Five albums from the 1980s that have no business being as great as they are

The 1980s. Just the mention of the decade might make you want to put on your loose pants and go dancing. There are too many songs to like.

The issue with the 1980s might have been there were so many good singles and that might have caused fans to skip some of the musical artist's entire albums. But deep tracks will tell a listener whether the band is truly good or not.

The following five albums all produced a number of good singles, but the records were also almost accidentally successful. In one case, the original concept of the album was re-recorded. In the first case, the band was almost too...Australian.

Five excellent albums from the 1980s

Men At Work - Business as Usual (1981)

Just as New Wave was beginning to get a real foothold on the listening public, Men At Work emerged from Australia with a different kind of sound. At first brush, they seemed more calypso and folky than rock and they sang about, well...Australian things. Vegemite? What the heck was that?

What made the album work, though, was the simplest of things, but sometimes the hardest for a musical artist to come up with: The melodies were fresh and fantastic. Maybe the flute part of "Down Under" was ripped off, but that wasn't the driving force of the track. Who cannot hear the beginning of the song and not have that stuck in one's head for weeks?

The hits - "Down Under," "Who Can It Be Now?," and "Be Good Johnny" (the band's Australian schoolboy take on "Johnny B. Goode") - were excellent, but what makes Business as Usual still listenable is the strength of the deep cuts. "Touching the Untouchables" and "Down by the Sea" are slower-paced but socially streamlined enough to become fan favorites.

The record sold extremely well in both Australia (where the album was released in November 1981) and the UK and the United States, but it wasn't just a kitschy one-off. The record is as vibrant now, more than 40 years later.

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