Matt's Books and Music

[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.]

Introduction

As much as we love our round numbers, cultural transitions between decades are rarely as clean as we’d like them to be. 1980 is a great example. With its disco and arena rock hits, in a lot of ways it sounds more like the ‘70s than the ‘80s. But, with strong albums from Roxy Music and a brand-new U2, there are signs of what’s to come. 1980 may not feel like ‘the ‘‘80s’ yet, but it’s still a great music year.

Top 10 Albums

1. The River (Bruce Springsteen): This is a big album, with five songs making it comfortably into my year-end playlist. It’s so big that it’s hard to believe Springsteen would rise to even greater heights just a few years later.
2. Bad Reputation (Joan Jett & the Blackhearts): One of the most notable things abou ‘80s music is the blatant nostalgia for the early years of rock’n’roll. So this album, filled with covers of classics given a hard, punk edge, is right at home. And it’s a masterpiece.
3. Super Trouper (ABBA): With three songs in my top eighteen of the year, ABBA was still at the peak of the powers in 1980.
4. Auto-American (Blondie): While this album didn’t have Blondie’s most enduring hit from the year, it’s still strong and shows the shapeshifting flair that made them special.
5. The Romantics (self-titled): Another album that mixed the 1950s nostalgia of the period with pop-punk sensibilities, the album is a surprise and well worth revisiting.
6. Boy (U2): Before this project, I was only really familiar with “I Will Follow” from this album, but I was impressed by how much they seemed themselves here, showing a promise that wasn’t really fulfilled until Joshua Tree in 1987.
7. Flesh + Blood (Roxy Music): Roxy Music only released two albums in the 1980s, but both contained innovative hits that make me wish we’d gotten more from them.
8. Romance Dance (Kim Carnes): From the perspective of the twenty-first century, one might expect Kim Carnes to have been a one-hit wonder. But this album from the year before her big hit is fantastic.
9. Departure (Journey): To my mind, nothing says “arena rock” more than Journey. Soaring vocals, big rock production, and bigger hair.
10. The Game (Queen): Led by “Another One Bites the Dust,” this album also features the band’s iconic cover of “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” What was that about early rock’n’roll nostalgia?

Other Albums of Note

• Double Fantasy (John Lennon): This is notable for the sad reason that it was John Lennon’s last album before his murder. But it’s also a solid album, finishing a respectable sixteenth for me in 1980.
• Get Happy (Elvis Costello & the Attractions): Elvis Costello will be an interesting artist to follow as I go through the decade. He’s an artist I’ve always respected more than I’ve loved, so I was glad to see this fare as well as it did for me, led by the standout song “Possession.”
• Making Movies (Dire Straits): I knew Dire Straits mostly from their 1985 album, but the second I head the riff from “Tunnel of Love,” I realized just how much of their music I knew without knowing it.

Top 10 Songs

1. “What I Like About You” (The Romantics): With what I wrote above, it seems fitting that my favourite song from 1980 was a throwback to early rock’n’roll. It’s not a cover, but it sounds like it could have been. (Favourite lyric: “Keep on whispering in my ear / Tell me all the things that I wanna hear”)

2.”The Winner Takes It All” (ABBA): While perhaps a bit of an out-of-pocket choice, on most days this is my favourite ABBA song. Few songs convey real heartbreak like this. (Favourite lyric: “I’ve played all my cards, and that’s what you’ve done too / Nothing more to say, No more ace to play”)

3. “Call Me” (Blondie): It what would be a common theme in the ‘80s, this iconic song comes not from a studio album but a soundtrack. This theme from American Gigolo perfectly captures the film’s sensibility. (Favourite lyric: “Color me your color, baby”)

4. “I Will Follow” (U2): This is a song from U2’s debut album that captures the energy that made them the huge band they were—even if it took a while for them to get there. (Favourite lyric: “I was on the outside when you said, you said you needed me / I was looking at myself, I was blind, I could not see”)

5. “Lay All Your Love on Me” (ABBA): This is one of those songs that just makes you realize how much fun disco music was at its best. (Favourite lyric: “I used to think I was sensible / It makes the truth even more incomprehensible”)

6. “Any Way You Want It” (Journey): Can a song have charisma? It must, because this song isn’t all that interesting musically and is lyrically laughably simple. And yet it absolutely rocks. (Favourite lyric: “Any way you want it / That’s the way you need it”)

7. “Over You” (Roxy Music): That this is the first song on the list to really feel like it belongs to the ‘80s shows just how cutting edge Roxy Music were. (Favourite lyric: “Wish I was somewhere, over you”)

8. “Once in a Lifetime” (Talking Heads): I miss the days when certifiably weird music could be popular. (Favourite lyric; “Letting the days go by / Let the water hold me down”)

9. “Tunnel of Love” (Dire Straits): As I mentioned above in the albums section, you know this song even if you don’t know you know it. (Favourite lyric: “Well it’s been money for muscle on another worthy gig / Money for muscle and another girl I dig”)

10. “Gotta Broken Heart Again” (Prince): This is a pretty conventional R and B tune from an generally unconventionally artist, but its groove is too groovy to ignore. (Favourite lyric: “This time it’s serious / It feels just like the end”)

Other Songs of Note

• “Watching the Wheels” (John Lennon): This last big song from John Lennon before his murder came very close to my top 10. Either way it’s a great and lasting legacy for the incomparable songwriter.
• “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” (The Police): The production on this song is so fun.
• “All Out of Love” (Air Supply): This song is one of my earliest musical memories and I’m not mad about it.

Most Surprising Inclusion

• “If You Need Me” (Gordon Lightfoot): Singer-songwriter icon Gordon Lightfoot having a big song for me in 1980 was not on my bingo card for the year, but it’s a really good song.

Notable Song that Missed the Cut

• “Magic” (Olivia Newton-John): My pop-music confession is that as a rule I really don’t get Olivia Newton-John. This was a hue song in 1980 but it does nothing for me.

[Note: It’s of course impossible to listen to everything, so while I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible, omissions are inevitable. For consistency’s sake, I’ve gone with the year music was released, rather than when it became popular. Any ratings or rankings are my own and entirely subjective. This has nothing to do with objective quality but is simply reflective of my personal taste.]