Best Blockbuster Album - 1984

Went with Born in the U.S.A..

born in the u.s.a. v. 1984 v. purple rain. probably the latter.

I haven't heard the Joel album, but every one of these -- every one -- is at least very good or represents a peak for the artist.

Purple Rain, but it was a basically a coin flip between that and Bruce

In retrospect I don't like Heartbeat City now as much as I did at the time. Springsteen and Prince obviously the front-runners here, although I could easily vote for Cyndi, Van Halen, Hall & Oates, Madonna or Billy Joel. I had all of those and still listen to at least the singles today.

Was the top 40 ever as eclectic as the mid to late 80s again?

Ultimately, I voted for Prince.

Great year for blockbusters! It's between Colour By Numbers, She's So Unusual, Purple Rain, Madonna.

At the time I would've easily gone with Cyndi, but now I think Madonna's debut has passed the test of time the best.

It's also fascinating how magpies like Billy Ocean and the Pointer Sisters jumped on the post New Wave train and did just fine.

I should add: I, a rather nerdy kid from NE Ohio with little exposure to music outside of commercial radio, spent the summer of 1984 visiting my dad, who was stationed in Hawaii at the time. I had one of those bright yellow Sports Walkman cassette players, which I took with me every day to the pool or the beach. I spent just about the whole summer listening to Prince and Springsteen, plus Stevie Nicks' The Wild Heart from the previous summer, over and over and over. My dad, in the car, listened had the Tina Turner and Huey Lewis records, plus the Eurythmics' Touch.

Fuck! I forgot Touch! Thanks, Phil.

The Van Halen swan song gets my vote.

A better question to ask, I suppose, is which is the weakest. I don't own Sports, don't want to, and only need "If This Is It" and "Walking on a Thin Line."

this was hard but VH edges out Prince. about 5 of these tie for 3rd. good year.

Care to post your list, will?

1984 was kind of incredible. I listened to Prince and Bruce a lot but Reckoning got more rotations.

i actually owned at one time or another Heartbeat City, Colour By Numbers, She's So Unusual, Purple Rain and Madonna. i think this will come down to the last two. impossible pick...going with Prince.

Purple Rain

Alfred: probably something like-

Hall & Oates - Big Bam Boom
Wham - Make It Big!
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
Culture Club - Colour By Numbers

I liked Sports a lot when I was 8, not sure how it would play for me now. I should give Heartbeat City another go, but the last time I put it on I was struck by how disappointing the non-singles are. The rest I don't think I've ever heard, outside of the blockbuster singles they spawned. I'm sure I would dig the Mads, Cyndi and Lionel though.

I should give Heartbeat City another go, but the last time I put it on I was struck by how disappointing the non-singles are.

But HC, like the other albums on this list, are top-heavy. Just about every track was a single.

* is top-heavy

owned all of them except suddenly at one point (and an aunt owned suddenly so i heard it plenty also), only own prince, madonna, springsteen, van halen now. prince easy.

some of these are definitely more chris bosh than dwyane wade

tru. "magic", "drive", "you might think" and even "heartbeat city" are all pretty great in my book. i don't think i ever cared for "hello again" and the rest i can't even remember.

xxpost

probably 3 tiers and as the reckoning shoutout above reminds me 84 as much a freakishly good year for college radio as top 40 radio

the cars (all of it not just this album) always sound like summer to me, as much as the beach boys or anything, and i'm not sure if it's an actual quality to the music (warm new wave) or just that one of my first strong associations with the band is ric ocasek walking on water in a swimming pool going 'summersummersummer SUMMER'.

Helpful:

1985 Grammy Awards Album of the Year poll

The quality is so good that I could conceivably have voted for either one of those five.

"Why Can't I Have You" from Heartbeat City is one of my favorite Cars songs and it salvages the album from the bad taste of the more bombastic tracks.

I voted Cyndi Lauper on the spur of the moment, because side one is nearly perfect.

yeah at the time it was a HUGE UPSET that can't slow down won - beforehand it was understandably thought to be purple rain vs. born in the usa (this is when the grammys were a bigger deal than the oscars). now i'm amazed private dancer didn't win - that thing is a quintessential album of the year.

I've read at some point that this era is what wrecked the major lable system, and ended the long-development of careers. (Like Hall & Oates got.) After this, if you didn't break like Appitite For Destruction, you weren't ever get the time or funds to put together a Born to Run.

But AFD took almost a year to break!

yeah but Appetite was their debut. h&o, bruce, prince, hell, even huey lewis & the news had a few records under their aelts before they became cultural behemoths.

belts

Another Lauper vote here.

