In 2012, Rolling Stone magazine revised its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. You can see the complete list here, but at this address we're only interested in albums on the list that were released in the years 1976-85. Yes, overall the list is weighted towards white, male, rock artists from the late '60s, but I'm trying to discover "new-to-me" music from my favorite decade that I may have missed. I made these lists for my own sake, but thought I'd share them with you for the common good of society. Here's the 21 albums from '76-'85 that ranked between 400-301:
No.
|
Album
|
Artist
|
Year
|
| 399 | Rain Dogs | Tom Waits | 1985 |
| 398 | Eliminator | ZZ Top | 1983 |
| 391 | The Pretender | Jackson Browne | 1976 |
| 388 | The Indestructible Beat of Soweto | Various Artists | 1985 |
| 383 | More Songs About Buildings and Food | Talking Heads | 1978 |
| 382 | The Modern Lovers | The Modern Lovers | 1976 |
| 372 | Reggatta de Blanc | The Police | 1979 |
| 360 | Singles Going Steady | Buzzcocks | 1979 |
| 354 | 52nd Street | Billy Joel | 1978 |
| 352 | Brothers in Arms | Dire Straits | 1985 |
| 351 | Rust Never Sleeps | Neil Young & Crazy Horse | 1979 |
| 345 | Stop Making Sense | Talking Heads | 1984 |
| 343 | Bat Out of Hell | Meat Loaf | 1977 |
| 340 | Damaged | Black Flag | 1981 |
| 334 | Squeezing Out Sparks | Graham Parker | 1979 |
| 333 | Wild Gift | X | 1981 |
| 332 | Shoot Out the Lights | Richard & Linda Thompson | 1982 |
| 325 | Slowhand | Eric Clapton | 1977 |
| 324 | Station to Station | David Bowie | 1976 |
| 323 | Ghost in the Machine | The Police | 1981 |
| 315 | Damn the Torpedoes | Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers | 1979 |
Here's a breakdown of the above 21 albums by release date:
1976
|
1977
|
1978
|
1979
|
1980
|
1981
|
1982
|
1983
|
1984
|
1985
|
3
|
2
|
2
|
5
|
0
|
3
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
3
|
And a breakdown of the 50 albums we've featured so far:
Though I have come to like much of Richard Thompson's later work, I never could get into the critical darling that was 1982's Shoot Out The Lights and that is probably my fault. Stephen Holden originally gave the album four and a half stars in his review in the June 10, 1982 issue of Rolling Stone (though it gets the full five stars in the three editions of Rolling Stone Album Guide published since 1983) and in 1982's final issue, it looks like the album finished fourth in their assessment of the Top 40 Albums of the Year, behind that year's offerings from Springsteen, Cougar and Costello. (Shoot Out The Lights was ranked 24th on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years published in 1987 and also ranked ninth in the magazine's list of the Best Albums of the Eighties from 1989. Tellingly, the album also made the list of 40 Albums Baby Boomers Loved That Millennials Don't Know in 2014.) I never wanted to like what the crtics like and to this day it still mystifies me when an act whose work I love wins an award or ends up on a Best Of list. Maybe I am a little contrarian that way.
ReplyDeleteBy my estimates, half of the albums listed this time around might also make my list of 500 Favorite albums. I have listened to each and every one of the twenty-one listed this time around though so my judgement is true.