I have a “greatest hits” appreciation of The Police. I own only Synchronicity but I’m very familiar with their most popular songs from the four albums that preceded it — ‘Roxanne,’ ‘Can’t Stand Losing You,’ ‘Message in a Bottle,’ ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’ and so on.
1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta was The Police’s third album and, though the band itself dismisses it as half-good, it received some of the best reviews of their career.
Peter Gabriel’s first four solo albums were all titled Peter Gabriel for some reason. His third, released in 1980, is popularly referred to as Melt due to its cover image.
As a kid, I owned this album on vinyl but didn’t play it very often. I remember it best for closing track ‘Biko,’ which I once played at school for an assignment asking us to pick a song about an historical figure. Pretty cool choice for an elementary school, if you ask me.
Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall just missed my list of 1980 albums, having been released with a few months left in 1979.
I never got to know this album very well, unlike its 1982 follow-up, Thriller. Thriller is an album that, even at 10 years old, I knew by heart. But Off the Wall might be an even better record start to finish.
I’ve written about the band Witness, and their sophomore album Under a Sun, two times before. Once for Song of the Day #268, in April of 2009, and once for Song of the Day #1,218 in November of 2011.
Both times I referenced the only association I have with this band and this album, the fact that I bought it on the spot after hearing it play at a record store. Back when record stores were a thing, I’m sure they sold a lot of albums that way, but this is the only time I can ever remember buying a CD I’d never heard of because a clerk decided to give it a spin one afternoon.
So many of the albums I write about in these year-by-year series elicit in me the same response: I really need to listen to this one. Such is the case yet again with today’s selection, Squeeze’s third album, Argybargy.
Considering how much I love Squeeze’s 1981 classic East Side Story, along with the greatest hits collection I wore out in college, it’s a mystery why I haven’t listened to any of the dozen or so other albums they’ve released. Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford are one of the great pop songwriting duos, a pair dubbed the next Lennon and McCartney by some of their English countrymen.
Meet Me In Montauk 