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My Favorite Album from Every Year I’ve Been Alive (Part Two: 1980–1989)
The greatest decade
In taking on the Herculean task of listing my favorite album from every year I’ve been alive, I knew that Part Two was going to be the most challenging. As an unrepentant and uncharacteristically vocal member of Generation X, the 1980s are my touchstone decade. This is true for films, books, and especially music. Picking my favorite for some of these years is like having to pick my favorite child: easy on some days and impossible on others.
Yet I will soldier on, if only because I’ve already started and can’t back out now. If there’s one thing that really surprised me, it’s that there is not a single New Wave album represented. Four decades on, I had forgotten that while there were a vast number of great New Wave songs, there were few solid New Wave albums, with The Go-Go’s Beauty and the Beat the only one that jumps immediately to mind. That one had the misfortune of releasing in 1981, and you will see from my favorite from that year that Beauty and the Beat was always going to come in a solid second.
I want to reiterate that this is a list of my personal favorite albums for each year of the ’80s. The question of “greatest” is better left up to those critics more knowledgeable than I am (except in the case of Born to Run, of course)…
