My #3 album of 1990 is Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, the second solo album by the late George Michael.
Three years earlier, Michael scored a massive hit with the pop classic Faith, an extremely difficult act to follow. Listen Without Prejudice sold only a third as many copies as its predecessor and received mixed to positive reviews, but for my money it’s just as strong an album.
My #4 album of 1990 is Joe Jackson’s Laughter & Lust, the signer-songwriter’s 12th studio album and the last to have any kind of chart success. This is the first Jackson album I owned and I played it quite a bit during my early college years.
My favorite track on Laughter & Lust is today’s SOTD, ‘The Other Me.’ It’s a brazenly romantic song about regretting the loss of an old love, but not quite enough to end your current relationship.
Today I pick up on my Decades series, where I dive into the albums of a given year in the 70s, 80s, 90 and 00s. I started with my birth year, 1972, then featured 1982, ’92 and ’02. Then I backed up a couple of years to cover 1970 and 1980, and starting today I’ll tackle 1990.
This is the year I turned 18 and started college, a time when I started expanding my musical horizons, and yet I had a hard time coming up with albums I really like from the year. I found a lot more that I missed out on, and I’ll cover those over the next couple of weeks, but this week I’ll count down my five favorite 1990 albums.
Rounding out my three-week look at the music of 1980 is a track from Joy Division’s second (and final) album, Closer.
Joy Division emerged in the late 70s as a punk band but crafted a sound and mood that pointed toward the New Wave and alternative music that would dominate the 80s. They’re a fitting choice to close these theme weeks because they epitomize the shift from one decade to the other.
Rush is another band totally off my radar. The most immediate association I have with their music is its inclusion in the hilarious 2009 film I Love You Man, best captured in the immortal “slappin’ da bass” scene. Doesn’t hurt that the scene features my biggest female crush (Rashida Jones) and male crush (Paul Rudd).
Apart from that movie, I can’t say I’ve ever heard a song by the Canadian prog rock band in full. I know ‘Tom Sawyer’ by name but couldn’t hum its chorus if you paid me.
Meet Me In Montauk 