Tag Archives: Decades 1985

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Song of the Day #5,634: ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ – The Pogues

Eight days ago, I chose today’s album for the final installment of my 1985 Decades series. I’m not sure why I settled on Irish band The Pogues’ sophomore effort, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, over a half dozen other albums I had on my list, but I did.

I listened to it for most of that afternoon, then sat down in the evening to write today’s post. When I brought up this song on YouTube, I noticed a lot of “RIP” comments about lead singer Shane MacGowan and thought he must have passed away rather young. I checked his bio, and was shocked to discover he had died that very morning.

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Song of the Day #5,633: ‘Is It a Crime?’ – Sade

Early this year, I finished up my Decades look at 1984 by featuring Sade’s debut album Diamond Life. A year later, the band (and the woman it’s named after) returned with Promise, an equally successful follow-up.

I don’t know this album as well as its predecessor. I’m familiar with the hits — ‘Is It a Crime?,’ ‘The Sweetest Taboo,’ and ‘Never as Good as the First TIme’ — and they’re all wonderful. The rest of the album coasts along on a similar jazzy vibe, though the songs don’t measure up to those high points. That wasn’t the case with Diamond Life, which is all bangers, start to finish.

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Song of the Day #5,632: ‘Adrian’ – Eurythmics

Eurythmics made a stylistic shift in 1985, away from the New Wave synth pop of ‘Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)’ toward a more rock/R&B sound. The resulting album, Be Yourself Tonight, was a major hit both commercially and critically.

Along with the musical shift, lead singer Annie Lennox switched from her striking androgynous visage to an equally striking platinum blonde bombshell look. She proved that her strong, distinctive vocals were as well-suited to crowd-pleasing romps as dreamy/creepy synth hits.

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Song of the Day #5,631: ‘Paisley Park’ – Prince

In 1985, Prince was faced with following up the previous year’s Purple Rain, a massive success that made him one of the biggest stars in the world and an album that is still hailed as one of the greatest ever.

His response was to record a weird little psychedelic pop album that seemed to deliberately avoid comparisons with its storied predecessor. Around the World in a Day is Purple Rain‘s quirky cousin, popping in from out of town to make everybody a little uncomfortable.

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Song of the Day #5,630: ‘How Will I Know’ – Whitney Houston

Three albums released in 1985 are among the 40 top-selling albums of all time. I covered two of them in recent weeks: Dire Straits’ Brothers in Arms and Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required.

The third is Whitney Houston’s self-titled debut, an album that crawled out of the gate in February of ’85 and slowly picked up steam, eventually becoming a record-breaking juggernaut. Despite coming out in early ’85, it ended up as the best-selling album of 1986. It also produced three #1 singles, a first for a debut album or an album by a solo woman.

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