Over what will likely be the next few years I’m going to be ranking and reviewing the top 5 albums - plus a fair few extras - according to users on rateyourmusic.com (think IMDB for music) from every year from 1960 to the present. If you want to know more, I wrote an introduction to the ‘challenge’ here. You can also read all the other entries I’ve written so far by heading to the lovely index page here.

Well, this one’s taken a while as there’s been some goings on in my personal life that have led to a period of reflection. Possibly due to the fact I’ve lived with these albums for a while, this is one of the highest scoring years of the challenge so far.

But anyway, what happened in 1981 outside of music? President Raegan and Pope John Paul II were both wounded by gunmen on separate occasions, MTV first went on air famously starting with the song Video Killed the Radio Star, AIDS was first identified and IBM introduced its first personal computer.

In music here’s what rateyourmusic.com users rated as their top 5 albums of the year:

#1 King Crimson - Discipline
#2 This Heat - Deceit
#3 Rush - Moving Pictures
#4 Glenn Branca - The Ascension
#5 Kraftwerk - Computer World

And here’s some others I’m grabbing from further down the list:

#6 Wipers - Youth of America
#7 Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju
#8 The Cure - Faith

But we’re not stopping there, Pitchfork’s top 40 from the 1980s includes Computer World - which we already have - and Black Flag’s Damaged - which we’ll add.

Finally, I’m taking a look at NPR’s best albums of all time by female artists list, as well as their reader voted list on the same topic and grabbing the following from there:

Grace Jones - Nightclubbing
Rickie Lee Jones - Pirates
Stevie Nicks - Bella Donna
The Go-Gos - Beauty and the Beat

That’s 13 albums to battle it out for 1981’s title. Off we go.

The debut solo album from ex-Fletwood Mac vocalist Stevie Nicks sold rather well, and was certified quadruple-platinum in 1990.

Featuring a whole heap of additional musicians, many of whom are pretty big names in their own right, the songs on Bella Donna feel nicely fleshed out and well produced. The production isn’t particularly exciting though, and it definitely verges a bit too much into middle-of-the-road country for my liking. There’s enough inventiveness sprinkled throughout though to raise it above much of the repetitive music in the genre, something which Stevie Nicks’ barnstorming vocals, which are impressive while never being showy, only help with further. Oh and it includes Edge of Seventeen, one of the decade’s best pop songs in my books, featuring probably Nicks’ strongest vocal performance on the album.

Bella Donna didn’t blow me away, but it does have a certain sparkle to it that kept me coming back for repeated listens.

Song Picks: Edge of Seventeen, How Still My Love

7/10

Ignored upon release, Black Flag’s debut album has since garnered quite the following as one of the most influential punk rock albums of all time, as well as pretty much giving birth to West Coast Hardcore. Pitchfork ranked it as the 25th best album of the 1980s.

Damaged is incredibly angry, but doesn’t take itself all that seriously, as shown by the inclusion of hilarious tracks such as TV Party, which essentially details a night in in front of the TV ignoring world events. Very much a three chords and the truth kind of album - though Ginn’s guitar on Life of Pain is spectacular , Damaged rattles along at breakneck speed, jumping from power chord to power chord as Robo smashes the drums like a man possessed. Henry Rollins, who had just joined the band, growls over the top of the din with an anger so cathartic that you feel as if you’ve just spent 35 minutes shouting your head off by the time you get to the end of the album, when in fact you’ve just been sat on your arse typing out a review.

Damaged is a train ride into the pits of hell while entertained by a bunch of a clowns with their finger firmly on the pulse of your demise.

“We’ve got nothing better to do,
Than watch TV and have a couple of brews”

Song Picks: TV Party, Rise Above, Gimme Gimme Gimme, Life of Pain

8/10

The Cure’s third album is stylistically similar to Seventeen Seconds from last year’s list, with gloomy atmospheres and sad, detached sounding melodies drifting out from beneath them.

The Holy Hour sets the tone, a song written by Smith whilst in church listening to mass, a song of people slipping away and unfulfilled promises. As with many Cure songs Smith’s guitar work injects just enough energy and hope to stop it being quite as bleak as bands like Joy Division. The album’s only single, Primary, features that fast paced guitar part common on so many of the band’s poppier songs. A song about growing older, the lyrics are once again as bleak as can be, but the overall feel of the song is perhaps as positive as any on the album.

Faith continues the band’s themes of mortality, alienation, and the general futility of life, something that sounds as dour and grey as the album’s cover. But there’s more to it than that, musically there are lights being shone at Smith’s bleak poetics, as if asking him to turn in their direction, as they flicker to instil some hope.

