Another year ticked off!

I had pretty high hopes for 1986 - how did it work out?

It started pretty slowly with a load of US dross and some very dodgy UK albums, but towards the middle of the year it went on a surprisingly decent run which perked things up no end. Ownership was, in terms of the albums we met, pretty low, with only seven owned which was a lot lower than I expected - but there are a few albums that we'd already met on previous lists that are in the house somewhere including Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and The Smiths. For some unclear reason, most of ownership was by the lovely Mrs Reed - I've no idea what I was buying in 1986, but it appears it often wasn't chart material.

Looking at the best selling albums of the year. Madonna took the crown - six weeks at #1 certainly helped matters along here! The rest of the top five were a similarly low-key selection of Dire Straits (TEN weeks at #1 for an album that had already been out for six months), Now 8 (five weeks at #1), Paul Simon (another five) and Whitney Houston (a mere three weeks at #2).

The rest of the top ten is, once we get past Now 7 at #6, somewhat more understated with A-ha. Queen, Five Star and Eurythmics making up the numbers. Something else that jumped out at me from the top 50 are the number of compilations - Hits 5 (#11) and 4 (#12), best-ofs from Wham! (#13), The Police (#15), Kate Bush (#16), Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music (#18), Queen (#35 - and they also had a live album at #38) and a couple of soundtracks for Top Gun (#27) and Rocky IV (#44). I'm also going to call out Suzanne Vega's eponymous debut (#46) which I was disappointed to miss this year (she came close in several weeks).

Looking at the albums we saw, let's start with the ladies because, although they did well in the top ten, they didn't do so well in meeting us.  I'm never entirely sure whether Sade counts as a solo artist or a group, but it was easily the best female lead album of the year. In terms of definite solo artists, Madonna's offerings were dominated by decent singles but were otherwise variable (and True Blue was patently better than Like A Virgin) and Tina Turner's was not hateful but very inessential - and that was it. Looking at bands featuring women (to various degrees), they had a bit more success with albums of varying quality - The Pretenders and both the Eurythmics offerings were the best of the bunch, Five Star were OK, Cocteau Twins was exactly as you'd expect whilst Human League's offering was really very poor (but it would be harsh to blame the women for that).

Sticking with the groups but moving on to the men, there were some very decent albums throughout the year - Talk Talk and Tears For Fears were the pick of the bunch, but Bon Jovi, Big Country, The Housemartins, A-ha (twice), Simple Minds, Go West and Depeche Mode all came out with very decent offerings as well. Most of the other offerings were pretty listenable but I'm going to call out The SOS Band for being surprisingly enjoyable, Huey Lewis for being so popular for such an average offering, Cameo for being incredibly dated and UB40 for being super dull (if somehow not quite as bad as expected).

Looking at the single guys, Sting takes the top spot for the year for a top notch album with Phil Collins and Billy Ocean also getting name-checks for decent albums. Most of the rest of the pack were a strange mix of bland yet amazingly successful, but Chris de Burgh is getting called out for not being as bland as you'd imagine whereas Paul Young and Feargal Sharkey get mentioned for being really exceptionally bland. I also have to admit that, whatever you think of Prince and Ozzy Osborne, they certainly aren't bland and Elvis Costello's offering is also somewhat unexpected. And we finish up with two albums which don't fit in any description so far - Top Gun and Comic Relief, both of which pretty much do what's expected of them and I won't ever feel the need to experience them again.

Looking at the number of #1 debuts this year, we only saw nine of them, which is lower than the ten we saw in '83. Also bucking the general upward trend is the number of albums that made it to the top - 14, as opposed to 22 in '83. A lot of the blame for this can be placed squarely at the feet of Dire Straits, Hits 4, Bryan Ferry, Madonna, Now 7, Paul Simon and Now 8 who had FORTY weeks at the top between them!

The generally accepted (by the internet or me) best albums from the year that we didn't get to meet are Metalllica's Master Of Puppets (peaked at #41), Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill (#28, but not until '14), R.E.M.'s Lifes Rich Pageant (#43), New Order's Brotherhood (#9), Janet Jackson's Control (#8 in '87), Billy Bragg's Talking With The Taxman About Poetry (#8), Anita Baker's Rapture (#13 in '87), The Bangles' Different Light (#3 in '87), Run DMC's Raisin' Hell (#41) Siouxsie & The Banshees' Tinderbox (#13), XTC's Skylarking (#90!), Throwing Muses eponymous album (didn't chart) and The The's Infected (#14).

1986 had its bad points - the dominance of the Now! and Hits collections along with Dire Straits and Madonna's behemoths (neither of which are great) isn't a good thing and there were a load of albums that sold very well for no obvious reason. However, there were some absolute classic albums released this year, some of which I only listened to for the first time as part of this exercise - shame on me! I'm going to pick a top three albums of the year we didn't meet (Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and The Smiths), a top four we did (Talk Talk, Tears For Fears, Sting and Sade) and a top three first time listens (A-ha, A-ha and Eurythmics). So, reviews-wise it definitely started slowly but overall I was very pleased with the general level of quality on display.

Where to next? That's a decision for 2025, methinks!

28/12/03 - Perfectly pleasant, but...
05/01/86 - A decent album to end the year