Acclaimed Music Top 25 from 1979 poll

Neil!

some albums just missing the Top 25 include: 26 XTC -Drums and Wires, 27 The Jam - Setting Sons, 28 Donna Summer - Bad Girls, 30 Ramones - It's Alive, 31 Supertramp - Breakfast in America, 32 Joe Jackson - Look Sharp!, 45 Fleetwood Mac - Tusk, 50 The Fall - Live at the Witch Trials,
51 David Bowie - Lodger, 52 Nick Lowe - Labour of Lust and 53 Blondie - Eat to the Beat.

i'm torn between Unknown Pleasures, Off the Wall or 154. will vote later.

of these, my favorites are B-52s > Armed Forces > Reggatta de Blanc

also dig the Prince, Led Zep and Lowell George albums from that year

oh and Fear Of Music is good too

I voted Cut. But I like Unknown Pleasures about equally.

London Calling

A decade ago I would've gone for the post-punk perennials. Now I'd as soon go for Risque or Off The Wall.

chic

Metal Box

Tusk is better than half of these. Voting Entertainment!

MJ

It's the Clash by a whisker of Michael Jackson.

The B-52's. No second thoughts.

b52s

^ no second thoughts

I'd normally vote Neil Young, but the title songs are pretty much dead for me, so I'd probably take 154 instead--possibly even Unknown Pleasures.

the Clash
the CURE
the Specials

Risqué

Close call between PiL and Chic. The AC/DC and Talking Heads albums are both great but with both bands I prefer the records released either side of them.

Been meaning to give that Graham Parker album a listen for ages now.

I'm probably the only one voting for Overkill.

This is tough but I have to go with The Clash - London Calling because, well, c'mon now it's fing London Calling!

none of my would-be underdog picks are here, so Off the Wall i guess

London Callong, duh.

Had to consider London Calling here, but I do honestly believe Reggatta de Blanc is one of the all-time postpunk greats - everything works on that album. So that's where the one vote is coming from.

I'm probably the only one voting for Overkill.

― van smack, Friday, June 1, 2012 1:19 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did too!

The B-52's gets my vote. Off The Wall, Fear of Music, Armed Forces and Risque would be up there too.

I'm voting for Damn The Torpedoes because YOU DON'T! HAVE! TO LIVE LIKE A REFUGEE!

(Don't have to live like a refugee-ee.)

is it just me or is half of off the wall actually really boring (other half is brilliant of course)

I'm not gonna bother trying to rank these: too many, too good. But Cut is my favorite, just over Metal Box.

risque probably

jesus, best year ever. had to go with 'metal box' despite stiff competition from, like, everything else.

specials

Surprised myself voting for Armed Forces, far and away my favorite album by an artist I don't even consider a huge personal favorite. Post-punk hasn't worn well for me, and I don't like anything else here quite enough to vote for it instead.

1979 was the year I started college in Athens, so.

so many great albums! voted 154 because of it being one of the greatest things of all time

i pick the year 1979 out of a hat. when i saw what albums would be listed, i knew it would be a very, very tough poll. now that the votes are rolling in, i really wonder what will win. almost all of these albums are A's and are really, really great.

gotta be neil.

first instinct is London Calling but I really fkn love Highway To Hell

Bon vs Joe FITE

sorry Joe. Bon it is.

Ok I've been 4 hours stuck in the airport and my urge to make lists is overcoming. My top 10 of these albums just because. A really good year for music.

1. Gang of Four - Entertainment!
2. Chic - Risqué
3. Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
4. The Cure - Three Imaginary Boys/Boys Don't Cry
5. The Slits - Cut
5. The Undertones - The Undertones
6. The Clash - London Calling
7. The Specials - Specials
8. Motörhead - Overkill
9. Wire - 154
10. The Police - Reggatta de Blanc

From the ones that didn't make it I like these ones even better, Tusk would be my actual #1 for the year and possibly for the whole decade.

XTC -Drums and Wires
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
David Bowie - Lodger
and Blondie - Eat to the Beat.

― Bee OK,

demographics here are weird. would like to know more about the sources aggregated.

Statin the obvious since I think almost everyone in here agrees that Pink Floyd rules but I hate the Wall, at least music-wise. The movie and concept for the live experience are on another level.

Also maybe i like acdc better than the police.

can't believe 20 Jazz Funk Great didn't make the list

UNKNOWN PLEASURES. If it had been twenty years ago, it would've been ARMED FORCES.