In the caves, all cats are grey
In the caves, the texture coats my skin
In the death cell, a single note rings on and on and on

Song Picks: The Holy Hour, Primary All Cats are Grey, The Drowning Man

8.5/10

Grace Jones’ fifth album was voted as the best album of the year by NME’s writers, and is widely considered as her best album. It sees her turn to a more new-wave style, blending a whole host of genres such as reggae, dub, pop and funk.

Full of drastically re-imagined covers including groovy baselines and Jones’ characteristic vocal style. The highlight of the covers is perhaps that of Bill Wither’s Use Me, which seems written for Jones’ vocal. Of the Grace Jones co-writes, Pull Up to the Bumper is my favourite; another 80s groove-fest, with a bass-line that sounds immediately iconic. Combine that with the wavy synths scattered over the top and you end up with one of the album’s most infectious tracks. Jones’ suggestive lyrics caused much controversy and many radio stations refused to play it on initial release, but that hasn’t stopped it becoming one of her most well known tracks.

Nightclubbing is testament to Jones’ originality. Undoubtedly a massive influence on lots of later pop-music, both in terms of the music itself, but also her image - which works perfectly with the music here - it’s an album completely unafraid to tread its own path, and sounds like the kind of music that people in the Blade Runner universe would listen to. An 80s vision of a future where fun has become sparse, but still seeps through the cracks of an overly sterile world.

Song Picks: Pull Up to the Bumper, Use Me, I’ve Done it Again

8.5/10

Rush’s eighth album continues the more radio-friendly theme started on their previous album Permanent Waves and features two of their most performed songs, Tom Sawyer and Limelight. It was also their best selling album, reaching number 1 in their Canadian homeland, and number 3 in the UK and US.

The opener, Tom Sawyer, is perhaps the quintessential Rush track, we’ve got a whole mix of time signatures, Geddy Lee’s restlessly strolling bass, Alex Lifeson’s atmospheric and powerful guitar, Neil Peart’s incomparable drumming - which is somehow both robotically in time and yet full of boundless human energy - and it all comes together to make something surprisingly accessible. Very prog, but accessible. It’s one of the finest songs in their catalogue for me. But Moving Pictures is no one hit wonder, Red Barchetta creates one of the band’s best stories, a car chase between the titular classic and two more futuristic police vehicles as our protagonist “[laughs] out loud with fear and hope”. Once again the production is punchy, the instrumentation constantly intriguing, and you’re very much kept on your toes throughout.

Moving Pictures is Rush’s most approachable album, and it’s also my favourite. There’s still a pomposity to the lyrics at times, but it seems to work here as the 3 band members are unable to settle on a tempo, time signature, style, or indeed anything. The album has some truly moving moments - YYZ’s magnificently slowed down, almost orchestral mid-section for example - and it’s just full of instrumental brilliance and unique song-structures. A wonderful coming together of all the band’s powers.

Song Picks: Tom Sawyer, Red Barchetta, Limelight, YYZ

9/10

Rickie Lee Jones’ second album is partially a breakup album after her split with musician Tom Waits, it was critical success and was rated as one of the 25 most underrated albums of all time by Word magazine in 2005.

Pirates is an album focused around Jones’ loose piano led song structures. Her spoken word style fits perfectly with the often dreamy, night-time evoking twinkle of her piano playing and the backing instruments. The way Jones weaves intricately poetic vignettes in the verses and then belts prophetically “We belong together”, the song’s title, in the chorus of the opening track is a perfect example of her songwriting skill. She’s clearly capable of writing more standard, accessible hits (just listen to Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking for proof), but she doesn’t want to, preferring to play with musical structures, poetry and even a mix of genres to create something infinitely more unpredictable and interesting. Traces of Western Slopes is a particular inventive highlight describing care-free nightlife with it’s gorgeously meandering verses and sporadic, tight choruses that seem to drop from the night sky.

I do think Jones’ lyrics get lost in the mix at points, particularly when listening on speakers, which is a damn shame considering how great they are, so this is definitely one I’d recommend checking out on headphones.

Pirates is a real gem, an album evoking late-nights walking quiet streets, thoughts coming and going, and a sense of ease.

Song Picks: We Belong Together, Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking, Traces of Western Slopes

9/10

Back after a seven year hiatus, King Crimson released their 8th studio album, and with it they find themselves making yet another appearance on one of these lists with only guitarist and founder Robert Fripp and drummer Bill Bruford remaining from the band’s previous line-up.

Discipline lives up to its name in that it feels more disciplined and tight than King Crimson’s previous albums. There’s less 9 minute prog-rock operas, and more new wave and inventive pieces that march along like intriguing and intricate clockwork. There’s more than a hint of the Talking Heads here with guitar riffs repeating over and over again until, though staying the same, they seem to morph into something different. The driving percussion, such as on Thela Hun Ginjeet, dares you not to move. On Indiscipline we’ve got an absolutely barnstorming riff by Robert Fripp, as Adrian Belew stutters and shouts over the top while Bruford’s drums thrash around like an animal dying to a variety of time signatures. Initially, I felt like the two closing instrumentals felt out of place here, but I’ve changed my mind on that. The Sheltering Sky is beautifully haunting, and the closing title track sounds like the birth of math rock with its plethora of time-signatures weaving in and out of each other hypnotically.

