Guilty pleasures – favourite pop albums of the 80s: Part 5

And so I come to the final part (I think) of my rewind through my favourite albums of the 80s. I’m going to squeeze 4 albums into this post, all of which were released during 1987-88. I can’t seem to find any pure pop albums I really like after this period, as it pretty much coincides with the rising popularity of rock/metal in the popular music charts, as well as R&B and electronic/dance music. And one can hear these musical influences in a couple of the albums featured here.

T’Pau – Bridge of Spies (1987): T’Pau is a character from the original Star Trek series which Carol Decker used as the name for the band that she fronted as lead singer and co-songwriter. Their debut album Bridge of Spies was a huge hit after which the band unfortunately faded away. I think all their creativity got poured into this album, evidenced by the fact that 7 out of the 12 songs were released as singles. The group’s sound is differentiated by Decker’s distinctive high pitched vocals and a tenor sax that features prominently on songs like Friends Like These. The best tracks are the mid-tempo singles Heart and Soul, China in Your Hand and the title track Bridge of Spies (love that chorus, even though it gets a bit awkward when she hits the high note on the last line!). The best song for me is Valentine, the fifth single from the album, an anthemic song built around Decker’s soaring vocals (feels epic when she goes “Hey hey hey, Sunny Valentine”); make sure your speakers can handle the treble when you turn up the volume on to this one! Even an average song like Thank You for Goodbye are elevated by Decker’s vocals. The album went all the way to No.1 on the UK album chart for a week and was eventually certified 4xPlatinum.

George Michael – Faith (1987): I had become big fan of Wham! and their bubblegum pop sound from the early 80s. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for how different George Michael sounded on his debut solo album Faith (this was the same reaction I had when Sting went solo after the break-up of The Police). Incorporating elements of R&B and electronica, the album broke new ground for him and still ranks up there as one of the best pop albums of all time. It won Album of the Year at the 1989 Grammy Awards and more significantly, became the first album by a white solo artist to top the US R&B Charts. With its overt (and covert) mixing of sexuality and religious imagery, George Michael (like Madonna) was making a political statement through his music. I love upbeat tempo and playful lyrics of the title track, Faith. Father Figure is, I think, one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded; it has absolutely everything – opening with an oriental synth riff followed by a “smacky” drum beat and throbbing bass line, one already knows that this is going to be an intense song…and then comes Michael’s breathless vocals enhanced with echo effects. Don’t you love it when the vocals skip a beat in the chorus between “I will be the one who loves you” and “‘Til the end of time”. And the variation on the final chorus. I could write a whole section on just this one song. Electronica makes its intro into mainstream pop with the synth riff interspersing the chorus on I Wan’t Your Sex. The electronica/dance sound gets dialed up even more with Monkey. There are two songs with a very different pace – one is Hand to Mouth with its poignant lyrics and minimalist musical arrangement. And the other at the end of the album, is the old-fashioned pop ballad sound of Kissing a Fool, which sounds like it could have been sung by Michael Buble.

Level 42 – Running in the Family (1987): I’ve loved this group ever since I heard their early singles hits The Chinese Way (1982) and The Sun Goes Down (1983). They had a unique sound – Mark King’s bass slapping style, his vocal delivery and just the whole modern jazz infused pop sound of the band. They had a couple of indifferent albums in ’84 and ’85, then it all came together in their 1987 record Running in the Family. Kicking off with the single Lessons in Love (released some months before the album), there were a total of 4 hit singles including the title track, the heartbreak song To Be with You Again and the contemplative/poignant It’s Over. Mark King’s singing style made the lyrics easy to decipher and sing along with. Even the so-called ‘filler songs’ are good enough to play in the background and make for easy listening, although they can be considered a bit formulaic. But I love their formula, so am happy to listen to songs like Sleepwalkers (a bit reggae-infused) and Freedom Someday (opening sounds a bit like The Chinese Way).

R.E.M. – Green (1988): Before they became world famous with Losing My Religion (and that music video directed by Tarsem Singh!) and its 1991 album Out of Time, R.E.M. spent many years as an underground indie band whose popularity was limited to the college circuit in the US. The album they released before Out of Time was Green in 1988, a wake-up call to the world showcasing their immense talent, quirky sound and deep (not always meaningful) lyrics. Virtually every song in this album is worthy of inclusion in a retrospective or “best of” album. Although I love the four bubblegum pop songs which were released as singles, over time my favourite song has become You Are the Everything, a wonderful, meditative love song, which would not have been radio-friendly enough to release as a single. Hairshirt sounds very similar, but somehow doesn’t have the same appeal for me. Another song which usually brings tears to my eyes is World Leader Pretend; this bleak song was not released as a single, but appeared on a compilation album (I think supporting Greanpeace); it is apparently the only song on the album to have its lyrics printed, which means the band felt that the lyrics were worth reading, as it is a political song about hollow/ shallow world leaders. At the other end of the spectrum, you have Stand, a song whose meaningless lyrics exist only as filler for the groovy 60’s-style “bubblegum pop” tune. In the same league are the other three songs released as singles Pop Song 89, Get Up and Orange Crush – all very catchy. For those interested, check out this amazing blog written in 2007/ 08, analyzing a number of R.E.M. songs https://popsongs.wordpress.com/about/.

