541. Tina Turner - Private Dancer (1984)
















Track Listing

1. I Might Have Been Queen
2. What's Love Got To Do With It
3. Show Some Respect
4. I Can't Stand The Rain
5. Private Dancer
6. Let's Stay Together
7. Better Be Good To Me
8. Steel Claw
9. Help

Review

Well there is one good thing that can be said for this album. Tina has a great voice... actually there's two good things... it isn't a double album. Although Tina does have a pretty good voice the album is in balance pretty shitty.

The fact that most of the album relies on synths but does not embrace them is one of those things from the 80's that does not stand the test of time. A synth is fine when it is admittedly a synth and not trying to be anything else, but when it tries to mimic instruments, as it does repeatedly here, it sounds like shit.

Then you have the really big hits, like What's Love Got To Do With It, one of the greatest sinners in the sin of synth mimicry. Or Private Dancer, that even though it is the best song in the album sounds like what it is, a Dire Straits reject track. I blame the producers. Avoid.

Track Highlights

1. Private Dancer
2. I Can't Stand The Rain
3. Help
4. What's Love Got To Do With It

Final Grade

6/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album was an outstanding success. Private Dancer has been certified 5 × Platinum (5 million) in the United States and sold around 250,000 each week for 2 months. Worldwide the album has been estimated having sold 14 million copies, but also some few sources estimating it sold over 20 million copies.

A prize piece of 80s nonsense... Private Dancer video:



Somehow I don't think that is the type of Private Dancing the music refers to.

540. The Style Council - Café Bleu (1984)
















Track Listing

1. Mick's Blessings
2. Whole Point Of No Return
3. Me Ship Came In
4. Blue Cafe
5. Paris Match
6. My Ever Changing Moods
7. Dropping Bombs On The White House
8. Gospel
9. Strength Of Your Nature
10. You're The Best Thing
11. Here's One That Got Away
12. Headstart For Happiness
13. Council Meetin'

Review

So we move from an album that is maybe too eclectic for its own good to an album that is, on the other hand... too eclectic for its own good. Yes, same problem but very different style from the Replacements.

This album goes along fine with some extremely influential pop-jazz of the kind that would make Swing Out Sister and Everything But The Girl have a career to Rap at the beginning of must have been Side 2 on the vinyl. It fails tremendously at the hip-hop experiment which is continued in the song after the quite bad A Gospel.

The rest of the album does make up for these 2 songs, however with some very well written, extremely well played mix of Jazz, Pop and interventionist song writing. They should have stuck to that however, with its smoky room atmosphere and some of the best singing by Paul Weller and a great guest appearance by Tracey Thorn the vocalist from Everything but the Girl in Paris Match.

Track Highlights

1. Paris Match
2. My Ever Changing Moods
3. The Whole Point Of No Return
4. Here's One That Got Away

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Café Bleu is the official debut album released by the band The Style Council in March 1984, reaching number 2 in the UK charts. It followed the compilation Introducing The Style Council, which was released only in Holland and Japan.

The Paris Match:

539.The Replacements - Let It Be (1984)
















Track Listing

1. I Will Dare
2. Favorite Thing
3. We're Comin' Out
4. Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out
5. Androgynous
6. Black Diamond
7. Unsatisfied
8. Seen Your Video
9. Gary's Got a Boner
10. Sixteen Blue
11. Answering Machine

Review

The Replacements give us a very interesting album, it's a bit R.E.M., a bit Black Flag and a bit of a couple of other things. Sometimes in different songs and sometimes all in the same song.

This makes for what is a pretty schizo album, maybe it is a bit too eclectic for its own good, the day when you feel like listening to Androgynous is probably not the same day you feel like listening to Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out. Still all the tracks are good enough in their own style to make this a more than worthy album.

The first track is definitely a highlight here, and that song by itself makes the album be worthy of inclusion on this list. This is very much one of the daddies of College Rock and it stands up remarkably well today, a very good album and something I will surely listen to again.

