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

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.

This poll is definitely giving me a kick up the ass to replace my broken amp - itunes just isn't doing Hounds of Love justice at all.

2. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back [1988] (478 points, 39 votes, 2 first place votes)

http://thimk.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/public_enemy_-_it_takes_a_nation_of_millions_to_hold_us-back-front.jpg

So it's an old adage among a lot of music critics and pollsters that PE released one or maybe two of the greatest hip hop records ever and blah blah blah. Okay, so here is the question: why if this band was so great and their recordings so monumental did so few hip hop groups follow their lead? Excepting maybe some of the Def Jux stuff I can't think of too many hip hoppers whose sound bears even the slightest resemblance to PE. Excepting Dead Prez most hip hoppers have completely avoided the sort of in your face politicking which PE were famous for. The most enduring element of PE in hip hop is that of Flavor Flav's comic jester figure an element which while vital to the group, hardly seemed at the time like it would be their biggest contribution to music (although I guess they were progenitor of sorts of rap rock, ick).

I hesitate to use the word influence, but the question really has to be asked: other than their perenial place on critic's polls what was Public Enemy's lasting effect on hip hop?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), 10. huhtikuuta 2003 1:01

I think anyone who's ever donned the "conscious rapper" mantle is buying into PE's mythos/"influence" as established by "Nation of Millions", and that includes an AWFUL lot of people. The effects have filtered and trickled down through all sorts of paths - whether it's the boho-righteousness of Black Star or the Roots (who *definitely* count PE as their major inspiration). I hear "Nation of Millions" in Outkast's "Bombs Over Baghdad"... I really don't think their influence is that hard to spot, it's just that rap has mutated so quickly, more recent trends (Dre, Puffy, Timbaland, Wu-Tang, Neptunes) have more blatant copyists.

― Shakey Mo Collier, 10. huhtikuuta 2003 1:35

I think Nation is stronger overall but I totally understand why people like Fear better--it's broader, more of a tour-de-force, takes more chances, risks more, more kaleidoscopic (near psychedelic almost at times). see also: Stankonia vs. Aquemini. there's also a matter w/Fear of it being easier to let seep into your everyday life in some ways--Nation pretty much demands all of your attention at all times in order for it to work totally, while Fear has parts you can sort of let slide by and then go back to or whatever, it's more of an everyday album, and I think its kaleidoscopicness helps in that regard, more moods help make it more user-friendly as opposed to white-heat concentration. this has more to do with the way those records work for me personally (and I imagine others by extension) than w/its "place in the culture" or whatever at the time of release. the quote I recall from the Pazz & Jop when Nation won in '88 was (quoted freely) "nobody bought the tape, or turned it on, it was just always on," and I think that's helped work against it in the long run: it's an album so culturally oversaturated during its peak that in some ways you never need hear it again (i.e. James's Sgt. Pepper point)

― M Matos (M Matos), 10. huhtikuuta 2003 19:50

NOM by a mile, maybe by two miles. The album is great from start to finish (my fav is prophets of rage), and the only filler are the transition tracks that are basically MEANT to be filler. You need a breather, after all.

The fact that everyone is picking a different favorite track from NOM is further evidence of its superiority. If you ask 20 people what their favorite track on SOC is, you will get a total of 3, MAYBE 4 answers. With NOM, I bet you get 8-9. I can listen to people argue for SOC (I mean, I agree, John, those SONGS you list were unbelievable), but the bottom line is that I NEVER get the urge to hear a single song from side 2.

Plus, NOM still has my favorite intro ever for a hip hop album.

Go get a late pass! Step!

― Scott CE (Scott CE), 20. toukokuuta 2004 5:43

this is an amazing album. nothing jumps out at me as being a standout song. i just love to play these tracks one after the other and over and over.

― Charlie Howard, 10. syyskuuta 2009 18:41

Let the wild speculation on what is #1 begin!

Numbers 2 and 1 backwards then.

Sorry, I mean YEEEEEEEEEEAH BOYEEEEEEE

Purple Rain was my #1. I think a consensus has definitely congealed that Prince was the greatest musical artist of the 80s.
No disrespect to MJ, who was on fire during the Thriller era (and who was definitely the best performer of our time), but even he didn't quite have the range and creative audacity that Prince did.

There it is.

zero Peter Gabriel. ;_; o ilm, why hast thou forsaken me?

1/20 hiphop albums = fuck ilm.

unless jungle brothers are #1

Well if you look at only the top 10 the ILM list is not so whitebread. You've got 4 by black artists, 2 by white artists, 1 by white artists bein' fonky, 1 by robots and 1 by an elf queen!

Slayer - Reign In Blood [1986] (666 points, 45 votes, 5 first place votes)
http://dr-blog.asiandrug.jp/archives/Slayer-ReignInBlood.jpg

Wow motherfuckers, I used to listen to this on my walkmen while beating up little shits in the creche.
It made me the guy I am today. But back in the kindergarten i was a hard little bastard until this came along and mellowed me out
and it showed me that pop was the way to go. Angel of Death is my 80s jam.

-Tuomas, 19. tammikuuta 2003 10:00

I was a goth until I heard this album. It totally changed my life.

Dan Perry, 18.elokuuta 2001 21:56

It's no Killing Joke. HONOR THE FIRE!

- AlexInNYC, 27.huhtikuuta 2003 23.51

I've never heard this
-lexpretend, 11. kesäkuuta 2009

-the last great pop metal album before britpop came along and made real music with guitars for real people and music should never ever change from that.
ps i listened to tupac once he's no paul mccartney.

-Geir Hongro, 7. heinäkuuta 2001

reminiscent of 90s poll (Wu at 2, MBV at 1)

loooool

can we just get to the part where we reveal #s 150-101?

and yes wtf at no peter gabriel indeed

1/20 hiphop albums = fuck ilm.

Dude I think it's about the demographic of people who vote even more than the demographic of ILM09. A lot of people who would have scored more Hip Hop albums just didn't vote I think.

yeah i dont actually care that much. its just typing things on the internet while waiting for jamie redknapp to die

^^^ New board description, obv.

Maybe I should simply stop here and never post the number one? Then it could be whatever any of you wants it to be: Slayer for Herman, N.W.A for A Hoy Hoy, Peter Gabriel for Johnny Fever, and so on...

GREAT IDEA

Tuomas you are killing me!