Continuing my look at 1984, first by counting down my own top five albums of that year.
#3. Purple Rain – Prince
Only five albums reached #1 in 1984, and one of those was Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which was released the previous year but still spent the first 15 weeks of ’84 at the top of the Billboard 200. Thriller was the top-selling album of both 1983 and 1984.
Continuing my look at 1984, first by counting down my own top five albums of that year.
#4. Like a Virgin – Madonna
Here’s an album I paid no attention at the time of its release, and an artist I actively dismissed for most of the following four decades.
It took last summer’s Madonna deep dive for me to finally appreciate the game-changing greatness of one of the 80s defining artists. And though Like a Virgin landed at #5 on my Madonna album ranking, it’s a worthy enough collection to land at #4 on this list.
What better way to kick off 2022 than by going back in time nearly 40 years to 1984 for the latest installment of my Decades series?
First, let me recover from the stunning realization that 1984, the year I turned 12, was nearly 40 years ago. Wowza.
I wasn’t very invested in popular music back then, so none of the year’s notable albums meant much to me at the time. But I have come to know and love a few of them. Over the next four weeks, I will cover those as well as a sampling of celebrated records I haven’t heard much or at all.
Here’s a track from 2004’s New Moon, the second posthumous Elliott Smith release following his death in 2003.
While the album released prior to this one (2004’s From a Basement on the Hill) was in the works but unfinished when Smith died, this one is a collection of unreleased tracks mostly recorded a decade earlier in his career. A lot of newer fans name this as their favorite Smith album, which bugs me because it’s the one Smith release with which he had zero involvement.
Happy New Year to all my readers, loyal and casual alike! Here’s hoping 2022 is brighter than either of the past two years. I’d say it couldn’t be much worse, but I know better than that.
Kicking things off on the first day of the year is Random Weekend selection from David Byrne’s 2004 album Grown Backwards.
Meet Me In Montauk 