Before I get started with the list below, I want to say what a massive fan I have always been of the three bands that have albums highlighted in this article. And I am also a fan of all three albums listed but for different reasons for each. Men At Work, A Flock of Seagulls, and ABC? Yes, please!
But these three bands were also held to the standards of their day. Record companies wanted hits and they had all the control. The first couple of records produced by any group had major oversee by the overlords who only cared about money. Or as Jello Biafra sang in the Dead Kennedys song, "MTV Get Off the Air": "Tin-eared/Graph-paper brained accountants instead of music fans/Call all the shots at giant record companies now/The lowest common denominator rules."
This is still true today, though artists like Taylor Swift have figured out a way to get what is truly theirs back, thankfully. The three records that follow are not ones record companies would have wanted for each band's debut. Partly due to that, these records died on the proverbial vine and never reached the audience they should have.
A Flock of Seagulls - Story of a Young Heart
A Flock of Seagulls released their third studio album, Story of a Young Heart, in 1984. As opposed to the more happy-sounding singles of the first two records - including songs such as "Space Age Love Song" and "I Ran (So Far Away)" - the new record didn't have the type of popcorn-movie fun as what fans had come to know from the band. In fact, Story of a Young Heart was pretty danged depressing in parts.
But this is partly what made the album so good if one were to listen to it multiple times. The sonic bombast of the album certainly doesn't match the volume and aggression of early 1990s grunge, but the themes and intent do. Story of a Young Heart ended with the track "Suicide Day" and contained "The End" which dealt with the paranoia of not trusting your partner. It's doomsday stuff.
But it's also fantastic in its way. The production is crisper on this record compared to the previous two. This almost marks the last time the original lineup of the band was together, and while most bands were synth-driven in the early '80s A Flock of Seagulls was basically guitar, bass, drums, and vocals with some synth thrown in. If A Flock of Seagulls had formed in Seattle in the late 1980s instead of Liverpool in 1979, they probably would have sounded a lot more like Alice in Chains based on the sentimentalities of Story of a Young Heart.
ABC - Beauty Stab
I am not sure what fans of ABC thought they might be getting with the follow-up to the band's excellent debut album, Lexicon of Love, but it certainly wasn't Beauty Stab. Most groups don't make their statement album - "We only did the first two albums to please our record company!" - until album three. ABC went all in on album two. And Godspeed to them for doing so!
Beauty Stab might actually end up on many "worst-of" lists, but that would be a mistake. I loved "Look of Love" as much as the next bloke still trying to grasp with entering teenage-hood, but I also appreciated Beauty Stab as well. To be honest, at the time I lacked nearly as much self-awareness as I do now and wasn't aware of just how much my friends thought the album was crap.
Beauty Stab took the humorous irony of Lexicon of Love and simply turned it into irony and without the laughs. Instead of strings, there were guitars. I could see what the band was trying to do, but I don't think they could fully grasp how to do it. The guitar sound has a pre-post-punk issue of sounding too crisp and without the real angst.
Songs like "That Was Then but This Is Now" are much-maligned but there is something glam-catchy about it all. But Beaty Stab wouldn't end the group as far as hit-makers. "Be Near Me" from 1985 and "When Smokey Sings" from 1987 were both charted in the top ten in the United States. The albums Alphabet City (1987) and The Lexicon of Love II (2016) were both top ten albums in the UK.
Men At Work - Two Hearts
Two Hearts was made when Men At Work were falling about as a band. Only three of the original five members were involved in the making of the band's third album and it shows. The instrumentalists are fine, but the group doesn't sound nearly as tight. The production comes through as singer Colin Hay and everything-musician Greg Ham seemed mostly on their own and sometimes joined by guitarist and co-founder of the band, Ron Strykert. Strykert left the band during the recording of the album.
Men At Work are an odd band in hindsight. They had a sound that was far more popular than likely anyone expected and that meant that there was going to be tension eventually. The band would have had to have been satisfied with falling a bit out of general favor and more into a band like the Dave Matthews Band where the group still made sterling albums but didn't expect there to be 10s of millions sold. That obviously didn't happen.
Yet, Two Hearts did produce lots of good songs, in my opinion, and two fantastic singles, "Everything I Need" and "Maria." Two other tracks were released as singles, "Hard Luck Story" and "Sail to You" but this was a mistake as neither had to kind of sound for broad appeal. Some critics thought the album sounded too mainstream, but this was part of the issue. Men At Work was never truly mainstream as intended, and Two Hearts didn't fit with everything else coming out in 1985.
The vinyl ends with both sides having songs that are anything but happy. "Children On Parade" ends side one and entails children leaving the world due to their toxic environment. Side two ends with "Still Life" that includes the verse, "With a photographic memory/I could live in a time that used to be/Is this the threshold of a fantasy?/Is there still life at all?" Rough. But for those willing to listen, this album might still hold some meaning.