Soundslike's (Ian Manire aka The '1981' Box Set Guy) TOP 50 POST-PUNK / NEW WAVE / ADJACENT ALBUMS & EPs of 1981

And if anyone is curious--these are the albums/EPs I drew from to get to 50:

8 Eyed Spy - 8 Eyed SpyA Certain Ratio - To EachAgent Orange - Living in DarknessAltered Images - Happy Birthday
Au Pairs - Playing With a Different SexAssociates - Fourth Drawer Down
Bauhaus - MaskThe Beat - Wha'ppen?
The Birthday Party - Prayers On FireBiting Tongues - Don't Heal / Live ItBlack Flag - DamagedBow Wow Wow - See Jungle!...
Glenn Branca - The AscensionBritish Electronic Foundation - Music For Listening ToBuggles - Adventures in Modern Recording
David Byrne & Bryan Eno - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Cabaret Voltaire - Red MeccaChakra - NowChris & Cosey - HeartbeatThe Clean - Left By Soft
Clock DVA - ThirstComsat Angels - Sleep No MoreElvis Costello - TrustPatrick Cowley - Megatron Man
The Cramps - Psychedelic JungleCrash Course in Science - Signals from Pier ThirteenCrass - Penis EnvyThe Creatures - Wild ThingsThe Cure - Faith
Holger Czukay - On the Way to the Peak of NormalThe Dancing Cigarettes - The Dancing CigarettesThe dB's - Stands for Decibels
Delta 5 - See the Whirl'Depeche Mode - Speak & Spell
Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft - Alles ist GutDevo - New TraditionalistsThe Diagram Brothers - Some Marvels of Modern ScienceDif Juz - Vibrating Air / HuremicsDinosaur L - 24>24 Music
Dome - Dome 3Duran Duran - Duran Duran
The Durutti Column - LCEcho & The Bunnymen - Heaven Up Here
Einsturzende Neubauten - KollapsThe Embarrassment - The EmbarrassmentEmpire - Expensive Sound
ESG - ESGEssential Logic - Essential LogicEurythmics - In the Garden
Eyeless in Gaza - Caught in FluxFactrix - Scheintot
Fad Gadget - IncontinentThe Fall - SlatesFamily Fodder - Schizophrenia PartyFelt - Something Sends Me to Sleep
Fire Engines - Lubricate Your Living RoomFlesh Eaters - A Minute to Pray A Second to DieFlying Lizards - Fourth WallFoetus - DeafJohn Foxx - The Garden / Burning Car
Gang of Four - Solid GoldGirls At Our Best - PleasureGo-Go's - Beauty & The Beat
The Gordons - The GordonsThe Gun Club - The Fire of LoveHalf Japanese - LoudHeaven 17 - Penthouse & Pavement
Robyn Hitchcock - Black Snake Diamond RoleHot Gossip - Geisha Boys & Temple Girls
Jeff & Jane Hudson - World Trade
The Human League - DareIcehouse - Icehouse
Ike Yard - Night After NightIndoor Life - Indoor Life
Industry - Turning to LightINXS - Underneath the Colours
Japan - Tin DrumMatt Johnson - Burning Blue Soul
Grace Jones - NightclubbingJosef K - Sorry for LaughingJoy Division - StillKid Creole & The Coconuts - Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places
Killing Joke - What's This ForKing Crimson - DisciplineKraftwerk - Computer World
Craig Leon - NommosLiaisons Dangereuses - Liaisons Dangereuses
Liquid Liquid - Liquid Liquid / Successive Reflexes
Lizard - GymnopediaLounge Lizards - The Lounge Lizards
