I didn’t like most of the music that was popular in the 1980s. Don’t get me wrong – there were still plenty of great tunes. I’m about to write about five perfect ‘80s albums.
But overall, to me, it may be the weakest musical decade in my lifetime. If the ‘60s were the youthful teenaged years of pop music, when artists seemed primarily interested in giving the middle the finger to everything that had come before them, and if the ‘70s were the dawning maturity and thrill of early adulthood, the ‘80s have always struck me as the staid settling into a kind of middle-aged routine.
Rock n Roll was old. So was country. Disco had oversaturated the market and that's some no decade should ever be attached to. The Captain and Tenille had two of the biggest songs in 1980. By 1989, Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli had taken their spots. I didn’t hear much difference.
Five excellent albums that helped define the 1980s
Popular music was waiting for something new. They were so desperate for something new that critics labeled one of the dominant trends of the decade “New Wave.” It produced some stuff, but it seemed to get old quickly, just as Disco had done a few years before. What they waiting for would eventually come to be known as hip hop, but it wouldn’t seize control for another decade.
Still, there were some awesome albums. Some were harbingers of things to come. Some were singular achievements that stand as all-time statements. These five were perfect.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: NEBRASKA (1982)
The creation of Bruce Springsteen’s sixth album is a story worthy of its own book. Actually, Warren Zanes took care of that last year with “Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.” Zanes tells the story of an artist in crisis, and how he used his art to work through it. By 1982, Bruce Springsteen had conquered the world.
Of all the singers touted as “the next Bob Dylan,” Bruce proved to be the one who could become a true star in his own right. After steadily climbing the charts throughout the 1970s, he finally hit the top with the 1980 double album The River. But success raised doubts, and Bruce withdrew from public life for a little while to figure it all out.
He holed up in a nondescript house in New Jersey not far from where he grew up and began writing songs. He’d record them himself with a cheap commercial 4-track tape player. It was just Bruce, playing guitar and singing. Occasionally he’d mix in a harmonica or glockenspiel. When he brought his new collection of songs back to the studio to test them out with the E Street Band, everyone could tell something wasn’t right.
A few of the songs did benefit from the full band treatment, but most actually got worse. So the decision was made to simply release an album made up of some of those songs just as Bruce had recorded them in his bedroom in New Jersey. The results were extraordinary.
From the opening harmonica wail of the title track – inspired by a late-night screening of Terrence Malick’s movie Badlands – this was new territory. That opening track tells the true story of serial killer Charles Starkweather. He follows it with the desperation of a good man gone bad in ”Atlantic City.” Then there are eight more stories from the heartland. Stories of people struggling with economic and moral choices that they know will not turn out very well.
This was the underside of the Reagan Revolution and Bruce Springsteen, through ten tracks of Nebraska, chronicled it better than any social scientist could ever hope to. It yielded no hits, but its imprint was enormous. And with Nebraska out of his system, Springsteen could turn to those songs that did seem to blossom with the full band treatment. They would make up much of his next album – Born in the USA.
HUSKER DU: FLIP YOUR WIG (1985)
Flip Your Wig completed a remarkable three-album run from Bob Mould, Grant Hart, and Greg Norton, following their post-hardcore gems Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. On Flip Your Wig, they moved a little farther away from hardcore punk into more melodic rock n roll, without losing the high-octane adrenaline rush of their earlier albums.
Mould wrote and sang these newer songs that could find a spot on mainstream radio – songs like “Makes No Sense at All,” and the title track. Drummer Hart wrote and sang the throwbacks to their hardcore roots, like “Every Everything” and “Private Plane” They fit together perfectly, largely because no matter the song, Mould’s guitar created a tidal wave of listenable noise.
After Flip Your Wig, Husker Du left the legendary indie label SST for Warners, and released their final two albums which didn’t approach their run in the mid-80s. A lot of their fans attributed their fall to the move to a big, mainstream label, but the writing was already on the wall. Mould and Hart were drifting apart as musicians. It was time for them both to try something new. They could split up knowing that they had created several crucial punk albums, including at least one perfect one.
RUN-DMC: RAISING HELL (1986)
Rappers Joseph Simmons and Darryl McDaniels, along with their DJ Jason Mizell, were in the first wave of artists who made hip hop the dominant cultural force it eventually became. By the time of their third album, the music world was ready for an explosion. Run-DMC lit the match.