Track Highlights

1. I Will Dare
2. Seen Your Video
3. Answering Machine
4. Androgynous

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Let It Be placed more of a focus on Westerberg's songwriting than previous albums. While elements of hardcore remain, the band's sound also incorporates arena rock, pop, jazz, heavy metal, honky-tonk country and Chicago blues. Unlike previous efforts, the individual songs have distinct sections and dynamic shifts. Instruments such as piano, lap steel guitar, 12-string guitar, and mandolin appear.
Audio samples of 'Let It Be'

The album is divided by more energetic rock songs like "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" and "Gary's Got a Boner" and more dramatic songs like "Sixteen Blue" and "Unsatisfied". R.E.M.'s Peter Buck contributed the guitar solo to Let It Be's first cut, "I Will Dare," which was released as a single prior to the album's release in July 1984.

I Will Dare Live:

538. Prince - Purple Rain (1984)
















Track Listing

1. Let's Go Crazy
2. Take Me With U
3. Beautiful Ones
4. Computer Blue
5. Darling Nikki
6. When Doves Cry
7. I Would Die 4 U
8. Baby I'm A Star
9. Purple Rain

Review

Many people consider this to be the best soundtrack album of all times, and if we are speaking of pop music soundtracks specifically written for a film I would have to agree. This also stands on its own as one of the best Prince albums, period.

All the tracks here are pretty interesting, Prince gives us layer and layers of sound, he makes something interesting with each single track, and the album is so well paced that it really goes by in a flash. This is particularly true of the title track which lasts 9 minutes, but never drags and you could happily keep listening.

It is hard to imagine that when I was a kid there were Michael Jackson fans disputing with Prince fans... really there is no kind of comparison, this is actually very intelligent music, made by a true artist albeit a slightly misguided one.

Track Highlights

1. Purple Rain
2. When Doves Cry
3. Darling Nikki
4. Computer Blue

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Purple Rain regularly is ranked among the best albums in music history. Time Magazine in 1993 ranked it the 15th greatest album of all time, and it placed 18th on VH1's list of The Greatest Rock´n Roll Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it 72nd greatest album of all time and Zounds Magazine 18th greatest album of all time. The album was 4th in Plásticos y Decibelios list The Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2007, the editors of Vanity Fair labeled it the best soundtrack of all time and by Tempo Magazine it was named greatest album of 1980s

Prince hates all his fans, so here you go:

537. Van Halen - 1984 (1984)
















Track Listing

1. 1984
2. Jump
3. Panama
4. Top Jimmy
5. Drop Dead Legs
6. Hot For Teacher
7. I'll Wait
8. Girl Gone Bad
9. House Of Pain

Review

From the cover image to the exquisiteness of the music to the themes all here just has the pervading scent of classiness. The Orwellian album title is little more than an amuse bouche for the smorgasbord of pleasures to be found inside.

From the harrowing Panama, focusing on the workers at the construction of the canal, to the Vonnegutian House Of Pain (a thinly veiled tribute to Slaughterhouse 5) to the sensitive exploration of the adolescent crushes possibly experienced by the band in Hot For Teacher passing by the tribute to Samuel Beckett's most famous play in I'll Wait, this is the peak of intellectual lyric writing in modern music.

Just a pearl waiting to be discovered, like so many out there, unfortunately unfamiliarity with the work of Count Edward Van Halen has led to this never being more than an underground hit amongst the more literati pipe smokers in their gentleman's clubs. Try it.


Track Highlights

1. Jump
2. Hot For Teacher
3. Panama
4. Girl Gone Bad

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Though the 1st of April appears to have been observed as a general festival in Great Britain in antiquity, it was apparently not until the beginning of the 18th century that the making of April-fools was a common custom. In Scotland the custom was known as "hunting the gowk," i.e. the cuckoo, and April-fools were "April-gowks," the cuckoo being a term of contempt, as it is in many countries.

One of the earliest connections of the day with fools is Chaucer's story the Nun's Priest's Tale (c.1400), which concerns two fools and takes place "thritty dayes and two" from the beginning of March, which is April 1. The significance of this is difficult to determine.

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