Cards on the table; U2 are one of my favourite bands, certainly in the top five, maybe even number one, on a good day. Almost all of the music that I grew up listening to was fundamentally negative: the blistering venom of the Manic Street Preachers, the icy darkness of Joy Division, the eerie autism […]
The Joshua Tree by U2 (1987) Read More »
Appetite for Destruction is one of the biggest selling debut albums in rock history, which is a mystery to me, because it’s an almost unceasing cacophony of scathing, strident guitars, shrill vocals, and thoroughly toxic lyrics about taking drugs, getting drunk, brutally copulating with your girlfriend and then, perhaps, punching her in the face. It’s
Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses (1987) Read More »
Prog rock – not for me, mate. As I mentioned in the review of So, the whiff of middle-aged, socially awkward white men is all too palpable in prog’s wilfully, almost antagonistically drawn out and meandering song structures and 25-hour-long suites which purport to narrate, for example, the perspectives of minor characters from J.R. Tolkien
The Hounds of Love by Kate Bush (1985) Read More »
I’m not into prog-rock – it carries the whiff of slightly overweight middle-aged men who hand paint small plastic models of orcs and warlocks – and so the back catalogue of Genesis is not very familiar to me. I’d rather listen to Phil Collins, or even Mike and the Mechanics – at least the songs
So by Peter Gabriel (1986) Read More »
Robert Smith, lead singer of goth rock band The Cure, put it like this: “Duran Duran (…) loved us, and they used to come to our shows, but they represented everything we hated: the whole glamorous ’80s, consumer bullshit; this horror show that we were up against.” So there’s that. But what’s interesting from the
Rio by Duran Duran (1982) Read More »
To continue the discussion from the Remain in Light review about classifying late 70s / early 80s music; are Tears for Fears post-punk, new-wave, or new romantic? Their music definitely has the downbeat sound and cryptic, tormented lyrics of post-punk but, in terms of instrumentation, it’s synth-infused rock, like New Order or a much darker
The Hurting by Tears for Fears (1983) Read More »
In the Remain in Light review, I suggested that the defining feature of new wave music is the synthesiser – that a synthesiserless band can’t be considered new wave. Maybe that’s not a very defensible thesis, given that some commentators consider new wave to be about songwriting style rather than instrumentation, but big deal. The
Dare by the Human League (1981) Read More »
So what exactly is “new wave” music? And what is its relationship to this thing called “post-punk”? Am I expected to believe that Duran Duran, a yacht-sailing boyband wearing blazers rolled up to their elbows, are part of the same musical genre as Talking Heads, creators of the thoroughly insane album that is the subject
Remain in Light by Talking Heads (1980) Read More »
Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson are typically said to comprise the (un)holy triumvirate of world bestriding 80s pop universalism, the “first stars of MTV” who were, intriguingly, all born in the summer of 1958. In my opinion, Prince does not quite belong in the company of the other two; he didn’t sell as many records
Like a Prayer by Madonna (1989) Read More »
If you want my opinion, Purple Rain is the quintessential 80s record, even more so than Thriller or Rio. It sounds like futuristic jazz music; a unique, somewhat chaotic, almost sci-fi blend of pop, rock, funk, R’n’B, and disco, shot through with sex, incessant partying, and rockstar messianism. It’s a cocaine record; bombastic, ridiculous, affluent,
Purple Rain by Prince (1984) Read More »