Acclaimed Music Top 25 Albums from 1984 poll

My finalists:

Pretenders - Learning to Crawl
Prince and The Revolution - Purple Rain
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
R.E.M. - Reckoning
Tina Turner - Private Dancer
Replacements - Let It Be

and am tempted to award this to either Pretenders or Tina because, you know, I've got to at some point in my life.

Minnesota was just the fucking shit this year, Mats is a sentimental favorite but I could have voted Zen Arcade or Purple Rain easy any other

some albums just missing the Top 25 include: 28 This Mortal Coil - It'll End in Tears, 29 The Special A.K.A. - In the Studio, 30 Sade - Diamond Life, 31 Bronski Beat - The Age of Consent, 34 Everything But the Girl - Eden, 37 Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel - Hole, 38 Billy Bragg - Brewing Up with Billy Bragg, 39 The Cars - Heartbeat City, 40 The Fall - The Wonderful and Frightening World of...The Fall, 44 Violent Femmes - Hallowed Ground, 45 Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream of Trains, 46 Julian Cope - Fried, 47 Lou Reed - New Sensations and The Cure - The Top.

Reckoning, Meat Puppets, Borm In The USA, Lobos, Learning To Crawl all great too

Some monumental albums for me: 1) Let It Be, 2) Reckoning, 3) Meat Puppets II. I'll take a pass on Zen Arcade, even though I love a few songs, and I became a fan of Like a Virgin a few years later. One day, I'll revisit Double Nickels.

ridiculous year, so many good options, but goin' with Double Nickels

every goddamn poll with "1984" in the title gets my Bruce or Prince vote and Private Dancer needs its reward. I can't imagine what nail biting I would have subjected myself to had Can't Slow Down made it.

impossible. i really want to give it to like Rattlesnakes or Treasure. will probably vote for the brilliant Hatful of Hollow, which towards over the Smiths debut.

Purple Rain. If it were there, Climate of Hunter.

Wow, I own a dozen of these and love them to pieces. It comes down to Ocean Rain vs Rattlesnakes and my heart says Echo.

My year. Minutemen.

First off, I was a very disappointed young person in 1984 because all the things I understood - New Wave and early 80s English pop stuff - kind of petered out and died that year, with plenty of band breakups. I hated radio that year - some of the most godawful dreck of the 80s. The gigantic coronation of Bruce Springsteen combined with the re-election of Reagan the first year I could vote, it seemed like the world was shutting down (and I was right, except I wasn't)

I missed the truly exciting things coming out of the American underground until years later.

So cut to 2012 and this is how looking through this list went for me: gotta be Zen Arcade. Nope, gotta be Double Nickels. Nope, gotta be Meat Puppets II.

Which is where I stop, because Meat Puppets II is possibly my favorite album of the decade. But it seems really cruel NOT to vote for Double Nickels. I'm going to have to play both of these again before I vote.

My favorite REM song ever is on Reckoning: Seven Chinese Brothers.

Prince, but damn, what a year.

I hated radio that year - some of the most godawful dreck of the 80s

this is fucking insane

the great thing about 1984 is that the "underground" and top 40 radio were for once intersecting on the dance floor and radio

Holy shit!

Prince vs Husker Du vs REM

with strong contenders from the Smiths and Van Halen. I actually didn't realize there was an 80s pop year I liked this much.

Hello. I just called to say I love you, Karma Chameleon, so hold me now. I'm Dancin in the dark, getting all...Footloose. Say, say, say, Caribbean Queen, now we're sharing the same dream, but they do say the heart of rock and roll is the beat, and from what I've seen, I was born in the usa. So take a look at me now, against all odds, I'm like a virgin but what's love got to do with it?

NO, you go be trapped at a job with a transistor radio playing the hits of 1984 end to end, not only all that year but for the next fifteen or so.

Coming up next: hit songs I like (not necessarily "liked") from 1984.

Is that a sweeping statement, Alfred? The underground and top 40 were intersecting on the dance floor and radio more than they were in 1978 or 1980 or 1982 or 1987?