I have actually never owned most of these albums, but felt familiar enough with so many singles from all of them to make an informed vote.

it's not the birth of the blockbuster model (rumours = jaws here i think) or even the peak of it (which is probably the 90s or even turn of the century when top sellers went diamond as a matter of course)(the bodyguard ost = batman?) but i could see this as the era when the music industry think the blockbuster model is as suited to them as it is to the movie industry. it's not til that peak that i read interviews w/ label heads explaining that if an album didn't go platinum they would lose money if they released it and that really it didn't make any financial sense to bother w/ artists that didn't routinely sell double platinum (this is only a few years after nirvana had them so confused that boredoms and daniel johnston got major label deals). now of course the big huge blockbuster albums like taylor swift only go double platinum.

1984 is also when music videos have finally saturated US culture, so there's suddenly this new vector to promote four or five singles from an album. If I recall, there was some suspense and novelty in just having established acts like Springsteen, Cars and Van Halen participating in MTV, to see what they'd do with the form. In 1982, MTV was still mostly a churn of two year old tracks from underselling new wavers.

One that got overlooked: Billy Idol - Rebel Yell

Came out in November 83, but all the singles charted in 84.

Other than Madonna, none of these artists achieved a 4 singles from the album push again, did they? Bruce and Billy and Prince seemed to consciously retreat (Prince even refused to do a video for Raspberry Beret for a while).

Going with the one I liked best at the time: Breakout.

Other than Madonna, none of these artists achieved a 4 singles from the album push again,

Huey Lewis certainly did – note all the singles from Fore!. Also: Tina, Lionel Richie, George Michael, and Van Halen.

George Michael

Yeah, the amount of hit singles off Faith is nuts - number US ones, a number two and a number five.

Yeah, the amount of hit singles off Faith is nuts - number US ones, a number two and a number five.

Yeah, the amount of hit singles off Faith is nuts - four US number ones, a number two and a number five.

I voted Cyndi Lauper on the spur of the moment, because side one is nearly perfect.

Other than Madonna, none of these artists achieved a 4 singles from the album push again,

Huey Lewis certainly did – note all the singles from Fore!. Also: Tina, Lionel Richie, George Michael, and Van Halen.

wham! too, right? (wake me up, careless whisper, everything she wants, freedom)

I think bendy meant four-plus singles from an album released after 1984. Wham! certainly did from Music From the Edge of Heaven: "I'm Your Man," "A Different Corner," "The Edge of Heaven," and "Where Did Your Heart Go."

aha i see

Yeah that's what I meant. Some of the other bands continued to try pumping album tracks at a Thriller-level pace, but usually only one or two of the singles really connected. (which is the historical norm, innut?) It's weird how many of these 1984 albums were runaway successes. George Micheal definitely did it again as a solo artist.

It's surprising that Elton John didn't have a blockbuster in this time, and didn't leverage music videos particularly well. He had good songs to plug, but presented them without the 70s flamboyance.

HI DERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh2hkTzcT7c

Off the top of my head, I'd probably go:

1. 1984
2. Madonna
3. Born In The USA
4. Can't Slow Down
5. Sports
6. Purple Rain
7. She's So Unusual

Thing about my Purple Rain challop is that I respect it more than I ever actually want to play it; would much rather listen to any of his four previous albums. (After the debut, I mean). Like a few others up there too. One I've played most this year is Sports.

"Best" is probably Purple Rain but I've played that s/t Madonna album as much as any damn album on my shelves. Voting Madonna.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFq4E9XTueY

I've played Madonna more too, I should've voted for that, but Purple Rain is the one I can play all the way through in my head.

And played 1984 nearly as much, ugh.

Born in The USA for top one, definitely
Genius Springsteen

Difficult.

Among those I've heard, would probably go for the Cyndi Lauper album, though Purple Rain gives me second thoughts. The album that I have probably heard the most and haven't listened to in the longest time is Billy Joel's An Innocent Man. My mother loved that album, and five year old me probably heard it on a daily basis for like six months after she got it.
Nostalgia aside, this really is an incredible run of albums, with everyone trying to match Thriller and coming up with records brimming with dynamite material.

in the longest time

ha ha.

don't leave a tender moment alone.

Purple Rain crushes all the rest of these.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted Prince just ahead of The Cars, but these are all really great albums:

The Cars - Heartbeat City
Culture Club - Colour By Numbers
Billy Joel - An Innocent Man
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain
Lionel Richie - Can't Slow Down
Madonna - Madonna
Hall & Oates - Big Bam Boom

Strictly speaking, the Lionel Richie, Billy Joel and Culture Club ones are actually from 1983, although I guess most of the sales happened in 1984.

its really just cyndi, prince, and madonna for me. saw purple rain the day it came out, bought madonna album the week it was released, and saw cyndi live on her she's so unusual tour! but i haven't played cyndi in years. so its madonna and prince. purple rain i played just a few months ago for the first time in a looooong time and boy did it sound great. love those madonna songs so much though...i dunno. its a toss-up.

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

No votes for Lionel.

No votes for TIna!