What sucked about the 80s is that if you couldn't afford a large music collection, you were stuck with whatever MTV and the radio dished out. Which meant suffering through the likes of Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Dire Straits, Phil Collins, Billy Joel, Huey Lewis, Chicago, Foreigner, Don Henley and many more I've blocked out, in between the small scraps of good stuff. And of course other halfway decent music was so overplayed to death, it took decades of avoiding it to be able to hear it again without twitching. Thank god I never have to go back!

8. Kraftwerk - Computer World [1981] (338 points, 29 votes)

http://img.imeem.com/ai/Z63VE4PWDE27PTEH2NJAX63XEW34SAE6.jpg

Contains two of my favorite moments in music:

1) The transition from Numbers into Computer World 2

I know the reprise trick has been done before and since, but has it ever been done as tactfully as this? Damn!

2) The restrained electronic snare freak out on Home Computer

The whole album is filled with ice cold efficiency beats, but on Home Computer, the momentum is too much, and whoever's controlling the snare drum on 2 and 4 can't help but throw in the occasional flourish.

The only negative I can't think of is that "It's More Fun to Compute", while an excellent song, doesn't really feel like a good closer.

― Zachary S (Zach S), 21. tammikuuta 2007 23:42

Classic, seminal, life-changing album.

― brettino's bounce (Da ve Segal), 22. tammikuuta 2007 0:13

The other thing that is funny about this record is that it seems completely northern to me. If you are not used to seeing your breath in the winter this record doesn't make as much sense. When I think of this record, I think of the orange light coming from behind barbed wire fenced industrial sites. I would drive around these empty spaces in the middle of a cold winter nights during my late teens and early 20's. Just me, the radio and these somber concrete buildings.

I used to hear Kraftwerk on the radio at least once a week back home. I don't think I have heard Kraftwerk once on the radio in the three years I've been in Texas.

― Disco Nihilist (mjt), 23. tammikuuta 2007 8:08

I like Computer World more than TYE. Quite a bit more, infact. Right now it's my fave Kraftwerk release (at least the one I've listened to the most lately.) It seems like their technology was starting to catch up with them at that point or something. The synth sounds seem very "warm" and human to me, though that might run counter to the theme of the album. And the Pocket Calculator/ Numbers--->Computer World Reprise string of tunes is untouchable.

― Mark, 27. heinäkuuta 2001 3:00

I love Computerworld and it’s funky melancholy. The usual criticism about Kraftwerk i.e. cold, distant, inhuman just seems to me to be about as far from the truth as you can get and esp. on that LP. I can’t think of song that expresses as eloquently the feeling of despair at loneliness ‘I don’t know what to do’, as Computer love, even Moz struggles to match them in his bleaker moments.

And I know it’s boring but the records just sound fantastic. Busy but spacey, clean but warm, stiff yet funky. I guess it’s the blend of heartbreaking and groundbreaking I love about them.

― Billy Dods, 27. heinäkuuta 2001 3:00

Computer Love - naive and intimate, they make electronics sublime.

― K-reg, 18. lokakuuta 2001 3:00