(or 1968)

the underground as depicted by these poll options definitely doesn't seem to have a lot of dancefloor/mainstream radio intersection

Yeah, maybe the Smiths and Frankie here.

you and me baby, twinkle twinkle

Prince will get loadsa votes... Cole might do ok-ish, so... gonna have to throw Sylvo a vote here.
It ain't "Secrets..." or "Blemish," but dude knows how to make some fine music!

i can't imagine Lloyd Cole getting any votes but then i barely have the slightest idea of who that is

Reckoning is pretty low on this list, not my fav here but def my favorite '80s REM album

Hmm. Maybe he won't then!

Rattlesnakes is beyond killer though. Gotta be good for one or two clicks.

That said, Prince could get ALL the votes and it'd be hard to complain, yo.

So now the big mainstream US hits of 1984 I like, in no order:

Romantics - Talking in your sleep
Kool & the Gang - Joanna
Sheila E - The Glamorous Life
Prince - Let's Go Crazy
Genesis - That's All
Pointer Sisters - Automatic
Madonna - Borderline
Scandal - The Warrior
Shannon - Let the Music Play
Phil Collins & Philip Bailey - Easy Lover

and my unabashed number one favorite hit of the year is:

Laura Branigan - Self Control

Self Control is crazy good.

The Shannon tune was so hot, ABC copied the production wholesale on the Millionaire single. Whatta sound!

I know the night is not as it would seem!

tempted to go through the born in the usa and purple rain tracklists and counting the number of tracks i have wept to in order to decide b/w the two

Je vais aller avec M. Roth et les frères Halen.

Rattlesnakes is an absolute brilliant album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSVDJwnrQKI

Lloyd Cole never got close to repeating it but we have Rattlesnakes.

What a crazy year. Whole bunch of other stuff that came out that I like a lot:

Arvo Pärt - Tabula rasa
Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4
The Go-Betweens - Spring Hill Fair
The Waterboys - A Pagan Place
Coil - Scatology
Tones on Tail - Pop
Laurie Anderson - Mister Heartbreak
Black Flag - My War
Television Personalities - The Painted Word
Die Kreuzen - s/t
Dead Can Dance - s/t
Scott Walker - Climate of Hunter
This Kind of Punishment - A Beard of Bees
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Ghédalia Tazartès - Une éclipse totale de soleil
Leonard Cohen - Various Positions
News From Babel - Work Resumed on the Tower
Tom Verlaine - Cover
Sun City Girls - s/t
Current 93 - Dogs Blood Rising

1. Talking Heads
2. Minutemen
3. Run-D.M.C.
3. Prince

Hello. I just called to say I love you, Karma Chameleon, so hold me now. I'm Dancin in the dark, getting all...Footloose. Say, say, say, Caribbean Queen, now we're sharing the same dream, but they do say the heart of rock and roll is the beat, and from what I've seen, I was born in the usa. So take a look at me now, against all odds, I'm like a virgin but what's love got to do with it?

I'll grant you that particular Huey Lewis song; otherwise this is heaven.

I'm not gonna lie, I clicked Purple Rain without even reading the rest.

I mean I love love love about 85% of this list and listen to it all on the regular, but Purple Rain.

i look at this list and all i can think is that 1984 is one of the weakest years for music. there's lots of stuff i like, but almost nothing i love.

Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4

OMG, didn't realize/remember this was 1984. An all-time classic for me.

Lets not forget Swans - Cop here

Voted for The 'Mats.

My top three: REM > Replacements > Los Lobos

anytime someone at worked asked why my aim name ended in "84" i had to note that a) 1984 was a very good year for music and b) i came up with my aim name as a college freshman.

someone at work, rather

it is really lame that Prince is going to lose this poll because everyone is assuming someone else will vote for Purple Rain

Double Nickels on the Dime. It would get my vote for best overall record of the 1980s.

Double Nickels, no question.

that's a good point. i sort of do think that nirvana had "better pop instincts" than their predecessors

I was going to say! Vic's points are very valid but I'm surprised that anyone would dispute that Nevermind has more of a pop sensibility than the sprawling, noisy Zen Arcade or early Meat Puppets.

(And I'm a fan of Zen Arcade btw. Like the Meat Puppets fine too. I'd be the last person to claim that "pop instincts" are a necessary component of good music.)

