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#1 
THRILLER Michael Jackson Released: December 1982 37 weeks at Number One 91 weeks in Top Forty Hit singles: "Billie Jean" (#1) "Beat It"(#1) "The Girl Is Mine" (#2) "Thriller" (#4) "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" (#5) "Human Nature" (#7) "P.Y.T.(Pretty Young Thing)" (#10) Thriller
is both the best-selling album of the Eighties and the best-selling album
ever. At the height of Michaelmania, it was moving a million copies
a week. Worldwide sales to date total more than 43 million copies.
In another record that has yet to be beaten, Thriller generated
seven Top Ten singles. It also earned Michael Jackson, only twenty-four
at the time of its release, seven Grammys and more than 150 gold and platinum
awards. It was his sixth album as a solo artist.
#2 
PURPLE
RAIN
Prince
and the Revolution
Released:
June 1984
24
weeks at Number One
42
weeks in Top Forty
Hit
singles:
"When
Doves Cry" (#1)
"Let's
Go Crazy" (#1)
"Purple
Rain" (#2)
"I
Would Die 4 U" (#8)
"Take
Me With U" (#25)
Prince's purple reign began with the 1982 fifth album 1999 and its breakthrough single, "Little Red Corvette". But it was the soundtrack to his semiautobiographical first film, Purple Rain, released in the summer of 1984, that made him a superstar. Featuring powerful performance shot at the First Avenue & 7th St. Entry Club in Minneapolis, the film became an unexpected hit. Prince starred as the Kid, a musician from a troubled home fighting personal and professional conflicts. In 1985 Prince clarified to what extend the movie was drawn from real life: "We used parts of my past and present to make the story pop more," he said, "but it was a story." Like all of Prince's albums, Purple Rain, which held down the Number One spot for half a year, was a characteristic and irresistibly funky mixture of black and white styles. Prince cites inspirations such as Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton and Frank Zappa, but the music is mainly driven by his own creativity and virtuosity. Prince took out the bass line from "When Doves Cry", giving it a stark, incomplete feeling. Despite record-company doubts, it became the biggest single of 1984. #3 
DIRTY DANCING ORIGINAL MOTIONPICTURE SOUNDTRACK Various Artists Released: June 1987 18 weeks at Number One 68 weeks in Top Forty Hit singles: "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" by Jennifer Warnes and Bill Medley (#1) "Hungry Eyes" by Eric Carmen (#4) Dirty Dancing was the Saturday Night Fever of the Eighties. Instead of stylized disco moves, however, the film dug back to the Fifties and beyond for everything from the mambo to the dirty boogie. Patrick Swayze played the John Travolta-esque lead: A working-class tough with a heart of gold and a repertoire of lady-killing moves on the dancefloor. Jennifer Grey played the young virgin who falls for him. The films succes owed as much to the whirling and grinding taking place in the ballrooms and backrooms of mountain resort as it did to its plotline. The movie resurrected some R&B classics - such as "Be My Baby", by the Ronettes, "In the Still of the Night", by the Five Satins, and "Stay", by Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs - which supplied the musical background for the lambada-style gyrations in the dirty-dancing sequences. A couple of new tunes linked loosely to the plot became sizeable hits. Eric Carmen got a career boost from the inclusion of "Hungry Eyes", as did former Righteous Brothers member Bill Medley from his duet with Jennifer Warnes on "(I've Had) he Time of My Life", utilized in the film's climactic scene. #4 
SYNCHRONICITY
Police
Released:
June 1983
17
weeks at Number One
50
weeks in Top Forty
Hit
singles:
"Every
Breath You Take" (#1)
"King
of Pain" (#3)
"Wrapped
Around Your Finger" (#8)
"Synchronicity
II" (#16)
The Police were among the first New Wave acts to enter the Top Forty, scoring back in March 1979 with "Roxanne". Each subsequent Police record softened the industry's resistance to alternative music, and the sixth album, Synchronicity, kicked the door wide open. All but two of the songs on the album were writen by singer-bassist Sting (Gordon Sumner) during a time of what he called "awful personal anguish", a mental state especially appearent on "Every Breath You Take". "I consider it a fairly nasty song," Sting later told Rolling Stone magazine. "It is about surveillance and jealousy." The song went to Number One, stayed there for eight weeks, and was Billboard's top single of 1983. As a solo artist Sting later recorded "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free" as an antidote to "Every Breath You Take". The Police somehow managed to incorporate jungian psychology and third-world rythms into pop and make the result enjoyable for a mass audience. In the 1983 Rolling Stone Reader's Poll, Synchronicity beat out Michael Jackson's Thriller as Album of the Year. Not bad for an album whose title, according to Sting, "refers to coincidence and things being connected without there being a logical link." #5 
HI INFIDELITY REO Speedwagon Released: November 1980 15 weeks at Number One 50 weeks in Top Forty Hit singles: "Keep On Loving You" (#1) "Take It on the Run" (#5) "In Your Letter" (#20) "Don't Let Him Go" (#24) For a long time, REO Speedwagon was the most popular unknown band in America. The band's albums typically sold in the hundreds of thousands, but the band never had a Top Forty hit until the release of Hi Infidelity, its eleventh album. REO made up for lost time: "Keep On Loving You" went to Number One, and three more songs did well as singles. REO's late succes had a lot to do with a new strategy. The band took the energy of rock, and put it in midtempo numbers. "REO has always been a rock'n'roll band," said singer David Cronin. "But we learned we could play ballads and still have them be real powerful." Suddenly, REO's powerballads were the hottest sound in America. Sources: Billlboard OnLine, various issues of Rolling Stone, Q, Vox, Mojo, NME, LIFE and TIME, the Rolling Stone Record Guide, Verdensrock. Images used for promotional use on this site only. Not for copying, modification or reuse |
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