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

this list is pretty similar to pitchfork's list, except pitchfork had more hip hop.

It's unlikely that Purple Rain was overlooked (though I wouldn't mind it not being here). I've given up on PG(3) and Tango in the Night, though.

Hounds of Love and Compton are not great albums

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/Chinatown.jpg

SOTT was my number #2. It's one of those canonical "best album by X" choices where it really it really is the best. Everything that makes Prince the biggest popular music genius of the last 30 years is in there: the odd psychosexual politics, the brilliant pop choruses, the left-field experimentation, the androgyny, the maximal in minimalism, the religious imagery, the hard funk and the soft sentimentality. It starts with the words "in France a skinny man died of a big disease with a little name" and ends with "for all time I am with you, you are with me", and everything you can imagine between those two phrases is there.

Listening to it makes me feel there's something that's been largely missing from pop music since the 1980s. Can you imagine one of the biggest stars on the planet releasing a single like "If I Was Your Girlfriend" today? The androgyny, the queerness, it just present in today's pop like it was then. (Maybe this is simply misplaced nostalgia for a time that wasn't really mine, as I was born in 1979?) I think was one of the reasons Prince had such hard time adapting to the 90s. The tougher image that was required during that decade, he tried to do it, but it never really fit. In twenty years we've gained so much, but maybe we've lost something too?

this list is pretty similar to pitchfork's list, except pitchfork had more hip hop.

Who would have thought?

xpost Stands For Decibels wasn't nominated, the two records after it were.

amazed that didn't win, so kudos for not having a predictable no 1 after all.

It was leading the poll for quite a while, I too thought it was gonna win, but then it started going down.

I think that's a decent point, Tuomas xp. It's not just androgyny - Prince was trying to be all things to all people, all the time. That sort of stopped after him for a while. Outkast, Eminem or Justin Timberlake have shown similar ambition since. I've never thought of the 90s as a hard decade though.

I was going to blame MTV or whoever first separated music-for-white-people from music-for-black-people - but maybe it's more that as the music industry got too fat it found it could make good money from a smaller audience, so it was happier to ghettoise its marketing and the acts just responded accordingly.

this is pretty funky - i am listening to it, prince is good people - and i am only 2 3/4 trax in

LJ, pleeeeez get Matos' book on SOTT, it will enhance your listening tremendously and it's not expensive.

i have decided this is an excellent poll for introducing me to things, especially OMD and Prince...maybe I will even 'get' Remain In Light...hmm

For now I'll just immerse myself. I'm liking it! I'm even liking 'It'. Right now. Why does everyone hate that song?

Who hates It?

The 'NOOKER' on the Sign ☮ the Times cover, that's presumably a snooker hall, right? Is snooker really the sort of thing that advertises itself in American strip-lighting?

rank the songs on Sign O' The Times

^^good reading - it appears that all the songs are good, which is nice

4. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (422 points, 35 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_WuoebR2yeLk/Su9mr_HPShI/AAAAAAAABBg/CriUYQTWEyA/s1600/kbush-hounds_03.jpg

Hmmph ignore Dastardoor, side 2 is lovely. Well, okay "Waking The Witch" is only for the real Bush fans (the ones who choke up with emotion when Kate breaks out into donkey-speak on The Dreaming) but it's still fun, and everything else is marvellous. "And Dream Of Sheep" is incomparably trembly- beautiful, "Jig Of Life" is like all the best musical moments that Sinead O'Connor ever had crammed in together, and "Hello, Earth"... Well, the less I say about "Hello, Earth" the better, because that's when I turn into a pathetically sad fanboy who babbles incoherently. Suffice it to say that I don't think any music can reduce me to a state of complete emotional uselessness as easily as the "all you sailors..." section.

― Tim, 16. tammikuuta 2002 3:00

"Hounds of Love" is my favourite song she's done by a huge, huge margin. That's not to say that the rest isn't great, just that this song does something amazing for me.

