The Top 25 albums of the 1980s

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Previous 5 #21-25 Bruce Springsteen: Born In the U.S.A. Phil Collins: No Jacket Required Fine Young Cannibals: The Raw & the Cooked Milli Vanilli: Girl You Know It's True Beastie Boys: Licenced to Ill µ #21

BORN IN THE U.S.A.
Bruce Springsteen
Released: June 1984
7 weeks at Number One
96 weeks in Top Forty
Hit singles:
"Dancing in the Dark" (#2)
"Glory Days"(#5)
"I'm on Fire" (#6)
"My Hometown" (#6)
"Cover Me" (#7)
"Born in the U.S:A." (#9)
"I'm Goin' Down" (#9)

Bruce Springsteen's phenomenal success with Born in the U.S.A. capped a climb to the top that had seen such apparent pinnacles as "Born to Run" and "The River". With MTV as an unlikely new ally of the working-class hero, Springsteen's audience expanded enormously.
The songs on Born in the U.S.A. deal mainly with the downside of the american dream and the fears of the working man in the Reagan-era. People valued Springsteen for his honesty, his social conscience and sympathy with the less fortunate, but even he would admit that there was a large measure of posturing involved. It's not easy staying in character as a working-class hero when you pull down $30 million or so a year.
The album consists mostly of tracks recorded in '82 and '83, but when Springsteen declared the album finished, manager Jon Landau insisted it needed a unifying song. Springsteen wrote "Dancing in the Dark" in a matter of days - it became the first of the albums seven top ten singles. Oddly, none of them made to Number One..

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#22

NO JACKET REQUIRED

Phil Collins

Released:February 1985

7 weeks at Number One

70 weeks in Top Forty

Hit singles:

"One More Night" (#1)

"Sussudio" (#1)

"Don't Lose My Number" (#4)

"Take Me Home" (#7)

After Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, drummer Phil Collins took over as lead vocalist, and Genesis' singles started showing up in the charts. Collins first solo hits appeared on his debut 1981 album, Face Value, but the serious success came with his third album, No Jacket Required.
With a mixture of peppy, funky dance tracks and the romantic, pianobased ballads that have become Collins' hallmark, it struck a chord with the audience and stayed on the Top Forty for well over a year.
No Jacket Required won the Grammy for Album of the Year, 1985.


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#23

THE RAW & THE COOKED
Fine Young Cannibals
Released: February 1989
7 weeks at Number One
40 weeks in Top Forty
Hit singles:
"Good Thing" (#1)
"She Drives Me Crazy" (#1)
"Don't Look Back" (#11)

Britain's Fine Young Cannibals mixed the melodic emotivenes of Sixties soul with the precision-tooled snap of Eighties technology on The Raw & the Cooked, their phenomenal second album. The trio, made up of two white instrumentalists and a brilliant black singer, won over an unsuspecting American audience in 1989. From the energetic, danceable R&B of "Good Thing" to the warm, Percy Sledge-inspired ballad "As Hard As It Is", the album is as solid as a Motown greatest hits collection. Singer Roland Gift's characteristic and commanding voice is the bands most evident asset, but the two musicians David Steele and Andy Cox provide a strong and precise musical backbone. The Cannibals, who let three years pass between their debut album and The Raw & the Cooked, handled the American succes with British coolness: "Every year there's one British group that does well in America, isn't there?" said guitarist Andy Cox. "You pull on the handle, and this year it's three lemmons and us."

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#24

GIRL YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE

Milli Vanilli

Released: March 1989

7 weeks at Number One

61 weeks in Top Forty

Hit singles:

"Baby Don't Forget My Number" (#1)

"Girl I'm Gonna Miss You" (#1)

"Blame It on the Rain" (#1)

"Girl You Know Its True" (#2)

"All or Nothing" (#4)

The popularity of Milli Vanilli owed more to video exposure and hairstyles than it did to music, and in that sence it was a typical Eighties success story. As it later turned out it was also a typical Eighties music scandal.
The European duo saw their second album, titled All or Nothing in Europe, picked up for US release, and soon a parade of well-crafted synth-soul-pop singles made their way up the charts. Fab Morvan and Rop Pilatus endured criticism for lip-syncing on stage, not to mention allegations that they didn't even sing on their albums. But they seemed to understand where their appeal lay: "I looked at all the superstars," said Pilatus. "What is their different thing? Their hair!"
Shortly after the cover was blown: The two dancing hairdos couldn't sing a note, much less write songs. The real Milli Vanilli was a pair of anonymous, middleaged studiomusicians.


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#25

LICENSED TO ILL
Beastie Boys
Released: October 1986
7 weeks at Number One
27 weeks in Top Forty
Hit single:
"(You Gotta)
Fight for Your Right
(to Party!)" (#7)


The Beastie Boys brought grungy rock guitar to rap, and the result was 1986's most popular party album. Licensed to Ill was the bastard son of AC/DC and Run-D.M.C. and it became a hit with white teenagers, who theretofore couldn't relate to rap. It quickly became the target for music censors in America. Despite that - or maybe because of that - Licensed to Ill became Columbia Records fastest-selling debut ever.
The succes of "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)", released the same year as Run-D.M.C.'s hit version of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way", signaled that rock and rap could share interests and audiences.


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      Bruce Springsteen: Born In the U.S.A. Phil Collins: No Jacket Required Fine Young Cannibals: The Raw & the Cooked Milli Vanilli: Girl You Know It's True Beastie Boys: Licenced to Ill Previous 5                         #21-25


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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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