I think the groundwork for hearing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Lithium" or "Heart-Shaped Box" as "pop songs" was laid specifically by these groups. No way would these have been hits if it had been possible for them to have appeared from 84-87 (talk about speculative argument, Vic!)

Great videos could have been made out of "Whatever" and "Plateau." The more jazzy Minutemen might have been a tougher sell, except "This Ain't No Picnic" already had a really great video - something that as I recall MTV used to be very douche-y about using in their promos but not fucking playing....

Frankly, almost anything played on the radio could get some kind of audience. My local "rock of the 80s" station used to play "blocks" of Oingo Boingo, and if there was ever proof that exposure is everything....

What I should have said was - no way would Nirvana have been a "pop group" if they hadn't enjoyed an industry push and enjoyed MTV support and been on SNL and etc. Instead maybe they would have been about Pixies level famous --- and maybe Kurt Cobain would have lived past 1994 too? I'm getting too sci-fi alternate universe now...

I don't disagree with any of that but I also think the music on Nevermind is more accessible than the other bands you're talking about, especially the vocals (more in tune than the Meat Puppets, less screaming than Husker Du). Zen Arcade contains psychedelic instrumentals, entirely-screamed hardcore, etc mixed in with the more tuneful songs while Nevermind is a concise collection of melodic verse-chorus tunes. Nirvana's other albums are another story, mind you. (Similarly, I think Fall Out Boy are much more accessible than the Get Up Kids, even though the groundwork for FOB was being laid by the bands in the emo canon thread.)

That said, who knows what Nevermind would sound like if it had lo-fi 80s indie production instead of glossed-out Butch Vig production?

Like, REM had no trouble crossing over from indie-world in the 80s. I don't think it's an accident. Major labels did try to push Husker Du and the Replacements, right? They just didn't catch on like either REM or Nirvana.

Well, they played REM on my radio station. They didn't play Husker Du. I have no idea why they didn't play The Replacements, who sound at times about as aurally challenging to mainstream tastes as Bryan Adams. But yeah. It's a closed system: nobody actually played The Meat Puppets, The Minutemen, or Husker Du on any radio station I heard, so arguing later that it would not have been a hit anyway is about as valid as my setting-Nirvana-in-the-80s arguments.

(I'm being modest - it's less valid, actually. Lake of Fire could have totally hit, man. People would have dug that one with one of those Peter Gabriel claymation videos, man).

I think "I Will Dare" could have been a big big hit with just enough radio play to get it going...

"Lake of Fire" is pretty dissonant and jammy compared to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Lithium". I mean, it may well still be less 'out there' than some of the Hendrix and Zeppelin stuff that gets heavy classic rotation airplay but it does seem more challenging by the standards of 80s-early 90s radio. (Something like the Replacements' "I'll Be You", on the other hand, would fit fine between Bryan Adams and Tom Petty, you're right.) You're saying that if radio stations simply chose to repeatedly play the Meat Puppets or the Minutemen (or perhaps some John Zorn?), a mainstream audience would latch on eventually? I'm actually curious whether that could work. It's an interesting idea in any case.

xpost

(OK, I was being an ass about John Zorn but I started becoming curious to what extent this could work.)

(Also, I see that "I'll Be You" did go to #1 on the modern rock and album rock charts while it made the bottom half of the general Billboard chart.)

(Makes sense since it was the only Replacements song I remembered seeing on Muchmusic.)

This got me to put on Meat Puppets II in any case.

Oh shit, I was actually thinking of the Too High to Die version of "Lake of Fire" when I said it was jammy! The 1:54 version on II isn't that jammy, obv, but I wonder if those voices could have made it on 80s radio.

All I know is Kurt Cobain sounded totally comfortable, right and by definition commercial singing it a few years later on MTV Unplugged.

