Another one down
My expectations for 1988 were mostly dross, but with some intermittent highspots throughout - how did it do?
Mostly dross is harsh actually - mostly average with some intermittent highspots is a lot fairer. Ownership was at eleven which was a bit lower than I was expected - I was buying quite a few albums around this time, but maybe not so many from the charts. There were also very few owned that we've met previously - Tracy Chapman is the only one that jumps out at me.
Looking at the best selling albums of the year, I think it's fair to say it's not a great top five. Kylie took the crown following by Cliff Richard's best-of, Michael Jackson, Now! 13 (which we never investigated, but is obviously easily the best album out of this lot) and Bros (which never made #1). What a selection!
The next five are a much better selection Wet Wet Wet, Tracy Chapman, Terence Trent D'Arby, Fleetwood Mac and U2 - whilst I don't love all of them, they are at least listenable and feature a decent amount of craft. There are an awful of compilations in the top 50 of the year with 24 of them being either best-ofs, soundtracks or random compilations - including Now! 11 and 12 as well as 13. Looking through the rest of the chart for albums that caught my eye drew a complete blank I'm afraid - we've seen most of them and, boringly, none of them are horrendous.
Looking at the albums we saw, let's start with the solo men since good old Cliff was at #1 when we started (although fortunately it was a best-of, so we didn't have to suffer it). The easy winner was Bruce Springsteen with a very decent album which was pretty much all his own work -Terence Trent D'Arby felt like he also did a good job but I just couldn't get with his voice. I'd say most of the rest were "fine" with Rick Astley (twice), Alexander O'Neal, Billy Ocean, Luther Vandross, Chris de Burgh, Steve Winwood, Morrissey, Rod Stewart (just about) and Prince (also just about) hitting these lofty heights with Jean-Michel Jarre being the only album I really couldn't see any redeeming features in.
The mix of genres is very much continued into the male groups with a surprisingly wide range of sounds on offer - and some of them were also surprisingly bearable. My favourites were ones I already owned - Pet Shop Boys, Deacon Blue and Hothouse Flowers with U2 also getting a mention for some great tracks, but I'd forgotten how much of a mess the album is as a whole. Considering first time listens, (particularly) The Proclaimers, Talking Heads, The Mission, The Pogues and The Christians (although I'm not entirely sure it was a first time listen) all produced fine albums that I would like to listen to again.
None of those were all that surprising in their enjoyableness - for that we have to consider the heavier options with Iron Maiden, Magnum, Whitesnake and AC/DC producing albums that didn't make my ears bleed (and the first two were almost enjoyable) - but don't worry, Metallica provided a suitable amount of pain. However, that album pales into insignificance when compared to Bros' sonic torture - it made Johnny Hates Jazz and Brother Beyond seem like masterpieces in comparison (whilst accepting that none of them had me in mind as their target market).
All the rest of the albums from male groups fall into the "perfectly fine" category, with some of them being surprisingly enjoyable because of my low expectations (Wet Wet Wet, our first visit visit with Erasure, The Pasadenas, Bon Jovi) and some of them being surprisingly disappointing because of my high(er) expectations (Level 42, Aztec Camera, A-ha, our second visit with Erasure). I am going to have to call out Huey Lewis though because I had low expectations for this and he comfortably failed to meet them - it was just so dull.
Moving on to the solo ladies, I think we have a surprising winner with Yazz because my expectations were low on this, but it was really well done - and I can also say the same for Enya. Most of the other ladies delivered exactly what you'd expect - this was true for Kylie (surprisingly enjoyable considering how much of it is rubbish), Sade (good, but also very disappointing), Whitney Houston, Belinda Carlisle, Mica Paris and Alison Moyet. Not meeting expectations were Joyce Sims (because I didn't have any - it's well done, but has dated badly) and Tiffany (which was considerably odder than I was expecting, but not exactly great).
Which only leaves us the female-lead groups which weren't overly represented this year - with just Fairground Attraction, which was perfectly fine and two T'Pau albums, with Bridge Of Spies being considerably better than whatever the other one was called. All in all, there were fifteen albums which featured a significant female input this year - that's better than '86 (9) but not as good as '90 (18).
Looking at the number of #1 debuts this year, we saw twelve of them which is higher than the nine we saw in '86 and '90 but I should point out that three of them were Now! offerings. The total number of albums that made it to #1 was 22, which is also higher than '86 (14) and '90 (18) - Terence Trent D'Arby was easily the winner with eight weeks at the top and Kylie also did well to manage six weeks. Compilations also did very well this year with the Now! albums holding the top spot for twelve weeks (across four albums) - what was less expected was Nite Flite (an R&B collection which I recognise very few of) managing four weeks and Hot City Nights (a decent, if peculiar, rock collection) managing one week. And we also had three weeks at the top for the Dire Straits best-of and two weeks for Cliff with everyone buying it for their gran for Xmas - what they weren't buying was promotional Japanese copies of Whitesnake's album because, at £1,146.47, this was the most expensive album we saw this year.
The generally accepted (by the internet or me) best albums from the year that we didn't get to meet are Pixies' Surfer Rosa (peaked at #47), R.E.M.'s Green (#27 - obviously a great album), Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden (#19 - interestingly quirky), N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton (#35), Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back (#8), The Travelling Wilbury's Vol 1 (#16), The Sugarcubes' Life's Too Good (#14 - this is good), Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man (#48), The Happy Mondays' Bummed (#59), The Primitives' Lovely (#6), Siouxsie & The Banshees' Peepshow (#20), Billy Bragg's Workers Playtime (#17), Michelle Shocked's Short Sharp Shocked (#33 - I really like this album but it's not available anywhere after she spectacularly killed her career), Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation (#99) and Voice Of The Beehive's Let It Bee (#13).
And one final pair of statistics - the most read post of the year was, somewhat surprisingly, Magnum (with Morrissey and Rick Astley not far behind) and the least read post (by quite a margin) was Chris de Burgh - I can only hope that he's not overly disappointed sat over there in his Irish castle on his massive pile of cash.
There were an awful lot of average albums this year but, pleasingly, very few dreadful ones - however I am going to have to call out Metallica and Bros for what they put me through. The three best albums I already knew were Deacon Blue, Pet Shop Boys and Bruce Springsteen and the three best first time visits were The Proclaimers, The Pogues and Yazz, with The Christians getting the nod as the best "I'm not sure if I've heard this before or not" choice.
So - where to next? '94 - here we come...
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