Lene Lovich - New ToyLudus - Pickpocket / The SeductionMagazine - Magic, Murder & The WeatherMalaria! - Malaria!Mariah - Marginal LoveMarine Girls - Beach Party
Martha & The Muffins - This Is The Ice Age
Massacre - Killing TimeMaterial - Memory ServesMeat Puppets - In A Car
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Mambo NassauThe Method Actors - Little FiguresMinor Threat - Filler / In My EyesMinutemen - The Punch Line
Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls, and MarchesModern English - Mesh & LaceMonitor - Monitor
Anthony Moore - World ServiceMX-80 Sound - Crowd ControlNecessaries - Big Sky
Negativland - PointsNew Age Steppers - Action Battlefield / The New Age SteppersNew Musik - Anywhere
New Order - MovementColin Newman - Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish
Klaus Nomi - Klaus NomiGary Numan - DanceOingo Boingo - Only a Lad
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Architecture & MoralityOur Daughters Wedding - Digital CowboyThe Passage - For All and NoneThe Passions - Thirty Thousand Feet Over ChinaPere Ubu - Song of the Bailing Man
Phew - Phew
The Philosophic Collage - Genius
Iggy Pop - PartyThe Pretenders - Pretenders IIPrince - Controversy
The Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk
Public Image Limited - The Flowers of RomancePyrolator - Ausland
The Raincoats - OdyshapeRational Youth - I Want To See the Light
The Raybeats - Guitar BeatThe Red Krayola - Kangaroo?The Residents - Mark of the MoleRip Rig & Panic - GodRomeo Void - It's A ConditionThe Saints - The Monkey Puzzle
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Left Handed DreamThe Scientists - The Scientists
Section 25 - Always NowThe Selecter - Celebrate The Bullet
Pete Sheley - HomosapienSimple Minds - Sons & Fascination / Sister Feelings Call
Siouxsie & The Banshees - JujuThe Slits - Return of the Giant SlitsGino Soccio - Closer
The Soft Boys - Two Halves For the Price of OneSoft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
The Sound - From the Lions MouthSpandau Ballet - Journeys to GloryStiff Little Fingers - Go For ItThe Stranglers - La Folie
The Suburbs - Credit in HeavenSwamp Children - Little VoicesSwell Maps - Whatever Happens Next...S.Y.P.H. - S.Y.P.H.Yukihiro Takahash - Neuromantic
The Teardrop Explodes - Wilder
Television Personalities - And Don't the Kids Just Love ItTelex - Sex
This Heat - DeceitDavid Thomas & The Pedestrians - The Sound of the SandThrobbing Gristle - Mission of Dead SoulsTom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club
Trio - TrioTronics - Love Backed by ForceRobert Turman - Flux
Tuxedomoon - DesireUltravox - Rage in EdenUnits - Animals They Dream AboutTom Verlaine - Dreamtime
Virgin Prunes - Moments & Mine / Twenty Tens / A New Form of Beauty
Von Lmo - Future LanguageWeekend - '81 Demos
Wipers - Youth of America
Wire - Document & Eyewitness
Robert Wyatt - AraucoX - Wild Gift
Yello - Claro Que SiYellow Magic Orchstra - BGM / Technodelic
Young Marble Giants - Testcard
The Zoomers - From the Planet Moon
Zounds - The Curse of Zounds