― hobart paving, 28. elokuuta 2007 0:08

greatest work of the 20th century

― cutty, 28. elokuuta 2007 4:16

Anyway I wasn't planning to go all mental about this album in particular, but today I heard a few random passages in my head from the Ninth Wave side of the album and it gave me pause. So tonight I am listening to the entire album all over again from start to finish because of that and this thread. I think the songs I heard snippets of in my head earlier today were "Watching You Without Me" and "Mother Stands For Comfort", yes those were the two. And normally this doesn't happen to me at all. I honestly don't give any thought to this album anymore, not in many years. But I cherish a thread like this to show me the way to experience it one more time, almost like it was new.

― Bimble, 8. syyskuuta 2007 8:18

I'm a Kate Bush newbie, but I've been totally obsessed with this album recently, so so great. Had I voted I'd probably go for "Cloudbusting" or "Running Up That Hill" because I am a newbie, but holy shit the coda of "Cloudbusting", the vocals, so majestic. The 12" mix of "Running Up That Hill" on the remastered album is fabulous too. I also love "Jig of Life" and "The Morning Fog". One off the way comment: Sinead's "Troy" makes more sense to me having heard this album; it has a bit more context, instead of being this "holy shit where did something this awesome come from?" song that it's been for me for 20 years.

― Euler, 6. maaliskuuta 2009 18:24

Hounds of Love lost to #3 by a single point, by the way.

Aww... was beginning to hope it would actually make #1. Too good to be true.

really happy that made the top 5, i didnt vote it up all that high because of strategic choices, but it is one of the most important albums ever to me

Hoping really hard now that Purple Rain was forgotten at voting time, but doubtful.

eurythmics being another one of those ;_; xpost

Gah, there goes my #1. It felt an inevitable choice - even though I still feel I've never quite got to grips with the second side, and I had to pretty much flip a coin between it and Graceland - just because of its immense ambition and in succeeding in that ambition. It touches higher peaks than anything else (hmm, maybe Frankie?) and has the best 1-2 on any album ever, too.

man that album is all about the second side, to me. first side's great too, obv., but "the ninth wave" is the real deal. my favorite rock "suite" or whatever you want to call it.

another album to get into! feeling less bad about the top 10 now tbh, altho how u savages didn't vote for oh forget it ;)

I should probably hear this. I only know Wuthering Heights and Running Up That Hill. She's pretty obscure in the USA.

yeah. this is the only one of the top 30 or so that I haven't heard in full.

People are really getting upset that their #1 record only finished #3, or #12, or whatever?

No, not really.

i am and i didn't even vote

There's lots of records on this poll that are solid and fun and memorable but I wouldn't want to claim that many of them are works of genius. SotT and HoL are all about total fully-firing magical Genius and at the very least they deserve to be where they are.

If you don't get Kate well fair enough I guess she's probably not for everyone but Hounds of Love - which isn't my favourite of her albums, I don't think - exemplifies her talent for making Pop out of the uncoolest of materials, so you get a reimagining of what Pop music can be that's still totally intimate and epic and memorable and warm and inviting but doesn't really sound like anybody else.

^ excellent

I can't actually listen to this closing monologue in "If I Was Your Girlfriend" without imagining Eric Cartman reading it!

I like the fact that this list has both some US off-beat picks that the UK voters don't know, as well as some UK favorites that never really crossed over to this side of the pond. I think the split votership adds a special sauce to the usual poll suspects.

3. Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain [1984] (423 points, 35 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://filmfookingcrazy.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/purple-rain.jpg

I loved Prince, and I loved how seriously bad Purple Rain (the movie) was...(though not as bad as Under The Cherry Moon)...that's what I dug about him...he wasn't afraid to be bad...if only his recent stuff wasn't so calculated...

― hank (hank s), 25. heinäkuuta 2006 20:50

it's "When Doves Cry" for me - one of the most interesting, gutsy, left-turn singles of my lifetime. Fuckin' Prince. Gets ready for his big moment and the lead single is this weird dreamy mind-expanding thing. So awesome.

