And that was 1983

So, was jumping back in time to 1983 a more enjoyable experience than 2020?  

For me, generally, I'd say yes - it was a mix of nostalgia and some surprising first time listens.  I can't speak for all of "my audience" but the readership numbers on blog posts were definitely slightly higher - however, there were still some absolutely dreadful albums in there.  

Looking at the best selling albums of the year, unsurprisingly Michael Jackson took the top spot - he didn't get written about because we'd already met him, but he was mentioned in passing a LOT given that he had a 19 week run in the top two and a 35 week run in the top 10.  #2 in the year-end list was Paul Young - of the 23 weeks available to him in the year, he only managed 22 in the top ten.  #3 is slightly more of a surprise being Culture Club, only because it had a mere 11 weeks available in the year, but it never left the top four in that time (and proceeded to stay in the charts for most of 1984 as well).  Rounding off the top five are David Bowie and Wham! - all in all, a pretty fine selection of albums, although I'm still not 100% convinced by Paul's effort as a complete album.  Looking further down the charts we have Spandau Ballet at #6, the first Now compilation at #7 (managed in only 5 weeks) and then Elaine Paige at #8 - who was the highest woman placed and the first album on the list not to make #1 (in only 9 weeks).  

On a slight aside, Xmas sales must have counted for an awfully high percentage of the yearly sales back then - an interesting example being Touch by Eurythmics which only had six weeks available, never got higher than #8 and yet was still #36 in the year end list.  Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) was also in there at #15, making them one of six artists to have two entries in the year-end top 50 along with Michael Jackson, Culture Club, Duran Duran, U2 and Lionel Richie.  

The year-end top ten was rounded out by Genesis and Lionel Richie both firmly harking back to the 70s.  Other albums of particular interest are Elton John's Too Low For Zero at #16 which was the highest placed album that we never met, Heaven 17 (at a pleasing #17) and Big Country (punching well above their weight at #23).

1983 was definitely a year for blokes in bands - even the albums by "names" were generally really just blokes in bands if the truth be told.  Tbh, it's easiest just to name the ones that weren't entirely male - Elaine Paige, Bonnie Tyler, Bananarama, Dionne Warwick, Elkie Brooks (all 100% female) Yazoo, Eurythmics (50%),  The Thompson Twins (33%), The Kids From Fame (who knows?) and Mike Oldfield (if we're being generous and recognising Maggie Reilly's contribution - which is more than Mike did).  Listed like that, there look to be more women involved than I remembered - but digging deeper, between Bonnie in mid May and Elaine in mid November, the only female voice we heard was Maggie's - which is quite some dry spell.

Of the albums featuring women, Yazoo and Eurythmics come out top for me - although I liked most of them (or just accepted they were fine for what they were).  I would say Elaine's wasn't as good as I was expecting but this was nicely balanced by Bananarama's being way better than I was expecting.  Mike's wasn't a great album, but Maggie's contributions certainly elevated it - unlike anyone on The Kids From Fame effort, which was truly excruciating.

Of the guys, I think it's safe to say the quality was variable - most of the ones I liked I already knew with U2, Duran Duran (both of whom appeared twice), The Jam, Culture Club, Big Country, David Bowie, Wham!, Tears For Fears and Spandau Ballet all delivering solid 80s gold.  The year looks good when you just consider the top 25%, doesn't it?

In terms of new-to-me albums, Elvis Costello was the stand-out first time listen, with Marillion, Echo & The Bunnymen, OMD, Heaven 17, Soft Cell and Genesis all feeling like they would be worth investing a bit more time in.  I'm also going to generously call out Kajagoogoo and George Benson for being good examples of that kind of thing, even though it's not really my kind of thing.

In terms of disappointments, I don't think I hated any I expected to like but The Police ran it very close with the first side of their album.  I wasn't expecting to like The Stranglers, but it was a very poor effort indeed and I also feel I was expecting more from Robert Plant, Lionel Richie, Thin Lizzy and Japan than they managed to deliver.  And Cliff, Rod, UB40, Richard Clayderman and Macca are all getting name-checked for delivering albums I was setting a low quality bar for - which they all miserably failed to reach.

And finally, I'm going to namecheck Black Sabbath, ELO and Asia because I can't even remember listening to them - which is "impressive" considering it really wasn't THAT long ago.

Taking a slightly broader view, it's interesting to consider the number of #1 debuts this year - it happened just 10 times in 1983, as opposed to 39 times in 2020.   This also meant there were considerably fewer albums that made it #1 - 22 in 1983 as opposed to 44 in 2020.  I only actually listened to the #1 album of the week once - and yes, that's partly because I'm travelling backwards in time but it also shows that albums hung around the top of the chart longer back then than they do now (with the notable exception of Harry this year and Ed and Adele every bloody year recently it feels).  I thought it was nice to venture a bit further down the charts - although I was surprised we never made it out of the top ten, with #9 being the furthest down we made it (it will be interesting to see whether we manage that in earlier years).

The generally accepted (by the internet or me!) best albums from the year that we never got close to seeing are  Speaking In Tongues by Talking Heads (#21), Murmur by REM (nowhere!), Kill 'Em All by Metallica (also nowhere), She's So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper (#16), High Land Hard Rain by Aztec Camera (#22), Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits (#62), Eliminator by ZZ Top (#3, but not until a 75 week run in '84/'85), Madonna's eponymous debut (#6, but not until a 47 week run in '85/'86), Soul Mining by The The (#27) and Billy Bragg's Life's A Riot With Spy vs Spy (#30, but not until '85).  Most of these that I know I would say are fine albums, but very few of them conform to the classic 80s album stereotype - but we've certainly met plenty of them on our travels over the year.

But wow - we've got time for one last minute surprise for me from 1983!  I'd actually already written up Synchronicity because it is (allegedly) the 159th best album ever (spoiler alert - it isn't).  It's odd that I didn't remember it, but I was very pleased to see I used the phrase "a game of two halves" in both reviews because this album is, if nothing else, the very definition of that.

Overall, I enjoyed going back to the dim and distant past, although there was a bit more dross than I was expecting.  There was also more variety than I was expecting - I suspect the lack of rap dominating the chart every week allowed a few more "treasures" to sneak in.  

However, I was surprised at how few we'd owned between the pair of us - I had a desperate thought that this might have been because I didn't count albums I'd previously met, so decided I'd add them in, but it turns out that Thriller and Power, Corruption and Lies were the only albums discarded for this reason (I've met surprisingly few from 1983 before!), only one of which I've ever owned, so that only brings us up to 14/54 - just sneaking us over the quarter mark at 25.93%, which is a lot lower than I was expecting.  Oh well, as Boris would say, "them's the breaks".

So, for the next year's selection, I want to push the owned ratio up, so I took a cheaty look through the best selling albums of the next 15 years to see which seemed the most likely candidate.  I was side-tracked (and almost tempted) by the sheer awfulness of 1989 - the top ten albums of the year feature Jason, Kylie, Simply Red and TWO Gloria Estefan albums.  And the next ten includes Bobby Brown, Jive Bunny and London Boys - that was quite some year!  But the need for quality won through and I've settled on 1996, which looks quite hopeful.  See you there!

02/01/83 - A somewhat uninspiring end to the year
29/12/96 - Girl power!