Discipline very much lives up to its name. A tight, well crafted and disciplined album at the base with the band’s inventiveness and musical skill generously sprinkled on top. It’s a triumphant comeback.

Song Picks: Indiscipline, Matte Kudasai, Thela Hun Ginjeet, Discipline

9/10

The second and final album from the experimental group is assembled from largely improvised recordings recorded in a disused refrigerated storeroom at a former meat pie factory in Brixton, known as ‘Cold Storage’ recordings, a studio space the band would continue to run after they disbanded. Deceit was designed to convey the anxiety around nuclear war at the time.

There’s experimental, and then there’s Deceit, at times it’s so chaotic it can barely be called music, at others - Paper Hats is a good example - you can almost dance to it. Throughout its 40 minute duration, I wouldn’t say boundaries are being pushed particularly, but it just feels like they don’t exist. Triumph sounds like a drug-fuelled instantaneous idea coming to life, S.P.Q.R’s drums try to keep things in tow until giving up and imploding at the track’s end, much like the idea of civilisation it depicts, on A New Kind of Water, there’s definitely a rhythm, but it’s so complex that it’s hard to decipher, and anyone unacquainted trying to move to it will quickly look daft. Some have argued the vocals are the band’s weakness, but I think they add to the off-kilter instrumentals, providing the odd warm respite - the ‘chorus’ on Cenotaph for example - while generally expressing the press of stress not being allowed to escape or breathe. There’s a tension to the album crucial to its atmosphere, a feeling that at any moment the whole thing could blow up, never to be heard again.

Deceit is a mood, one of industrial fear and dissonance. It’s easy to say that it’s unlike anything else, which is true, but it also succeeds in transporting you out from wherever you are into its uneven, brash and creaking world.

Song Picks: Radio Prague, Makeshift Swahili, A New Kind of Water

9/10

Beauty and the Beat is one of the most successful debut albums from a sales perspective, selling over 2 million copies. It’s also widely critically lauded as a key album in the ‘new wave’ genre.

The all female group’s debut is nothing short of a delight, and one of the most fun albums I’ve listened to for a while. Belinda Carlisle’s vocal melodies are infectious, and will be bouncing round your head long after the album has finished. How Much More is a great example of both Carlisle’s aforementioned vocal talents, but also how well the band backs her up. As if the vocal melody wasn’t catchy enough in the chorus, the guitar riff that follows is bound to have you bopping around with a smile on your face. The album continues in much the same vein, with perfectly crafted pop-tunes lined up one after the other containing a simplicity that hits you like a refreshing sea breeze.

Beauty and the Beat is a superb album in its own right, but it’s even more remarkable that it was so successful in a business that was - and in many ways still is - so sexist. They were rejected from many record companies for being just another ‘girl band’, something many had decided couldn’t be successful. Even when the album was released they were the victim of sexist reviews, among the worst of which was by NME, who claimed “It sounds like a joyous, bubbling celebration by five cute girls, with no thought inside their darling little heads save for tonight’s beach party,” while others claimed if 5 men from the USA (you know, that famously mistreated group) had made the album, everyone would have hated it.

Beauty and the Beat is powerfully joyous in the face of adversity, and though the band recall being disappointed in how ‘poppy’ the album sounded when they first heard it, beneath its poppy exterior this album’s attitude is as punk as anything out there.

Song Picks: How Much More, Tonite, We Got the Beat

9/10

Youth of America_Wipers.jpg — 4. Youth of America

Wipers

Wipers’ second album saw a sharp change in direction for the band, from the more traditional short song punk group evident on their debut album, to the more experimental, atmospheric group unafraid to put out songs over 10 minutes in length we see on this record. Youth of America is regularly cited as one of the most influential post-punk albums out there.

Sprawling pieces ask questions more than give answers. The vocal melodies are always catchy and often anthemic. No Fair laments the unfairness of existence, and asks 'why?', and the superb Youth of America is defeatist and bleak on the one hand, while also being a call to arms, "we've got to save it now" Sage screams as the blaring guitar threatens to swallow him. The mid-section consists of screeching guitar parts, drowned mumbles and post apocalyptic wails from decaying machinery. The guitar hook returns towards the end of the song’s over ten minute duration as Sage repeats 'Youth of America' into oblivion. You're the only hope he implies, but you don't get the impression he feels the place is worth saving.