/miserablist

xp It's probably somewhere in the top 50. Same w/ Half Machine Lip Moves. One of my favourite albums of all time, The Fall's Dragnet, is missing too...

I think almost everyone in here agrees that Pink Floyd rules

How ILM has changed!

Not that album. Some great guitar work, but I can't listen to THE WALL anymore.

RYM's '79 toplist, surprisingly similar:

1) Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
2) The Clash - London Calling
3) Pink Floyd - The Wall
4) Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
5) Talking Heads - Fear of Music
6) Gang of Four - Entertainment!
7) Neil Young - Live Rust
8) Judas Priest - Unleashed in the East: Live in Japan
9) Ramones - It's Alive
10) Wire - 154
11) UFO - Strangers in the Night
12) Motörhead - Overkill
13) AC/DC - Highway to Hell
14) Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box
15) Muddy Waters - Muddy "Mississippi" Waters Live
16) Elvis Costello - Armed Forces
17) The Specials - Specials
18) The Damned - Machine Gun Etiquette
19) Stiff Little Fingers - Inflammable Material
20) Olivier Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Luben Yordanoff et al)
21) The B-52's - The B-52's
22) Thin Lizzy - Black Rose: A Rock Legend
23) Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
24) The Jam - Setting Sons
25) XTC - Drums and Wires

Whaaaat? ILM list has no tusk!? The wall in the top 3!? I demand a recount.

here are some of my favorite albums from 79

Heldon - Stand By
Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats
Gunter Schickert - Uberfallig
Earthstar - French Skyline
Motorhead - Overkill
Gang of Four - Entertainment!
Wire - 154
PiL - Metal Box
This Heat - This Heat
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
Steve Hillage - Rainbow Dome Musick

xp to contenderizer - Yeah, very strange that they should be so identical. There are a lot of really popular albums all the way up through the 200s and 300s if you look at the full RYM 1979 list.

205. Earth Wind and Fire - I Am
209. Van Halen II
231. Simple Minds - Real to Real Cacaphony
243. Abba - Voulez-Vous
263. E.L.O. - Discovery
325. Get the Knack
346. The Romantics - s/t
356. Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door
374. Adam and the Ants - Dirk Wears White Sox
375. Prince - s/t

Etc., etc.

205. Earth Wind and Fire - I Am

Would've voted.

It's just odd, when we're talking about 400 albums, that things that seem a little niche to me like Stiff Little Fingers or Motorhead are top twenty-five on both.

dang, was gonna post something just like that list, tim. anyway, i agree. the nature of the commonality is odd: anglophilic, heavily privileging punk and post-punk over whatever else was going on at the time. this makes sense, as those were the freshest sounds of the moment, but there was a lot of other stuff going on. also from '79:

Donna Summer - Bad Girls
Rickie Lee Jones - Rickie Lee Jones
Bee Gees - Spirits Having Flown
Sister Sledge - We Are Family
Journey - Evolution
Sugarhill Gang - Sugarhill Gang
Art Ensemble of Chicago - Nice Guys
Ornette Coleman - Soapsuds Soapsuds
Black Uhuru - Showcase
Devo - Duty Now for the Future

I guess if Acclaimed Music uses RYM numbers in their calculations, that would make sense.

They don't.

I think almost everyone in here agrees that Pink Floyd rules

lol no.

Wow, what a good year. Really puts recent years to shame, imo. I'm afraid I have to pass over some really great and classic albums that I love for either Metal Box or B-52's, which are two of my all-time favorites. God only knows which one will actually win out, though.

RYM voters can be peculiar. The soundtrack for Empire Strikes Back is listed as the 8th best album of 1980, lol.

And it's not like there was a dearth of musical choices here...

Impossible choice. I've tried to pick one at least five times and just get hung up in "but...but..." Even if Tusk was on the list, I'd click it and then regret not clicking at least five others.

I think almost everyone in here agrees that Pink Floyd rules

How ILM has changed!

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Saturday, 2 June 2012 04:47 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, more American. Agree that "The Wall" is shit.

I'm American. The Wall is (half) shit.

The Wall has some decent disco-metal

I love love love Pink Floyd. Not so crazy about the band that wore the skin of Pink Floyd's corpse after Syd Barrett left.

(But yeah, at the very least, 50% of it is like the worst prog ever)

xp yeah, um they had a good run up til at least Meddle

I haven't listened to The Wall in ages. If anything, I remember it as an AOR move more than anything else.

