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The Remarkable Year With Only Five Number One Albums
One was a complete shock
I have written ad nauseam about the music of the glorious 1980s, and today’s Rate-A-Record is proof I have no intention of stopping. In my aimless wanderings across the vast wasteland that is the internet, I came across a bit of trivia that only a music nerd or Gen X kid could love; as many of my readers are one or both of these, I decided to share it.
During the decade of the 1980s, there were 96 albums that topped the Billboard Hot 200 chart, starting with Donna Summer’s On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II in January 1980 and ending with …But Seriously by Phil Collins the last week of December 1989. In between were some bangers (Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Springsteen’s The River, The Go-Go’s’ Beauty and the Beat, U2’s The Joshua Tree, and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction) and some head-scratchers (Tiffany’s self-titled album, Barbara Streisand’s Guilty, and the soundtrack from Miami Vice). It was a remarkable decade.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing happened in 1984. Actually, three remarkable things happened: two were me graduating from high school in May and seeing Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live for the first time in November, but the third is what we’re looking at today: in 1984, for the first and only time in the history of the…
