POLLnight Blue: 80s Debut Singles from Lead Singers Who Went Solo

woah, just recalled a big one no one's mentioned yet

CRAZY TRAIN

for posterity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tRmBD1UnrA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shO8vAqPtKQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqUvNOex8EE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwmO_GZfzI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUITyhP-C3s

lol

Looking Back with Love is Mike Love's only solo album. It was released in 1981 under Boardwalk Records. The track "Be My Baby" was produced by Brian Wilson, who also sings background vocals on the cut.

Strangely, some copies came with stickers promoting the album as "the first solo album by a Beach Boys member", despite the release of Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue four years earlier, Carl Wilson's self-titled album earlier in 1981, and Bruce Johnston recording solo albums before he even joined the band, in addition to his 1977 album Going Public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpjtHkPXE2I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=332SqqV-buk

was just about to post homosapien, great song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e72sMIsKdg

unless you want to count "endless love"

Marc Almond - "The Boy Who Came Back" and Ian McCulloch - "Proud to Fall" are nice too.
My vote goes to George Michael.

If it weren't for Midnight Blue, I'd be voting for The Knife Feels Like Justice, some Grade A roots rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0w8YcyLPmE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GgvoOKH4t8

post-king crimson & UK, pre-Asia

For a second I totally blanked on what "Midnight Blue" sounds like, again, but then just as quickly I remembered it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNAy15RB2vs

dammit apparently paul rodgers played EVERY INSTRUMENT on his '83 solo album but the single aint on youtube

Does Gary Numan's "Cars" count in this?

Wait, that was '79.

Springsteen and "Atlantic City?"

xp Tubeway Army were still Numan backing band for a number of years. They just stopped using the name.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3X6KtQ7nxQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG3c79ZxZ38

YEAHHH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgwmLq1acIo

Springsteen and "Atlantic City?"

great single, but nix. even less legit than tom petty, who at least included "& the heartbreakers" on all his previous album covers. and i'd nix petty too if i had the supreme authority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevhpfOjyKg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fRZpxGHwDM

i want to thank croup for breaking my browser several times.

sorry

all future obscurities will be linked not embedded

Tommy Shaw - Girls with Guns.

What about Robbie Robertson?

He wasn't the lead singer but he was considered the leader of The Band. Showdown at Big Sky was his debut single, a vintage piece of late 80s Daniel Lanois production.

WHAT ABOUT MIDNIGHT BLUE

killfiling bastards I knew it I knew it

voted Midnight Blue

I hadn't heard it for about 20 years and then it came in a supermarket and I wondered, "Who is this?" and then I thought "Why am I not listening to music that sounds like this all the time?"

It's no Midnight Blue, but we should pay our respects to the great Ray Parker Jr, whom upon leaving Raydio began a doozy of a solo career with his epic The Other Woman.

Nobody understands modern romance like Ray Parker Jr.

Also, what about Daryl Hall, Dreamtime?

had to vote 'midnight blue' over 'in the air tonight', both huge classics, but man o man did 'desert moon' tempt me. there's enough suggestions not in the poll here to do a followup poll imo.

Pete Townshend's (who sang lead a bunch, but obviously wasn't The Lead Singer) first solo album came out in 1972, but his first solo single, "Let My Love Open The Door," was released in 1980 (and was as big a hit as the Who ever had, hitting #9).

I adore "Dreamtime" despite being about a minute too long and boasting too much unhinged David Stewart; it's still a better production than "Don't Come Around Here No More" as far as luxuriant mid eighties paisley psychedelic rock goes. It's cool though that Hall's first solo single is as discrete a sonic entity as, say, "Out of Touch."

Suedehead

haha i just listened to 'dreamtime' (not nearly as fond of it as you are) and was somewhat mystified by the production, trying to figure out hall's vision and thinking 'this is what you might imagine an eric carmen record from around this time might sound like if you didn't know all too well what an eric carmen record from around this time actually sounds like', just a weird mess of bad mid 80s production ideas and hamfisted "60s" touches. how i didn't immediately think 'dave stewart' i don't know.

Many of these "solo" options offer a significantly different sound than if they would have done the same song with their original band. The George Michael singles are a huge leap from the WHAM! material, but could anybody really call WHAM! a "band"; seriously, they were an act. Singles like Midnight Blue Lights Outand Oh Sherrie could have just have easily been Foreigner, J Geils and Journey singles; so they should not get as much credit as something In the Air Tonight where Collins made a whole new sound that turned out be a bigger influence on the Genesis sound than the other way round.

Top marks go to what Byrne did with Eno on Regiment. In fact, of all the singles listed, I submit that none of them are on an album that established a new direction in a more satisfying way than My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. If Rei Momo would've had a single he could have slipped another one before the end of the decade -- and again, a fresh new direction.

So, with a premium placed on defining styles that expand or diverge from the band from which they came...

David Byrne, by a mile.

also rans include;
Phil Collins
Sting
David Lee Roth (really?)

i like the mick and the sting up there far more than i should

haha i just listened to 'dreamtime' (not nearly as fond of it as you are) and was somewhat mystified by the production

I like how what is in essence a guitar song bolsters one of Hall's most assholic performances ("I saw you standin' and I FELT your rage") where the synths and harmonic patterns on the H&O stuff mitigated the nastiness. It only works once. I actually own this album. Man, does it sound expensive.

Thought about Robbie rob when I went in my binge but dude wasn't a "lead singer" in the band by any measure

rather; Many of these "solo" options don't offer...

write-in votes for lindsey buckingham's 'trouble' and stevie nicks 'leather and lace' (though not quite solo)

All this talk about "Dreamtime" made me wonder if there weren't any singles released off of Daryl Hall's first solo album Sacred Songs.

"Something In 4/4 Time" was!

apparently 'stop draggin' my heart around' was the first single from bella donna, 'leather and lace' was the followup. pretty canny of her to have her first two solo singles not be flying solo. can you imagine holding 'edge of seventeen' in reserve?

and "Stop Draggin'" remains Tom Petty's biggest chart hit too.

discogs lied to me about the order of those, but the catalogue numbers tell the truth