Prince is probably the most sensible answer here, but I went with Meat Puppets II

the Rate Your Music list is not even close to the same albums:
1 Metallica - Ride the Lightning
2 Iron Maiden - Powerslave
3 Arvo Pärt - Tabula rasa
4 Prince - Purple Rain
5 The Replacements - Let It Be
6 Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
7 Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade
8 Cocteau Twins - Treasure
9 Mercyful Fate - Don't Break the Oath
10 The Smiths - The Smiths
11 Ennio Morricone - C'era una volta in America
12 Erik Satie - 3 Gymnopédies & Other Piano Works (Pascal Rogé)
13 Various Artists - Amadeus
14 Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphonie No. 9 (Berliner Philharmoniker/Karajan)
15 Meat Puppets - Meat Puppets II
16 Judas Priest - Defenders of the Faith
17 Echo and the Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
18 Lloyd Cole and The Commotions - Rattlesnakes
19 R.E.M. - Reckoning
20 Metal Church - Metal Church
21 Fabrizio De André - Creuza de mä
22 Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4
23 Warlord - And the Cannons of Destruction Have Begun...
24 The Fall - The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall
25 Stevie Ray Vaughan - Couldn't Stand the Weather

that list is a joke, Metal Church over something like Born In the U.S.A.?

no U2, no Madonna and no Van Halen...

Yeah. Acclaimed Music is just supposed to document the hegemony. This kind of canon-building is precisely the reason why lex and deej get all sneery about indie rock

RYM is something else entirely; a schizoid list that is half prog-metal technique geeks and half hegemony

I still am v much vulnerable to the garage-rock romance but ILX has broadened my horizons quite a bit. I do feel like ILX is probably the best place to build a "shadow canon"

god what is my favorite 1984 album not much hey now

Well, the RYM list reflects hardcore listener obsessions, including classical music and metal as well as what is laughably referred to as "hegemony". (Rock critics and indie cred people controlling your mind, man, fight the power).

Score a big one for Prince for landing high on this list by the way - the only finisher who was a superstar in 84. Meanwhile, the upstanding non-elitists whom we know would support Springsteen, U2, Madonna and Van Halen are apparently too busy leading productive lives to go "rating their music". It couldn't possibly be that they don't care any more.

also don't forget Run-D.M.C...

Minutemen's anti-rockist eclecticism

Whoever wrote that was probably referring to lack of guitar solos, rock and roll-oriented chord progressions, etc.

I count 6-9 "indie-friendly music mag guitar favorites" titles at MOST on this list of 27 albums by the way.

to flesh that argument out a little more thoroughly, i'm talking about the dominance on the six acclaimed music lists that have been polled so far of a few different strains of largely (but not exclusively) guitar-based rock and pop. here's a cursory map of the territory i'm trying to corral, as defined by the trends of the era in question: punk, new wave, pub rock, modern or alternative rock, synthpop, UK postpunk, college rock, and american proto indie - along with the sort of mainstream and art rock that's typically described as "literate", "sophisticated" and/or "subversive". i count about 15 i'd slot into that umbrella genre this time around, give or take a couple borderline cases.

throw in pedigreed rock-canon eminences like bruce springsteen and other sorts of mainstream rock, and you account for about 75% of this list - more like 95% of some others. meanwhile, the presence of nonwhite and female artists in acclaimed music lists often comes across as condescending tokenism at best, outright indifference at worst. happily, this particular list is relatively diverse in that four of the 27 artists are women (or bands fronted by women), and six are nonwhite/anglo. a good deal of the music listed exists beyond the conventional boundaries of what most would call "rock music". still, year after year, the pronounced skew in favor of white and especially male artists is hard to miss.

it's not that i don't think people should like such stuff, or that there's anything wrong with listing it among the best music ever made. i have no problem with people liking whatever they want, and i personally love a lot of rock music made by white guys. given, however, that these lists are presented not merely as some individual or institution's taste, but instead as the aggregate historical verdict of "music critics" in general, the narrowness of the vision surprises and bothers me. hell, though there's less RYM overlap here than there has been in the past (only 11 of 27 appear on both lists), the RYM list arguably casts a broader net.

it doesn't surprise me that there isn't much jazz here. jazz was in steep decline both as a commercial genre and a cultural force by this point. but why so little composed music? why so little soul, funk and R&B, even if these weren't exactly peak years for those genres? why so many moderately successful releases from artists in the "umbrella genre", and so few big pop smashes of the sort enjoyed by millions? why so little country, metal, dance music, vocalists, adult contemporary, reggae and african music? aren't there influential critics who concern themselves with those genres, approaches and regions? and why, in god's name, are there so few women represented?

