Tag Archives: Decades

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Song of the Day #4,954: ‘Private Dancer’ – Tina Turner

Tina Turner released four solo albums between 1974 and 1979, both before and after her split from the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Those releases met with tepid results critically and commercially.

That all changed with 1984’s Private Dancer, an album that launched Turner to international superstardom and marked a departure from her R&B roots toward a much poppier sound. Recorded in England with a rotation of producers, the album spent nearly 40 weeks in Billboard’s top ten and went 5X Platinum in the U.S.

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Song of the Day #4,953: ‘Something I Learned Today’ – Hüsker Dü

My process for these Decades posts starts with combing through a variety of sources for the year in question (1984, in this case), including Billboard charts, Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll, critics’ lists, Rolling Stone guides and the like.

I set aside the albums I know well for my own best-of list, then assemble a list of titles with which I’m not familiar, giving precedence to the ones that show up most often. When I’m down to my final list of 10 or 15, I listen to each all the way through at least once, sometimes more than once, before posting.

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Song of the Day #4,952: ‘It’s Like That’ – Run-D.M.C.

My look back at 1984 has been pretty heavy on rock music so far, but the year also saw the release of at least one pioneering rap album.

Run-D.M.C.’s self-titled debut was one of the first new-school hip-hop albums, replacing the disco-influenced tracks of the late 70s and early 80s with spare tracks driven by staccato drum machines and more aggressive rhyming. You can hear the seeds of both Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys on this record.

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Song of the Day #4,949: ‘Will the Wolf Survive?’ – Los Lobos

I own only one Los Lobos album, and that’s 1992’s Kiko, a rich and wide-ranging record that is widely considered their best.

More than ten years ago, when I first wrote about Kiko on the blog, commenter Phil made this suggestion: “Do yourself a favor and pickup Will the Wolf Survive and By the Light of the Moon.”

Well, it took me a decade, but I finally took his advice on one of those titles.

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Song of the Day #4,948: ‘Dover Beach’ – The Bangles

Usually when I do a Decades series, I discover one album that was completely off my radar but immediately feels essential. I’m not even halfway through 1984 yet, but I think I might have found it in The Bangles’ All Over the Place.

When I saw this album listed on best-of lists for the year, I assumed it would feature the hits ‘Manic Monday,’ ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ and ‘Hazy Shade of Winter,’ or at least some combination of those staples. But All Over the Place, The Bangles’ debut, didn’t have a single hit. It’s also, by all accounts, the best record they ever released.

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