Youth of America is a superb desolate landscape of noisy decay, with Sage’s constantly searching soul encapsulated in a vocal performance seemingly born out of endless frustration. It’s a man shouting all the questions we’ll never know the answers to at the sky, knowing full well no one up there gives a shit.

Through your mirror there is such vanity
Tell me, what is it that it wants from me?

Song Picks: No Fair, Youth of America

9.5/10

Glenn Branca’s debut album is seen as a no-wave classic, no-wave being a pun on new wave, a style of music it was trying to be the antithesis of. No wave tried not to recycle and develop ideas that were already there, but create entirely new ones using dissonance and a lot of noise.

Ascension was largely an experiment as to what would happen when you play guitar strings tuned to the same note at high volumes, those high volumes were brought across more in the band’s famous live shows than they are here, where you’ve got control of the volume and are unlikely to submit yourself to an intentionally loud barrage of dissonance unless you’re feeling brave. I’d very much recommend braving it though, it’s worth it.

Probably the most challenging album on this list, Ascension is noisy, unafraid to offend, single-minded and chaotic. Even more experimental than Deceit by This Heat, it took me a few listens to get into the groove. But once I did, the apocalyptic church bells of Lesson No. 2; the teetering close to catchy riffs while sounding like the collapse of society of The Spectacular Commodity; the death march of Structure; and the title track, which finishes the album triumphantly like a persistent siren accompanying an alien invasion, had completely won me over.

Ascension is like a relentless noisy chisel working away all the barnacles you’ve picked up from your earthly voyage, it’s fucking magnificent.

Song Picks: Lesson No. 2, The Spectacular Commodity, The Ascension

9.5/10

Siouxsie and the Banshees’ fourth album is generally seen as one of the most important post-punk albums, and was both critically and commercially successful on release.

Siouxsie Sioux’s vocals have a real sense of importance to them, whether she's singing about being smitten on the opening track, or about what happens after death on Into the Light, her vocals really pull you into the music. The band's solid, multi genre influenced backing adds plenty of intrigue; the way the toms mix with that timeless guitar line on Into the Light is a prime example of the band's talent for creating a unique atmosphere of darkness that is somehow still inviting. ‘Guitar riffs’ would have to be ticked as another of the album’s strengths with the howling effort on Arabian Nights and 2000s indie foreshadowing guitars on Monitor and Halloween being prime examples. In fact, the more I think about it what makes this album are the vocals, and the guitar work, which are both consistently sublime.

Juju is bloody timeless, something not all that common in the 80s. It could have come out yesterday, and it clearly influenced a whole heap of things that did. It also contains probably the best vocal performances of the 80s so far.

Song Picks: Spellbound, Into the Night, Monitor

9.5/10

Kraftwerk’s eighth album deals with the rise of computers in society, it was ranked as the 25th best album of the 1980s by Slant Magazine, and the 18th best by Pitchfork.

Even more relevant now than it was in 1981, as our lives have now well and truly been taken over by computers, Computer World contains more human sadness in its crystal clear synth lines than their previous albums. Despite its content, it feels more soulful somehow, like the resigned cry of someone who’s only method of communication is through the computers they’re surrounded by.

I think what gives Computer World this magical sense of humanity are two things. Firstly, the production is absolutely top drawer, gone is that harshness from some of their earlier albums - and indeed from the albums of many of their contemporaries - and its replaced with an electronic smoothness that can only be described as ‘warm’. Secondly, the synth melodies here are sublime: like futuristic nursery rhymes they somehow cut straight to the core. Those four notes of the two title tracks seem to echo through the stratosphere all the way to the sun, while Computer Love is probably my favourite song of the 80s so far, with a combination of wonderful synth melodies - which were later used by Coldplay on their 2005 song Talk - complementing the lost robotic vocal perfectly. It’s a masterpiece. As Pitchfork put it when rating the song the 53rd best of the 1980s “It's hard not to wonder if the title ‘Computer Love’ was meant as ‘love for computers’ or ‘love through computers.’ Both ideas are now so commonplace and intertwined that they verge on indistinguishable. It’s hard to think of another song out there that so perfectly and warmly sums up the ‘Computer World’ we live in today.

Computer World came completely out of leftfield for me, I’d really liked the previous Kraftwerk albums that appeared on these lists, but I hadn’t loved any of them and I thought this would be the same. How wrong I was. Computer World perfectly predicts the world we live in today, but instead of making that chilling and apocalyptic as is generally done, they’ve approached the topic with warmth and compassion. There’s a sense that no matter how surrounded by computers we get, our humanity will still seep through the cracks, whether that be by the creation of emotive melodies using computerised sounds, or by writing such as this on that computer screen in front of you.

Song Picks: Computer World (1&2), Computer Love, Home Computer,

10/10