Infidels is probably my 16th or 17th favorite Bob Dylan album, but that’s enough to make it my 10th favorite album of 1983.
I didn’t discover this album until I did a Dylan deep-dive on the blog in 2010. As big a Dylan fan as I am, I had a blind spot for his work between 1976’s Desire and 1989’s Oh Mercy. Oh Mercy was the first Dylan album I bought upon its release, while I had gobbled up his pre-Desire albums (almost all classics) as a younger teen.
‘Superstar’ is the seventh of 15 tracks on 1998’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to appear on the blog. That’s a mix of Random Weekend selections and songs I chose to feature.
Miseducation is definitely one of the best albums of the 90s (I ranked it at #19 on my own decade list) and perhaps the greatest album ever that was the first and last studio release by an artist.
A month ago, the Random iTunes Fairy served up Elliott Smith songs on back-to-back weekends. Now she’s back with another one, the 11th from his catalog to appear on Random Weekends.
The RIF must really like Elliott Smith. He is outperforming the percentages considerably. The law of averages would predict about half as many Smith posts as we’ve gotten.
I slotted Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut in the #11 spot on my list of the best albums of 1983 because it has been so far off my radar for so long that I couldn’t justify it cracking the top ten.
If I’d made this list in 1990, this album might have occupied the top spot. That’s in part because I hadn’t yet discovered many of the albums to come on this list. But it’s mostly because Pink Floyd meant the world to me when I was in high school.
My 12th favorite 1983 album is one I definitely listened to at the time. Huey Lewis and the News were a big hit in my house, and I vividly remember listening to my older sister’s vinyl copy of the album Sports.
This baby has one hell of a tracklist. It could be mistaken for a greatest hits collection, boasting songs such as ‘The Heart of Rock and Roll,’ ‘Heart and Soul,’ ‘I Want a New Drug,’ ‘Walking On a Thin Line’ and today’s SOTD, ‘If This Is It,’ a favorite of mine.
Meet Me In Montauk 