this all troubles me more than it really should. i understand that i'm making a mountain of a molehill. it's unsurprising that a largely white and male critical establishment in a few largely white countries might tend most to celebrate the work of their (*ahem*) close cultural peers. more charitably, it's unsurprising that, regardless of factors like race or gender, "published critics" might in certain respects be a culturally distinct group unto themselves, with shared tastes, interests and values. this is no mystery, no conspiracy, nothing that really requires my hand-wringing concern. but still my hackles go up when i see something like the 1980 list, with one nonwhite lead artist, and only three women in lead roles. that shit is just weird.

fwiw, I think my most played album of 1984, bar none, was American Dream by Tetes Noires: a drummerless sextet of women from Minneapolis who used the new wave as a springboard for launching their own concoction of feminist folk, diy rock and performance art; sort of a melting pot of Roches, Raincoats and maybe Camper van Beethoven. I saw many, many of their shows, and they became friends, ( helped silkscreen t-shirts before their first east coast tour) so the release of their debut lp was a huge event at my house.

The Pearl - Eno Budd came out in 1984. That's the album I've literally heard the most, as it was the "everybody go to sleep now" album when my kids were little. But I would often stay awake for the whole thing, hundreds of repetitions in - it's a unified composition, not just soothing sounds.

The most-acclaimed lists aren't nearly as interesting as what you'd get from, say, a poll of 150 ILMers (with, say, a ballot of 40). That would probably result in the diversity contenderizer craves. Though it seems fairly diverse for just 27 albums. It does have Youssou N'dour and Rubén Blades for example.

Some from my top 40:

King Sunny Ade - Aura
The Blue Nile - A Walk Across The Rooftops
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Zulu Rock
Justin Hinds & The Dominoes - Travel With Love
Junior Murvin - Muggers In The Street
Ambitious Lovers - Envy
23 Skidoo - Urban Gamelon

There's some women, just not high enough profile or good enough to be in the top 40 let alone 25:

Rock Goddess - Hell Hath No Fury
Laurie Anderson - Mister Heartbreak
Cristina - Sleep It Off
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Hyaena
The Bangles - All Over The Place
Kukl - The Eye
Joan Jett - Glorious Results of A Misspent Youth
The Go-Go's - Talk Show
Bananarama

Voted R.E.M. over the fantastic Run-D.M.C. debut.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Meat Puppets II. Might get the bronze, but I'm guessing fourth.

Voted Prince in the end. I'm pretty sure I prefer the RYM list.

Bruce and Prince were where it was at in the US, and Frankie in the UK, but nowadays I'd rather listen to the Pretenders' best album than any of those monsters of 1984. (yes, Learning to Crawl > s/t)

Dang, I have to get Learning To Crawl (s/t is pretty much flawless, imo)

ditto

voted for LTC.

I should admit I've never heard the Minutemen, Youssou N'Dour, Ruben Blades, or David Sylvian albums, all of which I think I could like.

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

hi fives to those who chose Treasure. that was easily my number two album. i remember hearing it for the first time and it absolutely blew my mind that someone could make music that beautiful. then i had no idea what they were saying but tried to understand it anyway. excellent album that i'm glad got some major love.

also two Rattlesnakes votes!

biggest shock: 14 Madonna - Like a Virgin 0

Everyone that might have voted for Madonna voted for Prince?

I voted for Reckoning!

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2013/06/07/vote-for-best-albums-of-1984/

my POX:

Cocteau Twins, ‘Treasure’
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, ‘Rattlesnakes’
The Cure, ‘The Top’
Dead Can Dance, ‘Dead Can Dance’
Echo & The Bunnymen, ‘Ocean Rain’
New Model Army, ‘Vengeance’
The Pogues, ‘Red Roses for Me’
Section 25, ‘From the Hip’
This Mortal Coil, ‘It’ll End in Tears’
Tones on Tail, ‘Pop’

Forgot to vote in that one. After the vast greatness of 1979-82, hard to be nostalgic for '84.

I can't find the P&J poll. So let's do this one.

I think the Smiths debut deserves better than a Meh. And no Blue Nile?

not on that chart!

Ah, I see. I like your '84 singles list better. That was a formative year for my listening.