Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1986…

#8 – Especially For You – The Smithereens

I didn’t hear The Smithereens’ debut studio album until several years later when the band played a free concert during my freshman year at the University of Florida. I liked what I heard at that show so much I picked up this CD the next day.

Especially For You is an alternative pop rock masterpiece, featuring one absolute banger after another. Lead singer/songwriter Pat DiNizio called the album “a greatest hits collection from a band nobody’s heard of” because they’d been writing and playing for five years before recording the album.

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