I don't understand "My My, Hey Hey"/"Hey Hey, My My". They'd make sense if he were singing about Sid Vicious. However, Johnny Rotten had clearly not 'burnt out'. In fact, he released a high-profile album in the same year, as shown on this list. If Neil was actually referring to PiL as burnout, however, then those are classic and I should probably vote for Rust Never Sleeps.

I'm wondering if I should actually vote for AC/DC. Hillage would easily take my vote if it were on the list.

Oh, I guess 'Johnny Rotten' had died and been replaced by John Lydon? That makes a certain kind of sense, nm.

the wall definitely has moments, but it's at least half turgid, ugly monstrosity. the first pink floyd album i can't honestly say i like (though i'm on the fence about animals, too). hell of a lot better than the final cut, though.

I actually find it a little surprising how popular The Wall is, considering that its narrative would seem to be hard for the average person to relate to. Maybe it's all about the massive singles.

i think a lot of people really do relate to angsty, narcissistic bombast, whatever the context

i voted for risque but i should have voted for the pop group

i'm pretty sure lydon has expressed extreme annoyance about the neil young song more than once down the years.

i've come to like post-barrett floyd but i never could get into any of 'the wall.' feels like a dumbed-down version of their best stuff.

I forgot how great some of the stuff on 154 is. It only occurred to me how proto-Radiohead "A Touching Display" is. I think this album might actually hold up better for me than Unknown Pleasures, surprisingly.

"only occurred to me now"

Kind of a weak year, IMO, at least for albums. Surprising, since it seems like so much was going on around that time. I guess I'd vote for B-52s.

yeah '79 looks kind of like a falloff compared to '77 and '78.

A weak year based on these lists? I don't know how someone could look at the top 1,000 albums from '77, '78, and '79 and make any comparative judgment at all.

yeah that seems unbearably wrong. 79 is one of my favorite years easy.

If no one votes for Y, I will be very sad.

"Armed Forces"

As my tastes go, looking at the top 50 albums on Acclaimed Music, 1977 does seem like a much better year while 1976 is about unbeatable.

Voted AC/DC in the end. Chic is good though.

As my tastes go, looking at the top 50 albums on Acclaimed Music, 1977 does seem like a much better year while 1976 is about unbeatable.

yeah, but why would you want to use some bullshit aggregator site's top lists as a basis for comparison?

Entertainment over 154 by a smidge.

What makes it bullshit? The lack of transparency about its algorithms?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

If those 25 albums were the only albums I owned, I'd be pretty satisfied. I'm glad they're not, of course, but hypothetically - I could live with these.

I saw Waters do "The Wall" last year, and it may have been the first time I'd heard the album (as such) in almost 25 years. It was weird how much of it I had forgotten about but immediately remembered. (Still don't really like it, but I won't begrudge it its moments).

so i decided to vote for The Cure Three Imaginary Boys/Boys Don't Cry as it got absolutely no love on this thread, so i will be that single vote.

yeah, but why would you want to use some bullshit aggregator site's top lists as a basis for comparison?

Only because it's the poll we're discussing and voting on.

i don't care about 'acclaimed music,' but many times i've looked at my favorite albums of 76, 77, 78 and then 79, and seen way more albums i am fanatical about in each of the first three years than in the latter. that's all i'm saying.

i mean 78 may be my favorite year of the decade and 79 my least favorite, albums-wise.

Only because it's the poll we're discussing and voting on.

Otherwise, I basically never think about music in this way, especially since plenty of music I care about is written on paper and then performed or recorded at various times by various people.

Undertones. (but only the late-'79 release with "Teenage Kicks" and "Get Over You" on it - I didn't know until now that early pressings didn't have those two essential singles on it).

B-52's and Marianne Faithfull runners-up.

Boys Don't Cry was released well into 1980, not sure why it's on this list, even if five of its tracks were recycled from the previous year's Three Imaginary Boys

I assume it's because it was the US debut of that material. The same way you might list The Clash's UK/US self-titled first album together as a 1977 release, even though it did not have a Stateside release until 1979, and then with a modified track listing.

It was their US debut, but the same album with the same track listing was also released in the UK a few months later in the summer of 1980

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Very happy that B-52's squeaked it out over the Clash

bullshit

Ha. Yeah, that's about right. I love London Calling but I LOVE the first B-52's album.

