Why is The Power Station on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
Robert Palmer and members of Duran Duran and Chic combo for some super group action, 1980s style.
What does The Power Station’s The Power Station mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
It’s possible that I first heard the term “super group” with regard to The Power Station.
This makes sense – or kind of makes sense – when you picture it from the standpoint of I’m a young kid in the mid-‘80s obsessed with MTV, as so many of my generation were. Duran Duran was huge, thanks to stylized up the wazoo synth pop and stylized up the wazoo twice over music videos on the good old Music Television. Robert Palmer, meanwhile, was big time himself with hits like “Addicted to Love,” which themselves received heavy MTV rotation.
So as a young lad, when I found out that members of Duran Duran (John Taylor and Andy Taylor, specifically) and Robert Palmer were in the same band. Like whoah… was something akin to my well-articulated response.
But taking a step back and closing in on forty years later, The Power Station is simply a fun, super ‘80s-ified album with several standout smashers.
If someone played “Some Like It Hot” and said with zero irony and with the straightest of faces, “This is THE song that best represents the 1980s,” I think you’d have to at least take such an audacious assertion with the level of seriousness that it deserves. Which is to say, like whoah…
The song, replete with wild horns and drums (by way of Chic drummer Tony Thompson), is nearly as over-the-top as the music video.
My favorite song on the album, though, is the cover of the great T. Rex song, “Get It On (Bang A Gong).” It’s a song that’s custom made to get glammed up, ‘80s style, and The Power Station is the right band at the right time to oblige.
On songs like “Murderess,” the Taylor boys are able to lean into their rock sensibilities versus the synth-ier Duran Duran, to good effectiveness.
Some stats & info about The Power Station – The Power Station
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Dance Music, Rock Music, Pop Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 out of 5 stars
- When was The Power Station released? 1985
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #887 out of 1,000
The Power Station on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective take on what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.