So I’ve decided to try and do this. It’s quite interesting for me. I was young in 1980, and finishing school by 1990.
I feel for many people this becomes a defining decade, but for me I only really started to find music towards the end of the decade, and have forever considered the decade a bit of a wasteland, in the way people tend to think of stuff from the older generations. I haven’t really ever felt inclined to go back and catch up on stuff. (For example, I really have never rated Bowie because I didn’t bond with 80s Bowie stuff, and because of that I just never really was interested)
So anyway, to do this I went to wikipedia and studied the lists of albums per year. In some years there was nothing that I loved. Particularly in the early years.
- I would probably suggest the Blues Brothers soundtrack was the most defining stuff for me out of that year, but I have never really known that as an album
1981
1982 : Thriller - Michael Jackson. Did I love this? Not sure, but I still know all the tracks. I reckon it deserves a place
1983
1984 : All over the Place - The Bangles. I think I came to this in about 86, and I still love it today, although I’ve only ever had it on tape, and it seems unavailable anywhere. Pop genius.
1985 : Listen Like Thieves - INXS. I loved INXS in the mid 80s. Nothing else from that time really stood out as even in competition
1986 : They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Gants. I came to love TMBG in about 89, and this album along with Lincoln and Flood was the core of the stuff that defines that period. So many good tracks on this. Only real other option was The Bangles’ Different Light
1987 Kick - INXS. I loved this so much at the time. Listening now there’s a bunch of filler (Tiny Daggers for example) but still it was meaningful to 14yo me.
1988 Green - REM. This was one of the most difficult years for me to choose. Options that I haven’t seen elsewhere included TMBG’s Lincoln, Living Color’s Vivid, and The Go-Betweens and then there were the obvious ones as well. But Green meant a lot to me, and I still rate it.
1989 The Big Don’t Argue - Weddings Parties Anything. I thought I was going to go another way here. Either Doolittle, or Neneh Cherry, but realistically Weddings is just one of those bands that has been massive in my life (especially their legendary christmas shows). And Tale they Won’t Believe is central.
That was weird, and a really strange process. I found a lot of my early 80s memories are around individual pop songs (Karma Chameleon!!), and then as I grew albums started to matter. But the albums I most loved I found later in the 80s, and pretty much none of them will mean as much to me as albms from the 90s. But the fact that WPA got the gig in 89 was instructive as in the future I would come to love live performances and ‘the moment’ even more than the albums from many of my favourite acts.
I look forward to the 90s version. And am totally worried that I’m going to miss something critical to my own definition of self.