If you glance at the most popular albums from 1985, it’s easy to come away with the notion that the mid-1980s weren’t necessarily a scintillating era for music: Wham! “We Are the World.” Bryan Adams. Phil Collins circa No Jacket Required.
But go under the hood, and you’ll find it’s an incredibly rich period, with synth pop and punk rock and indie and experimental doings all colliding into each other in fascinating ways.
One of my favorite things about having spent five years lovingly and obsessively cataloguing the best 1,000 albums ever is the ability to look at splices of music history in such a way.
It’s much less about ranking music than about revisiting the music that meant the most to me throughout my life.
Here are the best 11 albums from 1985 ever. Entries below are pulled from the larger best 1,000 albums ever project, where each gets the full treatment.
1) Echo & The Bunnymen – Songs to Learn & Sing (#210 of the best 1,000 albums ever)
Several years ago, I noticed that the Spotify mobile app had added what we might call “ancillary content” to songs, which is a fancy way of saying that you could read little factoids about a song while playing it on the app.
When “The Killing Moon” popped on one day… there was a little related anecdote that one could read involving lead singer Ian McCulloch.
And it’s something that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life: it relayed that McCulloch believes that “The Killing Moon,” a song that he himself wrote, is the greatest song ever written.
2) Oingo Boingo – Dead Man’s Party (#214)
I knew about Oingo Boingo before I knew about Oingo Boingo.
What do I mean by that?
Back to School is what I mean.
3) Meat Puppets – Up on the Sun (#318)
When I get really into a song, I get really into it. Like I’ll play it over and over again and let it wash over me and through my head and ears and heart and brain. And “Buckethead” is a song that I’ve gone through that cycle with multiple times.
Now, I’ll clearly note that “Buckethead,” like the Meat Puppets at large, ain’t for everyone. But if you give it a chance, you just might find yourself filling up with this one.
The hook is an all-time crusher, and the vocals are an incredible mix of strange and alluring. In listening to “Buckethead” for about the 9,000th time during this writing, I’m struck by how masterful the Meat Puppets are as musicians, and they are adept at pushing right up to the line – for me, at least – of chasing their oddball musical proclivities while keeping it just accessible enough to be wildly entertaining for many music fans.
4) Fishbone – Fishbone (#356)
And as great and as wildly eclectic and innovative as Fishbone is, I’ve often wished that they would have produced more music in the vein of “Party at Ground Zero” and “Skankin’ to the Beat” – super-powered ska punk with a mix of influences – versus the heavier, metal/funk amalgam that they trended into post-Truth & Soul (#734).
5) Descendents – I Don’t Want to Grow Up (#513)
It’s fascinating to look back at the 1980s – a decade in which the mainstream culture pushed Reagan-era conformity, “greed is good” capitalism, not to mention collar popping, neon belts, and other wacky paraphernalia – as a decade in which vibrant indie, punk, and DIY countercultures were broiling underneath the surface.
For much more on this topic, check out the non-fiction book, Our Band Could Be Your Life, by Michael Azerrad, which features the journeys of bands such as Black Flag, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, Minor Threat, and the Minutemen and their impact on music and pop culture during the 1980s.
6) Tom Waits – Rain Dogs(#598)
While taking notes during the research process for this here best 1,000 albums ever project, I noted the following about Rain Dogs: “I’m pretty sure this album is playing on blast and on loop in purgatory’s waiting room.”
Which… I’m not sure if there would be a waiting room for purgatory, should purgatory even exist and all that? But more importantly, I meant it in a good way. I think the album put me in the mind of Tim Burton’s 1988 movie Beetlejuice, a darkly comic journey through some kind of cross-dimensional space. Or something.
That is all to say: it’s a strange ride, it’s a strange trip. Another non-sequitur that I jotted down: “When there’s a song called ‘Cemetery Polka’ and that’s not nearly the weirdest thing about the album…”
7) The Cult – Love (#618)
There’s something about “She Sells Sanctuary” – by far the best song on Love – that makes it feel like the perfect fusion of several mid-’80s sounds and genres.
There’s that U2 Unforgettable Fire/Joshua Tree guitar delay effect thing going, though tilted in a more goth-y Sisters of Mercy direction. And then add in a heavy dose of the Def Leppard hard rock sound perfected on songs like “Animal” off the Hysteria LP (#166 of best 1,000 albums ever).
8) R.E.M. – Fables of the Reconstruction (#638)
For many R.E.M. purists (if that’s a thing?), I’d guess that “Driver 8” would be their standout song from this album, but for me it’s the dreamy and immersive “Maps and Legends.” Like so many early R.E.M. songs, the lyrics are cryptic and packed with imagery. For me, oddly enough, I’m reminded of loving old maps when I was a kid. I’d stare at books of maps for hours.
9) Hüsker Dü– New Day Rising (#771)
“The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill” isn’t just the kind of song that gets stuck in my head for weeks at a time. It is a song that gets stuck in my head for weeks at a time. The review of New Day Rising on All Music does a great job of calling out, “the razor-thin production and waves of noise mean that it takes a little bit of effort to pick out the melodies” on this record.
It’s a reason why bands like Hüsker Dü – and same goes for the likes of Sonic Youth and Pavement – will remain inaccessible for many: adjusting to that “wave of noise” can take a little practice, but then all of the sudden it becomes essential. And with the best Hüsker Dü songs, and “The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill” is my all-time favorite at the moment, the wave of noise meshes with its pop sensibilities, fusing together into a uniquely addictive sound that’s a powerful mix of hardcore punk, indie/college rock, and pop. That’s also partially why I semi-jokingly think that New Day Rising takes maximum effect if you play it on a battered cassette player or on the tape player of a similarly battered but still running car.
10) Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms (#803)
There are two main things that I associate with Brothers in Arms, one very specific and personal, the other more shared and universal.
First, the personal. When I was around 15 years old, I visited my sister at college, who was then a freshman at the State University of New York at Fredonia. I flew by myself from a small airport on Long Island (MacArthur) to Buffalo, where I was picked up by Lisa, her boyfriend Mike, and a few of their friends.
I recall that one of the friends was wearing a black t-shirt that read in white lettering, “FAILED SEX, NEED TUTOR,” and I thought, “So this is college life.”
11) The Power Station – The Power Station (#887)
It’s possible that I first heard the term “supergroup” 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.