pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Re 2002 vs 2018 above, ZERO female artists in the top 25 from 2002. Best they could manage were Pixies and MBV with some female lead vocals. How you could compile a best of the 80s and omit Madonna's debut and Big Science is beyond comprehension.

Not disagreeing with your general point but you might want to recheck who was number one in 2002 and all.

xp Nurse With Wound is on both '80s lists.

duh, excuse my brain snap(s)

i would vote in an ILX 80s poll if someone wanted to bother

I’d be happy to organize it if there’s true interest. Top 50?

(Maybe 35 more manageable?)

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

there was one 9 years ago but it's surprisingly boring for an ILM list and is missing all sorts of things I would have thought would be locks (Janet, Madonna, The Blue Nile, Sade)

Haha — at a glance, the top 20 or so isn’t terribly dissimilar from the Pfork list...

it's probably closer to the old pitchfork list than the new one, just with a little more synthpop & sophistipop etc

Maybe we should just have a thread where everyone posts a group of personal favorites; leaning toward albums that may not be so strongly represented on these other lists? (To avoid getting bogged down in Daydream Nation slugging it out w/Nation Of Millions for the umpteenth time?)

(“My Own Personal Eighties”)

a 'the top 100 from the previous ilx poll are banned' might be interesting, that's been done here before with the 70s albums I think and is probably the best way to accomplish that

We don't need to do the 80s.

We DO need to do the 00's, preparing for our big 10's poll at the end of 2019

although I'm not solipsistic enough to expect Cardiacs, Rudimentary Peni, Julian Cope, Foetus, The The, The Astronauts, The Chameleons or any XTC album not made by Todd Rundgren to all appear, one of them might have been nice

+ Magazine, + Simple Minds

The more I think about what r&b is missing the more I’m like -____-

I know I’m a hip hop guy n all but I genuinely do think the 80s was r&b’s “decade“ in so so many ways where the 90s was hip-hop’s (and it’s reflected in the sound of 90s r&b)

That said run dmc still sounds amazing, esp anything produced by Larry smith....rick Rubin got the rep that should have gone to Larry... that’s why I’m glad whodini made it.... but seriously listen to “it’s like that,” that beat sounds as hard today as the day it was recorded

my strongly felt tuesday morning opinion - beefheart’s ice cream for crow is a much better record than i dunno, 90% of the jerky art rock that did make the list

Saying Run-DMC sounds dated is like complaining that the Ramones don’t sound enough like Panic! at the Disco

Lol otm

Disrespecting one's elders is a punishable offence.

Raising Hell sounds v fresh to my ears

could never make it through an entire Janet album so I can't say that Control sucks, but I never understood what's to like about the sound

I like "Together Again" a lot...

Good mourning!

If Cecil Taylor's gonna be one of your two token jazz titles, how do you opt for For Olim instead of nodding to the In Berlin '88 box set, a landmark in jazz history, period?

I thought that too, but realistically, how many of the voters own a copy of the widely-distributed single-disc For Olim vs. the insanely-expensive blink-and-you-missed-it mail-order-only Berlin '88?

Most insanely glaring omission for me is Marvin Gaye's Midnight Love.

realistically, how many of the voters own a copy of the widely-distributed single-disc For Olim vs. the insanely-expensive blink-and-you-missed-it mail-order-only Berlin '88?

I own something like three dozen Cecil Taylor albums - For Olim isn't one of 'em. I find it to be a genuinely baffling choice, not just as one of only two jazz titles in a list of 200 but even from among Cecil's catalog. You know what would have been a perfect choice? Garden, also a solo album and a much more highly regarded one AFAIK (and recently reissued, which gives it extra marketing juice).

Does anyone know if they literally just averaged out the rankings on each ballot, or if the editors applied some “special sauce” (to elevate or downgrade certain albums of their choosing)?

my strongly felt tuesday morning opinion - beefheart’s ice cream for crow is a much better record than i dunno, 90% of the jerky art rock that did make the list

― I'd Rather Kecak (NickB)

doc at the radar station even better, but like tom waits it doesn't _sound_ like what people think of when they think of '80s music. i wouldn't put either beefheart record on a "best music of the '80s" list.

have to agree it there are albums on this list that have very strong singles but aren't really good albums, like Let's Dance, who listens to that all the way?

I own something like three dozen Cecil Taylor albums - For Olim isn't one of 'em. I find it to be a genuinely baffling choice, not just as one of only two jazz titles in a list of 200 but even from among Cecil's catalog. You know what would have been a perfect choice? Garden, also a solo album and a much more highly regarded one AFAIK (and recently reissued, which gives it extra marketing juice).