― J0hn D., 30. joulukuuta 2007 17:24

Probably too much of a "rock" album for his most funk oriented fans. As for me, I find it his best ever album. So many perfect moments. I stand by my vote for "Darling Nikki", but "When Doves Cry", "Take Me With You", "I Would Die 4 U" and "Let's Go Crazy" are also really marvellous.

Not too much of a fan of the title track though. Other than "Sometimes It Snows In April" I tend not to like Prince's ballads much at all.

― Geir Hongro, 30. joulukuuta 2007 19:36

This may very well have been the first LP I bought with my own money. I remember it came with that weird poster with the eyes...

Anyway, I wish I could vote for "Erotic City" since that was the unparalleled b-side to "Let's Go Crazy". But since that's not an option, I also am a "Darling Nikky" guy. It still has a lot of edge.

Great, great album. The fact that half the songs were done entirely by Prince, and the other half was cut live in concert is still something I've never heard anyone else do. So rad.

― Nate Carson, 31. joulukuuta 2007 9:23

no. purple rain is divine. as i'm confirming tonite returning from experiencing an AMAZING falsetto karaoke-rendition of "the beautiful ones" by a beanie-and-beard clad valley boy

― Vichitravirya XI, 13. kesäkuuta 2005 12:14

I think was one of the reasons Prince had such hard time adapting to the 90s. The tougher image that was required during that decade, he tried to do it, but it never really fit. In twenty years we've gained so much, but maybe we've lost something too?

― Tuomas, Wednesday, December 2, 2009 11:21 AM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is a fine insight, and i wanted to snag it before it slipped through the cracks. the 90s were a hard era, and i don't know that that's recognized often enough. probably a response to the glossy, plastic exuberance of the 80s - nirvana and dr. dre replacing motley crue and prince. the rise of punk-born alt culture and gangster rap are obviously a huge part of this, but it was true in other media, too. quentin tarantino replacing brian de palma, that kind of thing.

it's maybe hard to see, because the 90s version of hardness and authenticity was itself so contrived, and this is especially evident in retrospect. but the gap between 1988 and 1996 was vast, and a ton of really great artists didn't make it across.

Two Prince albums in the top ten. Don't get it.

Have you listened to them?

this is what it sounds like when Daves cry

Have you listened to them?

In the past. I like Prince, I like most of his '80s stuff, just... not this much. No way.

Yeah I've never understood Prince either, tbh. I dont dislike him but I dont understand the adoration at all.

lol

The fact that half the songs were done entirely by Prince, and the other half was cut live in concert is still something I've never heard anyone else do. So rad.

Wait, really? I didn't know this!

I think I've heard Purple Rain so many times that it just sounds like wallpaper now. It contains some fine singles, but it's not the third-best album of the 80s. It's not even the third-best Prince album

I am so happy this made it!

So that leaves Remain In Light and Nation Of Millions.

Maybe they tied.

I voted for the latter.

Tuomas was right the scores for Hounds of Love vs Purple Rain are pretty wow

when this got down to the top 20 'Remain In Light' did strike me as likely winner

Contenderizer: see my reply to Tuomas above, it's still about ghettoisation for me. 'Black or White' was a key moment for me in retrospect - a massive star coming back and trying to unite rap and rock, and androgyny and himself in one single event, and it just seemed totally lame. It is a pretty lame record I think, but it's the fact that the idea seemed totally lame that's interesting in this context. And then here Prince was just four years earlier doing everything MJ was aiming at, and it worked.

I don't see the hardness in the 90s, other than in hip hop. Nirvana started out being sold as the punks' response to the jocks' Motley Crue, it just seems the other way round now. Tanrantino was tongue-in-cheek, gangster rap the same I think, at least initially. Possibly as the decade went on the hard got harder, having been separated from any need to appeal to the soft - I wish I could think of a camp act that became camper to prove my point.