They did it in part because they didn’t really see themselves as something radical. They had proclaimed themselves as the kings of rock on their previous album. They were merely using the rhythms and practices of New York rappers to revitalize rock n roll. Could they have possibly known that this style of music they were helping invent would conquer rock n roll in short order?
The obvious rock crossover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” opened the door. Inside, mainstream Americans found anthems like “My Adidas,” “It’s Tricky,” and “Proud to Be Black.” This was just before De La Soul would revolutionize/ruin a lot of rap albums by launching the concept of the skit onto the world.
Raising Hell is not bogged down by skits the way so many great hip-hop albums would be over the next few decades. It’s just filled with pounding drums, pulsing bass, and stripped-down scratching that allows the individual voices to shine. Within a few more years, crews like NWA and Public Enemy would raise the bar with hugely important albums. They were more ambitious and arguably greater albums than what Run-DMC had done, but they were not more perfect.
PAUL SIMON: GRACELAND (1986)
Of all the great American singer-songwriters, Paul Simon may be the most restless and the most inquisitive. Even now, in his 80s, Simon still sounds like a man with something to prove. He broke up his massively popular partnership with Art Garfunkel at the height of its success so that he could stretch his musical wings in all directions. As with any experimenter, he doesn’t always hit home runs. When he does, it’s called Graceland.
The story of the creation of Graceland, a process which garnered a lot of condemnation for the singer, is hard to comprehend today. During apartheid, most artists refused to perform in South Africa. When Simon went there to record with black musicians like Ray Phiri and Bakithi Kumalo, in addition to the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, he drew heavy criticism. But those black South African musicians provided the pulse of Mbaqanga that helps give iconic tracks like “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes,” and “You Can Call Me Al” their unique quality.
And just take a look at all the other influences Simon managed to incorporate throughout the 11-song cycle. Everyone from Los Lobos David Hidalgo to Adrian Belew. Linda Ronstadt sings background on the gorgeous “Under African Skies.” He has accordions and zydeco constantly on tap. There were hits, like “The Boy in the Bubble,” and the title track, but many of the lesser-known tracks are just as good if not more engaging. It all comes together on the final track – “Áll Around the World or the Myth of Fingerprints” – an accordion-fueled rocker that suggests there is no true distinction between music regardless of origin. It’s a lesson Paul Simon has been examining for his entire career.
DWIGHT YOAKAM: GUITARS, CADILLACS, ETC., ETC. (1986)
Willie Nelson left Nashville for Austin in the early 1970s and a lot of disaffected country fans went with him. Outlaw Country was born. But for a long time, Nashville didn’t seem to care. Traditional country music was doing just fine, thank you very much. Then came 1986, when a trio of albums from young musicians seemed to suggest that it was time for a change. Randy Travis’s Storms of Life tilted a bit more traditional and Steve Earle’s Guitar Town was the most revolutionary. Dwight Yoakam’s debut slotted right in between them. Taken together, these albums seemed to be the public finally saying that the impulses of Outlaw Country were part of the natural evolution of mainstream country.
Yoakam doesn’t challenge many of the old-school country truths about partying and drinking and losing the love of your life. He just does it perfectly through his 10-song cycle. Most of the album consists of original compositions from the bluegrassy ”Miner’s Prayer” to the rocking title track to the classic pedal steel drinking song “It Won’t Hurt.” And he mixes in a few classic covers, including the Johnny Horton cover, “Honky Tonk Man,” which sets up the album to an up-tempo take on Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire," which comes near the end.
Yoakam would expand his musical ambitions in later albums like This Time and 3 Pears, and Steve Earle would release an arguably greater album toward the end of the decade with Copperhead Road. Those albums have some soaring highs but also have a weak part or two. Guitars… has none of that. It stands at the crossroads of country music, looking both forward and back, a perfect testament to where we have been and where we are going.
Come to think of it, maybe the ‘80s weren’t so bad. BTW - a bit of trivia for you. Only one artist had a song in Billboard’s yearly top ten at the end of both 1980 and 1989. Care to guess? Here’s a hint: she played herself in an episode of Seinfeld and professes a love for pineapple-flavored Italian ices. If that doesn’t whet your appetite for our next piece about five perfect albums from the 1990s, I don’t know what will.