Looks good to me. Love the first two in that order, though Highway To Hell would be in third.

lol joy division, fuck is wrong with y'all

i'll take unknown pleasures over b-52s and london calling

though i'll take cosmic thing and clash s/t over unknown pleasures

voted rust. the only album i haven't heard of this list is the pop group, but even the albums i think are overrated (london def being one) have some golden tracks on them.

i guess i wasn't the only one to vote for the cure.

this order seems like the ranking ILM would have with only two albums not getting any votes.

nice, was hoping the B-52's would take this

They do all 16 dances
They do all 16 dances

Neglected to vote in this, it would have been one more vote for B-52's. Actually, that's pretty much my top 5, except I've never found Joy Division particularly, erm, pleasurable. Swap that for The Slits.

Yeah, this top 5 (well 6) seems right, regardless of order.

The B52's scored anomalously high relative to its Acclaimed Music ranking. Is it just a peculiar favourite on this board?

B-52s get love on ilx, yes

B-52's were, like, my first favourite band

The B52's scored anomalously high relative to its Acclaimed Music ranking. Is it just a peculiar favourite on this board?

no, thing is the acclaimed music ranking is horseshit and means nothing

Acclaimed Music get it ranking from critics lists from around the world. it comes from print and more recognizable on-line sites.

http://cdn.socialmediaexaminer.com/images/1011sh-compensated-endorser.png?9d7bd4

no, thing is the acclaimed music ranking is horseshit and means nothing

― spextor vs bextor (contenderizer), Wednesday, June 6, 2012 11:39 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i mean, it is far to say that London Calling and Off The Wall and Fear Of Music generally have a more assured place in the canon than The Bs' debut in most places outside ilx

DO THE AQUA VELVA

Kind of surprised by this - don't even know any B52s outside of about three singles.

Which three?

there's a huge gulf of public recognition between their three biggest hits and whatever their 4th biggest hit is, so it shouldn't be that hard to guess

Lol right on

btw it makes me so happy that the album on this list that John Lennon was most excited about at the time was The B-52s

Had no idea the B52's were that loved on ILM. They've never vibed that well with me. Is this album a good starting point?

yes

i haven't really heard much of them, but at SOM records last week they were playing some amazing record, and I asked what it was and it turned out to be their debut!

Moka, check this out; a longtime holy grail for me, it recently popped up on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gobO7spdAfg

It's difficult for me to put into words how much I love them; five slackers from smalltown GA at the dawn of the new wave, pretty much inventing their own form of music.

That show is so good.

Which three?

Love Shack, Roam and Rock Lobster obv, but was googling their singles just now to see if I knew any others and their second biggest single in the UK turns out to be something I mercifully have zero recollection of - Meet The Flintstones, which got to #3.

Nick, you should listen to the 1978 show above too, then!

They were young and on fire. Guitars on this are just cracking.

I loved "Rock Lobster" and "Private Idaho" when I first heard them but "52 Girls" is really the song that made me go "okay this band HAS IT"

Dan, I will fire that thing up just as soon as I get a chance - thanks!

Dan Peterson that is

oh shit I forgot about "6060-842"

Your number's been disconnected
Your number's been disconnected
Your number's been disconnected
Your number's been disconnected

Wow, "52 Girls"... I guess I need this record.

Another track which may convert the unconverted: the longer alternate mix of "Cake' from Mesopotamia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu1cgHWI6iM

Love how virtually overnight ILM has come to regard itself as an enclave of massive B-52's worship

Ten years ago, before my time here, the worshippers were outnumbering the naysayers by a pretty wide margin.

B-52s: Classic or Dud.

See, "Rock Lobster" on SNL was epic but "Love Shack" was a piece o' crap as far as I'm concerned.

The phoenix-like rebirth of The B's after Ricky's death, and the massive mainstream success of the Cosmic Thing album, is heartwarming and wonderful to me. And I still love Love Shack.

― Such A Hilbily (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 10 June 2009 20:20 (2 years ago) Permalink

True for me two years ago, true today.

Three years ago!

Cosmic Thing is still one of my favourite 80s albums. Bouncing has a lot of gems as well.

Cosmic Thing is fine (I loved it when I was in jr. high), but I love introducing people who are only really familiar with that later period to the early stuff. I rep hard for the first three albums + Mesopotamia (which is a close second to their debut in my esteem and one of the best EPs ever).

Actually I'm willing to bet Mesopotamia is right up my alley.

Didn't see this until just now. I'd probably have voted for Off the Wall, but The B-52s is a close second.

Love how virtually overnight ILM has come to regard itself as an enclave of massive B-52's worship

i have been a massive enclave of B-52's worship since fall quarter 1980