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

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

ok i'm going to have to listen to this album

also REM sucks

also bah

So, there you go.

There she is. Album was the inspiration for my dog's name.

RIP my dog Kraftwerk :(

Did some of you really think this wasn't gonna be in the top 100 at all?

Naw!

Love the picture on the sleeve - I bet it looked old-fashioned in 1981 too, so it's never become dated. I share your REM ennui, but I think they're fated to be there.

Also, that's three of the top ten down, and not a #1 vote between them.

what is the proper ilm pronunciation of kraftwerk? cos id feel sorta posery yelling khraaftvehrk at my pup in usa

The mystery is solved! I'm so happy to see this so high, it was in my list but it should have been higher. It's a perfect record and fast closing in on Trans Europe Express for the title of my favourite Kraftwerk album.

I pronounced it as "Craft Work". She barked along to the bleeps and bloops all the way through "It's More Fun to Compute" when I picked her up from the pound.

yes, having to yell it out in the yard was a bit ridic tho.

ppl dont want dogs that taste good, they want dogs with good taste

OK so now my only impetus to watch the rest of the poll is to see whether Daydream DOESN'T take #1 (I really hope it doesn't).

RIP Master Of Puppets, metal doodz just hate to vote.

I don't think it will.

vague hope that murmur will miss and master of puppets will chart, but i know it is a lie

Time to toll the bell for my biggest forgot-to-nominate regrets--

Underwater Moonlight
Fire Of Unknown Origin
Moonhead
Throb, Throb

UM would have made the top 50 I think; the other 3 would've sunk without ado, but still, ;_;

Did some of you really think this wasn't gonna be in the top 100 at all?

― Tuomas, Wednesday, 2 December 2009 16:57 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I can't really tell the difference between Kraftwerk albums so I thought maybe 50-100 somewhere but I obviously underestimated them.

I'm going with Remain In Light for number one and if it's not well It's my fault I forgot to put in my list and wasted a vote on a Go Betweens album that wasn't even nominated.

Awesome, used to be my fave kraftwerk album so glad to see it top 10. I was confident it would be top 10.
I think that's going to be the last of my votes to place.

I want something at #1 which is still interesting for me to listen to-- either Prince choice would be great. Remain In Light is a cool record but it's just completely stale to me at this point.

i never understood the appeal of later kraftwerk. the early stuff with michael rother and before was great experimental and occasionally wildly improvised music. but from autobahn on they were just cashing in with boring repetitive electronic music with simplistic tunes.

7. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation [1988] (356 points, 28 votes, 3 first place votes)

http://www.diskull.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/daydream.jpg

So SY are typically dud with lyrics, and DN stands as a great exception with the title track, Trilogy, and especially Sprawl (my vote for the best SY track) where Kim's vocals just soar. DN is hard to look back at partially because it WAS so influential, but I think that it marries the art and pop aspects in a way only paralleled in small parts of Dirty and Experimental Jet Set (my other fav SY album). DN is not exactly a concept album, but not just sequencing either. There's an epic proto-postrock feel to the work, which I've heard described as "one big riff from start to finish" -- SY's later experimental noise stuff is similarly immersive (Silver Sessions, Diamond Sea, Thousand Leaves) but harder for the most part to wrap your head around, and less likely to get stuck in yer head. All of which is not to piss on Sister, which is utterly brilliant, especially "Catholic Block" but which has no flow and rests more on a feel of bursts of aggression rather than catharsis. DN is when SY ceased to be Punk in any sense of the term, and they're well served for having moved on.

― Sterling Clover, 2. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

I'm not sure about dismissing albums on the 'for non-fans' ticket. I love 'Daydream Nation' and am not that bothered about a lot of there other stuff, but I don't think this devalues my opinion. I'll try to explain my preference.

All this is from the viewpoint of someone who isn't a 'close listener' to a lot of records, like I sense a lot of the people on ILM are. I dismiss things quite quickly and rely on an instinct for what I like. Sometimes time makes me reconsider, sometimes not.

The pinefox once quoted me as saying that I don't think pop music should aspire to being 'epic in sound and scope'. By and large that's true. I generally find that records with such ambitions are boring and just make me think of tedious men with nothing else in their lives but their record collections. I don't think artrock, prog rock or shoegazing music has ever taught anyone anything very much, nor do I find it interesting for its own aesthetic sake. A few artists make terrific 'mood music' (eg. Air's 'Virgin Suicides' soundtrack') and if they achieve that by the use of interesting chord progressions then good for them.

For a band to make a beautiful, coherent slab of an aesthetic statement that relies more on guitars than lyricism or pretty melodies is for me, pretty rare but I think 'Daydream Nation' does it. It's all tied up with all sorts of things that 'serious fans' might consider trivial. The sleeve, for starters. Can't be doing with all that pre-DN scratchy indie look. The title. The fact that it's a double album. The band looking and acting so fucking NY cool.

Then, on a more substantive note: The sequencing of the tracks, That build-up to 'Teenage Riot'. The blank, knowing dumbness and numbness of that Lee Renaldo line that you hate ("my girlfriend's beautiful/looks pretty good to me"). Those soaring vocals. 'Providence' and its part in the dynamism of the album. All the things that Omar said ('horny, paranoid, spaced out'). The way the whole thing comes across like the defining statement of a generation that probably never really existed. It's a fucking great ride and I'm going home to listen to it right now.

― Nick, 3. huhtikuuta 2001 3:00

Daydream Nation is my favorite. I never thought about the production until I read complaints about it, but then I took notice and decided I actually liked it. It was one of the aspects of the sound I really liked without thinking about it. It bathes the whole thing in a eerie silence and somehow makes everything sound wet, which for some reason I have always liked ("wet" sounds of recordings).

― dean ge, 26. heinäkuuta 2007 15:14

Yes, DN is best. Lee Renaldo is actually not boring when he sings. The guitars are amazing, dizzying and new and the production is what makes it fantastic, so I don't know what the guy was talking about with the "flat production". Just listening to the track with mellow guitar and "sweet desire sweet desire we will fall" followed by one of the coolest melodic blasts ever played is enough to put it head and shoulders above the rest. EVOL is a great album but strikes me as more of a dramatic college kid's record and Sister used to entertain me but now I just find it half-assed with stupid lyrics. It very much echoes the attitude of their lame Master Dik ep and Ciccone Youth nonsense. I think there was a carefree period where they were taking too many drugs to bother thinking things through and just played from the gut. Sure, that's how rock is supposed to be. Don't bore me with this speech. If you spend time writing songs and playing them over and over and humming 'em in your spare time, quite often the song goes through a few alterations and comes out sounding much better than if you go to the studio with some bare bones song that your just going to rip through.

― Nude Spock, 5. marraskuuta 2001 3:00

Oh, it's a 10

I really couldn't ask anything more of an album.

― Roy Williams Highlight (diamond), 22. lokakuuta 2004

This sleeve always reminded me of http://ludix.com/moriarty/images/together.jpg

haha is that Nude Spock answering Nude Spock aka Dean Ge there?

my #1, hi haters!

my highest ranking album that didn't place is the Pretenders s/t, kinda pissed it got the shaft

Ah, I didn't know it was the same person. Wouldn't have included two quotes by him if I knew.