Tag Archives: John Mellencamp

Revisiting the Canon: Best Albums of 1985

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My backwards journey through the pop/rock canon of the 1980s, as inspired by my friend Mike B., continues apace with 1985. Such a transitional year for popular music. It felt like the music industry finally had to start reckoning with MTV, synthesizers, new wave, and a whole bunch of other things they’d been trying to ignore. The historical record shows that there was less consensus than usual regarding which albums from that year really stood out, which strikes me as evidence that everyone’s focus was scattered. Or, put another way, people were listening to a bunch of new things, and tastes changed accordingly.

All of which is to say, it was an easier year than most for being totally subjective.

Ergo, here are some albums from 1985 that I truly love:

Scarecrow, John Cougar Mellencamp

This is another one of those albums where just about every track could’ve been a single. The hooks are abundant, the vocals are tough and confident, and the band has never sounded better. Everything that’s great about Mellencamp’s recorded oeuvre – including his (at the time) burgeoning social conscience – coalesces into its peak form on this record. For me, it’s an all-time classic.

Around the World in a Day, Prince and the Revolution

Full disclosure: this is a purely sentimental pick on my part, and I’m not going to defend it as one of the best albums of its year. It came out during my formative adolescent years, and it has a soft spot in my heart for many inexplicable teenage reasons. Objectively speaking, though, calling Around the World in a Day a transitional record for Prince would be putting it mildly. This was his bizarre, psychedelia-inspired follow-up to Purple Rain, and it confused the hell out of everyone because it was so willfully and aggressively unlike its predecessor. Considering what fans (like myself) had come to expect from The Purple One by that point, some of these songs could easily be called sub-par. But, Prince’s sub-par material was still better than a lot of other artists’ A-list best, and this album was a rebellious announcement to the world that there was more to His Royal Purpleness than “1999” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” Plus, it features my favorite Prince single of them all, the scrumptious “Raspberry Beret.”

Listen Like Thieves, INXS

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This was the album where INXS’ brand of 1980s new wave got funkier and grittier. There are tasty hooks everywhere on this record, and the band sounds like they’re enjoying their newfound boldness. Listen Like Thieves clocks in at a lean, mean 37 minutes, and INXS make the most of that time: the album contains eleven songs, four of which became Top 40 hits in the U.S. Think of them as Duran Duran with more guitars (which is a compliment, by the way), and you’ll get the idea.

White City: A Novel, Pete Townshend

Pete Townshend spent most of the 1980s making solid solo albums, and this was one of his best. Anchored by an excellent studio band featuring none other than Pink Floyd‘s very own David Gilmour (who does a fabulous job here as Pete’s session guitarist), White City is full of bouncy earworms that show off Townshend’s still vital songwriting acumen. There’s a loose concept binding everything together (not surprising, since Pete wrote one of rock’s pioneering concept albums), but it doesn’t matter. The propulsive strength of tracks like “Face the Face” and “Give Blood” defy conceptual pigeonholing.

Little Creatures, Talking Heads

This might be the Heads’ most overlooked record, and also their most accessible. By 1985, they’d added the sheen of high-end studio production to their jangly, idiosyncratic sound, and gotten even better at writing hooks. Case in point: “And She Was,” “Stay Up Late,” and “Road to Nowhere,” the album’s trio of signature tracks, all of which became rock radio heavy rotation classics. Little Creatures is full of songs like those, that nestle themselves sneakily into one’s psyche. This album didn’t seem like much to me when I first heard it, but then I discovered I could hum the whole thing after listening to it only once. It’s a fun record that goes down easy, and rewards return visits.

Revisiting the Canon: Best Albums of 1987

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My friend Mike B. recently put out an APB on social media: he wanted to do a deep dive on the greatest albums of 1987, and asked for everyone he knew to weigh in on their favorites. 1987 was such a great year for music, in my opinion, and everyone who commented on that thread was right, no matter which albums they mentioned. That’s how strong a year it was, and it inspired me to revisit some my own favorites from that time.

Are these the actual best albums of 1987? On the one hand, there is empirical evidence to suggest that these albums have stood the test of time, and have been lauded appropriately. On the other hand, I’m no expert, nor am I trying to be. I’m just looking for an excuse to write a little something about a handful of albums that I absolutely love.

Ergo, here are some of my favorites from that magical year of 1987:

Sign o’ the Times, Prince

Prince - Sign O' The Times (2CD) - Amazon.com Music

This one was a shocker when it came out, even for hardcore Prince fans like myself. In a decade where he kept upping the ante for himself on each record, how is it that Prince made the best album of his career after making the biggest album of his career? How is it that he released a double album that was even better than the double album he’d put out only five years earlier? Maybe the answer is just as simple as Robert Christgau’s sentiment that Sign o’ the Times was nothing less than “the most gifted pop musician of his generation proving what a motherfucker he is for two discs start to finish.” Amen.

Pleased to Meet Me, The Replacements

Musicheads Essentials: The Replacements, 'Pleased to Meet Me ...

This was the album that introduced me to The Mats, and what a great introduction it was. In retrospect, this was the sound of a band going for the brass ring – except that we’re talking about a band that was always too scrappy, rowdy, and rough around the edges to ever fully achieve whatever popular mainstream success they were aiming for. In their hearts, they were an underground cult band, and this album showed the world what an underground cult band on the cusp of some measure of maturity could do when operating at full power.

Kick, INXS

INXS - Kick - Amazon.com Music

INXS built upon the new wave funk/rock sound they’d developed on their previous album, and came up with a record where every track could’ve been a single. Kick was one of those magically catchy albums where everything just worked, and it was a bona fide hit machine: five of its six singles went Top 5 on the U.S. Top 40. When put up against other mega-hit albums from that era – like Thriller, Control, Purple Rain, Born in the U.S.A., and pretty much everything Madonna and Whitney Houston did in the 1980s – Kick holds its own just fine.

The Lonesome Jubilee, John Cougar Mellencamp

Canon Fodder: John Mellencamp, 'The Lonesome Jubilee' | The ...

This was the first appearance of Mellencamp’s expanded band, featuring new additions Lisa Germano on fiddle, John Cascella on accordion, and backing vocalist Crystal Taliefero. All three opened up new musical avenues that hadn’t been available before to Mellencamp’s long-standing band, and their playing on The Lonesome Jubilee reflects how much they relished it. As for Mellencamp, the band’s new rootsy country folk sound gave him the chance to embrace the kind of songwriting he wanted to do: as he said in his 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibit, “I realized what I thought I wanted to say in song. …I wanted it to be more akin to Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck, Faulkner, as opposed to The Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan.” This was where he really started wearing his social conscience on his sleeve, and it was a great fit for the toughness of his band. A fantastic album from start to finish.

Document, R.E.M.

Document: Caputring R.E.M. At A Pivotal Point In Their Career ...

This was the first R.E.M. album I ever heard, and I knew right away what all the fuss was about. This was the sound of an indie band making a big time power move – and succeeding. They never rocked harder or more convincingly than they did on Document, which also featured their first Top 40 hit, “The One I Love,” and a future classic rock radio staple, “It’s the End of the World as We Knew It (And I Feel Fine).” This was obscure college rock made accessible for the masses without sacrificing an ounce of indie cred, and it helped usher in the mainstream takeover of alternative music. Perhaps more than any other album from that year, on both a musical and a historical level, Document was the sound of 1987.