Ha, same; it does seem like a random pick. Garden would've made much more sense.

Most insanely glaring omission for me is Marvin Gaye's Midnight Love.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, September 11, 2018 5:55 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i couldn't fit this record into my own top 50 but god it's so good. never imagined it would ever make this list though

have to agree it there are albums on this list that have very strong singles but aren't really good albums, like Let's Dance, who listens to that all the way?

― niels, Tuesday, September 11, 2018 6:59 AM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait let's dance is on the list???? ugh

in all fairness it is a little worse than like a virgin i guess

The Lexicon of Love doesn't make it, but INXS and Whitney Houston do. That's all you need to know about this list.

it's kinda funny how looking through this list it has so little to do with so much of the actual music that was *everywhere* in the 80s

no AOR/MOR like REO, Air Supply, Rick Springfield, Styx, Bonnie Tyler, Bryan Adams, John Cougar Mellencampm, Christopher Cross, Foreigner
no hair metal Warrant, Ratt, Def Leppard, Cinderella, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake etcetc even Van Halen (unless I missed 1984)
no new wave one/two hits like Cutting Crew, Fixx, Kim Wilde, Simple Minds, Wang Chung, Men at Work
no Eliminator by ZZ Top, no thrash except Metallica
no Police Synchronicity
no Dire Straits Brothers in Arms
none of the huge soundtracks that were so dominant like Top Gun, Footloose, Dirty Dancing, Pretty in Pink, Flashdance
no boomer comeback stuff like Henley, Raitt, Heart, Boston, Aerosmith, Genesis/Collins
no pop/R&B (except Madonna, Whitney) stuff like Paula Abdul, Bobby Brown, Bananarama

All of which isn't to argue that the bands and albums on the list aren't great...or shouldn't be there...
but it's funny how these lists are really conversations between themselves and the people that wrote them and the existing lists and canons and writers that did lists and canons before them...like the things that are removed are removed to make statements about prior lists and canons and other things that are added are added for the same reasons....

and none of the lists really tell you anything about what the lived experience of being around in the world and hearing music was really about

(which isn't again the job of a critic, i just think it's funny how much history diverges from the reality of the times...and it makes me wonder what it would have been like in the 60s and I would have probably heard like, um...Fifth Dimension all the time and never like Jimi Hendrix or Moby Grape)

the singles list is a bit more representative in that sense, iirc.

also, pour one out for eliminator that record kicks ass.

no boomer comeback stuff like Henley, Raitt, Heart, Boston, Aerosmith, Genesis/Collins

yeah there's a late 80s period I think of as the Wilbury Era, where it felt like 60s and 70s folks took up a large part of the charts/airwaves/magazine inches.

Traveling Wilburys shoulda made tha list

no AOR/MOR like REO, Air Supply, Rick Springfield, Styx, Bonnie Tyler, Bryan Adams, John Cougar Mellencampm, Christopher Cross, Foreigner

almost all of these acts are fucking awful

like if you lived through it that's fine and I'm sorry but I don't have to

ums is right that these lists aren't really about what was actually representative of any given decade.

I don't think you could find a single person in 1990 who would have actually listened to/been familiar with all 200 of the albums that placed.

(also, most of that music is still everywhere, via oldies/'80s/JACK-FM type stations, so The Youngs probably actually have heard it everywhere, constantly, and can report that it is in fact bad)

like if you lived through it that's fine and I'm sorry but I don't have to

I bet Dr. Casino could start some listening threads for you so you could suffer like the rest of us did

katherine that has nothing to do with the point of my post if you read it - i went out of my way to say so

i even specifically said i didn't take issue with the quality of the stuff that was on and in fact i own and listen to a great deal of the list

i was just noting that it's interesting, cfe my thought about the 60s

i was talking about lists in general, sorry if REO makes u angry

I'm not sure what the point of your post is, then -- this isn't a list of the songs most popular in the '80s and never attempted to be. if you want that just go look up the Billboard charts

god fuck this place

I don't understand what I said wrong, but I'm really sorry

all the 70s lists full of Krautrock and Dub Reggae and Punk probably look pretty weird to people who spent the decade listening to Poco and Linda Ronstadt.

(this is serious -- I genuinely have no idea what people want from these lists. it seems like no matter what people pick, it's wrong, which is incredibly demoralizing)

hey I didn't even read it! I don't care about lists.

I like arguing about what albums are good though