Well, that pretty much wraps up my list of favourite 80s albums, but not quite. There are a few consolation prizes to be handed for artists who couldn’t quite get all their best songs into a single album, but did put together 2 consecutive albums that together would account for most of their “best of” compilation. Stay tuned!

Guilty pleasures – favourite pop albums of the 80s: Part 4

I have to take a bit of a step back in this fourth post of favourite albums of the 80s. I was listing them out in chronological order and should have been getting into the 1987-88 period next, but then realized that I had suffered some strange amnesia and missed out talking about 3 albums that I listened to pretty much non-stop during the 80s. Terrible oversight! So, I’ve had to make amends and go back a few years to the early 80s again. Here they are:

Men at Work – Business as Usual (1981): “Travelin’ in a fried out Combi, on a hippy trail head full of zombie” – I had no idea what those words meant, but with Colin Hay’s gravelly voice and that distinctive flute intro, they took Down Under all the way to the top of the UK charts. The Australian pop-rock band became a global sensation and stayed that way for a couple of years, then broke up after a recording just 2 more albums; this debut album would easily feature in any list of all-time great pop albums. As much as I love Down Under, my favourite song is actually the first single released, the cheeky Who Can It Be Now? with that beautiful sax intro and the signature “tat-tat-tat” on the snare drum. Underground also has a great sax intro which then leads to a propulsive bass and drums sound; I love the high harmonics on the vocals at “we’ll be alright in the morning time”. I Can See It in Your Eyes has the entire package – unusually insightful lyrics for a pop song, that cool lead guitar passage in the middle of the song and again, Colin Hay hitting impossibly high notes. Touching the Untouchables is a strangely arranged song that shouldn’t be appealing but somehow is, mainly because of the chorus! And the album ends with awesome Down by the Sea; great guitar work in the intro over a sparse background beat, then Colin Hay’s voice kicks in with lots of echo, and every now and then there’s a short sax or trumpet riff to highlight the end of a verse. Truly, one of the all-time great albums.

Leo Sayer – World Radio (1982): I was captivated by the song Heart (Stop Beating in Time), which was being played on high rotation in mid-1982. I didn’t know until I started writing this post that the song was written by the Bee Gees. I loved it so much that I bought the album and fell in love with most of the songs and his voice. Strangely, I’ve not been a big fan of any of his other songs, except his 1975 hit Moonlighting. Something about the songs in World Radio really clicked with me. Most of them deal with one topic – Paris Dies in the Morning, Have You Ever Been in Love, We’ve Got Ourselves in Love – you get the picture, but in those days I didn’t really care too much about lyrics. What hooked me to songs was the vocal delivery and music arrangement and I loved Sayer’s soulful voice and the poignancy that they evoked on these songs. The last track in the album, World Radio is a beautiful song about humanity and love, with a quiet and measured piano intro that later surges and soars with strings and horns.

Kid Creole and the Coconuts – Tropical Gangsters (1982): I was thinking earlier that the title of these posts, i.e. “Guilty pleasures” was a bit unfair to myself as there is no need at all to feel guilty about loving albums by Michael Jackson, Madonna, Duran Duran and Peter Gabriel! This album – Tropical Gangsters – on the other hand, probably does deserve that epithet. August Darnell, the leader of the group Kid Creole and the Coconuts, didn’t like the album, feeling that the record label had interfered too much and the final product was a “cop-out” compared to his original vision. Many critics didn’t think very highly of it either, when compared to the group’s previous album Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places. But incredibly, it became their best-selling album ever, a bit hit across Europe, UK and Australia. I heard Annie I’m Not Your Daddy when it broke into the UK Top 20 and fell in love with the foot-tapping, calypso-tinged Big Band/R&B sound, as well as the tongue-in-cheek lyrics (“See, if I was in your blood then you wouldn’t be so ugly”). The same sound runs throughout the album (I guess critics weren’t too impressed with the lack of variety); it wasn’t Grammy winning material, but listening to it would just get my feet tapping and put a smile on my face. Stool Pigeon was another big hit, a song about a hoodlum who snitches on his buddies to the FBI and then is put on a witness protection program. I’m a Wonderful Thing Baby was the actually the first single released from the album, a song about an egocentric character (“Take a look at me/ See, I couldn’t look no better/ Girl, I’m at my peak/ And that’s a fact, that’s a fact”). There are other ridiculously titled but catchy tracks such as Loving You Made a Fool Out of Me and No Fish Today. For anyone who wants to give it a try, listen to Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy, which hit #2 on the UK singles chart in late 1982.