Hi, I’ve got a tape I want to play,” David Byrne says at the beginning of Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads live album and Jonathan Demme-directed concert film. Wearing white sneakers and a soon-to-be-iconic boxy grey suit, he hits play on a boombox and launches into an off-kilter solo rendition of “Psycho Killer.” It was a bold move from a bolder band: At the height of their popularity, the quartet turned a live show into performance art. It sounds like it was fun to make. Crowded House's debut album is full of lighthearted, melodic, enormously catchy pop songs: "Mean to Me,""World Where You Live,""Now We're Getting Somewhere,""Something So Strong" and its biggest hit, "Don't Dream It's Over." From start to finish, Crowded House is shot through with the high spirits and sheer tunefulness of classic pop music. Although he'd begun a spiral of booze and drugs that would lead to a bout with alcoholism and a temporary split with his wife, Karen, Townshend pledged in "A Little Is Enough" to make the best of their fitful marriage. "I was able to very easily put into words something that had actually happened to me when I was a thirty-four-year-old," he said. "It's very emotional, but it's also very straightforward and clear."

80s Compilation Albums [2023] - 80s and 90s music 10 Best 80s Compilation Albums [2023] - 80s and 90s music

Lange's obsessiveness with the smallest sonic details had a big downside: It was hard to tell, from day to day, whether any progress at all was being made on the record. After an all-night session, Lange would often play work tapes for Leppard comanager Peter Mensch, who lived a short drive from Battery Studios. "Mutt would come in and say, 'Listen to what we did tonight'— and three more words would be added to a vocal," says Mensch. "It got to a point where I'd keep listening to these tapes and I couldn't tell what was there and what was missing." It’s hard to find a sector of music today that hasn’t been touched by this album. It’s been endlessly sampled by hip-hop artists, and it’s found its way to house DJs and producers across the globe. Neo-soul and alt-R&B are clear and obvious successors, as is Drake, who’s called Adu a defining influence. (He also got a tattoo of her. Twice.) Echoes of Adu’s voice—notes piercing with perfect clarity through fog and breath—can be heard in Tracey Thorn and Sinéad O’Connor, and in modern artists like Jessie Ware or the Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye. Sometimes, “Nothing Can Come Between Us” sounds like the blueprint for half of what’s on the radio. –Katherine St. Asaph Literally worlds away from the artful simplicity of his hits with the Police and even his jazz-fusion tangents on The Dream of the Blue Turtles, his first solo excursion, … Nothing Like the Sun is as much a vivid reflection of the mushrooming exploratory fervor among many of Sting's middle-aged pop peers, such as Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads and Paul Simon, as it is an expression of Sting's disgust with the state of pop. Ironically, the eleven original songs on the album were the product not of extensive musical field trips but of five months' concentrated writing in New York City in the winter and early spring of 1987. She had to get reacquainted with being in the studio," Walden says, "and she'd get winded." But it didn't take long for the singer to regain her form. "She'll sing a song down in the lower range maybe four or five times," he says. "Then she'll sing it up in her range and do two or three takes."Dorn pitched a Nevilles deal to A&M, which initially didn't share the producer's enthusiasm. "A&M thought the Nevilles were too ethnic and too regional," he says. Concurrently, singer Bette Midler — whom Dorn had produced and who is also a Nevilles fan — lobbied A&M on behalf of the band. The label eventually gave Dorn the green light. Labour of Love, by Britain's UB40, was exactly that: an enjoyable way of paying tribute to the reggae tunes that meant the most to the band members when they were growing up. The ten numbers they chose to cover from among hundreds they knew and loved were originally recorded between 1969 and 1972 — a period that corresponded to the band members' early exposure to reggae at weekend-long parties in the ethnic neighborhood of Balsall Heath, in their hometown of Birmingham. But there is an elegance here that is hard to achieve and harder to replicate. For whatever reputation Glass has as an ambassador of the avant-garde, what emerges on Solo Piano is a vision of contemporary music not for the concert hall but for the living room; of the piano not as a vehicle for systems or ideas, but something more elemental: a companion, maybe, the quiet voice you want to hear when you have nothing else to say. –Mike Powell

The best album covers of the 1980s - Radio X The best album covers of the 1980s - Radio X

In fact, for the song "Nite Club," the band even brought in an audience. "We had roadies, Chrissie Hynde and a few other friends," says Staples. "It was a laugh, because we had a little drink to get the pub atmosphere going." The shotgun marriage worked out in the end, but it was a shaky trip to the altar. The band felt uncomfortable recording in Los Angeles, Asher's home turf. The Maniacs were also unhappy with many of Asher's additions to their sound, including computerized drums. Asher insists he was merely "cajoling" the band into doing its best work. One of the most fervent and forceful political statements to emerge from Eighties pop music, Sun City didn't achieve the sales or wide radio airplay of other "cause" records like We Are the World. Nevertheless, the single and the accompanying album managed to achieve their primary goals: to draw attention to South Africa's racist policy of apartheid and to support a cultural boycott of the country. After all, only a few years before making his big splash, Crenshaw had been touring the United States as an ersatz John Lennon in various national companies of the successful pseudo-Fab Four musical Beatlemania. Tiring of that well-paying gig, Crenshaw decided to leave the show and work on his own music. By the summer of 1980, Crenshaw — who hails from the Detroit area — was playing his own tunes around New York City as part of a trio, with his brother Robert on drums and Chris Donato playing bass. Cobain never disguised the pain at the root of his rage. “Scoff” rails against a parent who gaslights him into believing the worst about himself. And on “Downer,” he screams some parting advice: “Don’t feel guilty masturbating!” After spending his entire youth feeling boxed-in and ashamed, he wanted everyone who heard him to know they didn’t have to feel the same. –Evan RytlewskiThe Stop Making Sense album also feels immersive, and there’s a mounting energy throughout the set that translates the live experience into a sit-through listen. This was a band that sang euphorically about architecture and philosophy, making such nerdy topics sound fun. The synths and programmed drums flit between zany and chilling, kitschy and funky, as Byrne’s breathless delivery compliments the anxious isolation of his lyrics; even before a roomful of adoring fans, the singer knew how to sound alone. –Jay Balfour Through a convoluted string of events, "Red Red Wine"— written by Neil Diamond, covered by Tony Tribe and rediscovered by UB40 — became a Number One hit in 1988, four years after its first appearance on Labour of Love. The album also reentered the charts, doing better the second time around and outselling the band's then-current release, simply titled UB40."I think it's purely the fact that American radio is now prepared to play reggae, whereas before it wasn't," Campbell says of UB40's long-overdue recognition in the States.