After a few weeks in 1982, I’m bringing things back to 2015, taking a look at the Billboard charts as summer wraps up and makes way for fall.
The battle for Song of the Summer has no clear winner this year. My vote goes to Walk the Moon’s ‘Shut Up and Dance,’ which had a strong Billboard run and embodies the spirit a Song of the Summer should exhibit.
Shakira writes the oddest lyrics. Her left-field sensibility is refreshing given her sexpot persona — you’d expect the lyrical complexity of a Britney Spears song from a woman whose stomach is the featured performer in every one of her videos.
Shakira is relatively new to the English language, and I’m guessing that’s the source of some of her weirder turns of phrase.
I don’t return to Elvis Costello’s 1991 album Mighty Like a Rose very often, but when it first came out I was in love with it.
A sticker on the album’s cover promised it was his best, most inventive work since Imperial Bedroom, which was overselling it, but it does have its share of baroque gems.
While New Wave was the defining sound of the early 80s, the #1 album of 1982 was the self-titled debut by prog-rock band Asia. Asia spent more than two months at the top of the U.S. album chart.
The band was created by former members of Yes, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their debut album outsold anything any of those other bands ever produced.
I own Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly, another critically-acclaimed 1982 album, but I can’t say I’ve ever listened to it in full.
I digitally borrowed this record from frequent commenter Dana, who counts it among his favorites. I expect we’ll get an illuminating treatise on the album from him sometime Thursday morning.