It is literally impossible for me to pick only one, so I can't even vote in my own poll...

Skids - Joy is missing :(

But no, I can't vote in this either* Too much of this is among the greatest music ever made (* but will vote for A&M anyway)

Vote-or-death, I'd probably go with 'Architecture & Mortality,' too. Especially if it can be the early 2000s CD version that added the b-sides "Romance of the Telescope" and "Of All The Things We've Made" and "Sacred Heart" and "Gravity Never Failed"...

Voted Faith as I think it's the first time it has shown up in one of these polls.

What an incredible list. Great to see The Suburbs on it. I could never make the case that it's better than anything else here, but coming of age in Minneapolis in the early 80s and seeing the band in clubs 2-3 times a month it's hard to overstate how important that record was/is to me.

Branca, baby

love it

I really wanted to vote for that great (gloriously overproduced) Delta 5 record, but had to go with the Go-Gos

Good stuff, off the top maybe 21 songs I love (and I probably love the rest, too, lol). Nice to see Massacre's "Killing Time" in a list.

Voting for sentimental favorites the dB’s

‘81 had an over abundance of riches

Yeah and it’s interesting how much of it was under the radar. OP says they heard it 20 years after the fact, but then so did I with some of this stuff even though I was old enough to hear it in ‘81.

I was four months to 16 months old in 1981 heh. Talking Heads and The Cure and then Pere Ubu and Raincoats (want to say those last two via Kurt Cobain talking them up?) were my way-in to post-punk in my teens, and then around 2000 as I grew weary of the indie stuff my friends liked, post-punk, jazz, Krautrock and hip-hop took me over completely. The odd thing about seeking so much post-punk and new wave out at that distance from when it happened (via things like the 'Post-Punk Diary') was that I had none of the baggage of any of the sub-camps. So to me, the above-ground big name acts, the lesser-knowns, and the totally unknowns struck me on the merits of the music. And I loved so much of it, regardless of reputation or lack thereof--and still do. So Family Fodder and This Heat loom as large as Gang of Four and Human League.

MX-80 Sound edges out the Wipers and Telex, great list!

P-Furs hard to top.

Voted for Crash Course in Science

But this is a brilliant era. At least 15 things in here I love.

Ha, I wrestled hard to keep Crash Course in even though it's just an EP, because they're so brilliant. Glad they got a vote!

Kraftwerk

Nice! Many agreeable options here.

Odyshape is the one I can say with the most certainty would feature in an all-time Top 50 if I attempted such a thing.

The Gordons vs Josef K for me... no idea which to pick

Also Durutti & Wipers...

Furs, but just barely over Gang of Four and my beloved Heaven 17. (Special nod to Faith, the one of these I’ve listened to most recently, i.e. last week.)

A little surprised by multiple Psychedelic Furs picks, but that's what makes this whole poll fad interesting!

The albums from this list that I heard regularly in 1981 in Athens, GA, were Bryne & Eno, Gang of Four, and the Go-Go's. Voted for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

I was thinking of doing this exact thing (as a bonus, this is my birth year). Voted for Movement but what an incredibly loaded year. Seconding 'Post-Punk Diary' which made me want to "be there" more than probably any other music book.

Had to go for Architecture & Morality with The Ascension a close second

Impossible to pick, so I went with my first instinct: Comsats.

This is honestly a selection where, to me, there isn't even a handful of "ringers," obvious favorites. I could make the case for more than a dozen asy own personal #1. So I'm sort of expecting/hoping to see a lot of these with one or two votes, or at least, no runaway winner...

Bumping for those too cool to be on ILM on the weekend...

computer world

Lots in here I don't know that well but always happy to vote for Grace Jones.

So happy to see Suburbs love. I discovered them in the early 90s, was lucky to see some of their great reunion shows in Minneapolis.

The Suburbs have such an unusual sound, I really love them. I guess they might appeal to fans of 80s REM, or thr Only Ones, The Chills, The Replacements, The Necessaries--but they don't really sound like those artists. They have a down-to-earth and yet dreamy quality--maybe it all comes down to the way they foreground the piano? Really great, should be better known.

I often said Chan (the suave pianist) was Bryan Ferry, Beej (the baritone singer/guitarist) was Iggy, and the rest of the band were early Talking Heads, but they don't really sound all that much like those artists either.

This is how I'll always remember them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdzQfhKis_k

About 30 years ago I wrote on alt.music.alternative that the Suburbs actually fulfilled Duran Duran’s claim to be “Chic crossed with the Sex Pistols”

Awesome performance, thanks for sharing!

The faxt that they chose piano rather than synth lead, that choice alone makes them so unusual for their time. Not a lot of piano on the rest of the '1981' box, mow that I think of it...

Bumping one last time, as I realized the automatic bump and poll closing will occur in the deadsville of the weekend...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

voted _odyshape_ but only because _moving pictures_ was inexplicably omitted from the list

Number of albums heard: 16

Favourite: Tin Drum

Least-favourite: either Dare or Speak and Spell, which both have two good songs

Nicest surprise: The dBs

Unheard, but most want to hear: OMD, This Heat, Odyshape

Favourites from the rest of the list: Heaven Up Here, Magazine, Ubu, Spandau Ballet

moving pictures was inexplicably omitted from the list

that's before even getting into boogie, funk, disco, R&B, etc...

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

I like that 32 of the 50 warranted at least one vote--and a sign of the strength of the batch that none was a runaway winner.

Only real surprise 0-vote getter is This Heat's 'Deceit' which would probably make my top 10 post-punk albums.

Thanks, all!

Oh man “Deceit” is one of my all time faves, too. But I had to vote for the Suburbs because of the personal memories and associations. This is why I’m not a fan of polls where one can only choose one.

“Cenotaph” is as heavy as “War Pigs”