The Cure is one of those quintessential 80s bands that helped define the New Wave era, particularly in the mid to late part of the decade. They started their career in the late 70s in a gloomy goth mode that persisted — at least in the band’s appearance — even after they were writing far poppier material.
I’m familiar only with a few of The Cure’s hits, and I like those a lot. Whether that appreciation would carry over to a whole album is anybody’s guess.
The #1 album on Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll for 1981 was The Clash’s Sandinista!, the triple-album follow-up to their heralded London Calling. The album was released in December of 1980, just missing the cut for that year’s poll.
Interestingly, it was London Calling — released in January 1980 in the States — that topped the 1980 poll. Critics were apparently in a Clash state of mind at the turn of the decade.
Most of the retrospectives that followed Prince’s death earlier this year singled out 1980’s Dirty Mind as his first great album and one of his very best, peiod.
This sexually explicit funk-pop classic was Prince’s third album, and the first on which he played pretty much every instrument. The five-star AllMusic review trumpets its influence on the decade to come, saying “its fusion of synthesizers, rock rhythms, and funk set the style for much of the urban soul and funk of the early ’80s.”
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.
Meet Me In Montauk 