This 1980s compilation includes some artists and groups you don’t hear much of anymore. When’s the last time you heard China Crisis (other than in reference to Taiwan). Or Strange Advance?
On the flip side, there are some very well known artists and groups represented here. Love Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill,” Blondie’s “Call Me,” and Naked Eyes’s “Always Something There to Remind Me.”
Do you remember these songs from the Eighties? Any favorites? GRADE: B
TRACKLIST:
| 1 | Naked Eyes– | Always Something There To Remind Me | 3:40 |
| 2 | Talk Talk– | It’s My Life | 3:52 |
| 3 | China Crisis– | Working With Fire & Steel | 3:59 |
| 4 | Duran Duran– | Girls On Film | 3:31 |
| 5 | Blondie– | Call Me | 3:30 |
| 6 | Billy Idol– | Dancing With Myself | 3:18 |
| 7 | The Power Station– | Some Like It Hot | 5:05 |
| 8 | Kate Bush– | Running Up That Hill (12″ Mix) | 5:43 |
| 9 | Simple Minds– | Promised You A Miracle (Special Extended Version) | 6:14 |
| 10 | Spandau Ballet– | To Cut A Long Story Short | 3:20 |
| 11 | Strange Advance– | We Run | 3:56 |
| 12 | Endgames– | First, Last For Everything (Club Version) | 4:36 |
| 13 | R.E.M.– | The One I Love | 3:17 |
| 14 | Ultravox– | Dancing With Tears In My Eyes | 4:09 |
| 15 | Killing Joke– | Love Like Blood | 6:42 |
| 16 | Simple Minds– | Love Song (Philadelphia Bluntz Remix)Remix – Philadelphia Bluntz | 6:39 |
I all of them except for Strange Advance and Endgame. My favorites are the Kate Bush, Blondie, REM, and Talk Talk. The ones I don’t like are the ones by Ultravox and Speandau Ballet.
Steve, this compilation CD clearly pleased you more than my past few musical choices! It’s hard to go wrong listening to Kate Bush, Blondie, REM, and Talk Talk.
As with Steve, I have no memory of hearing of nor from Endgames nor Strange Advance. The others are very vaguely to utterly familiar, with China Crisis indeed my most obscure that I actually recall existing.
Favorite songs here would run to Blondie’s “Call Me” (Debbie Harry’s performance on that one even more bravura than usual), the REM, and that might be about it for genuinely liking, though I liked Simple Minds well enough and refreshing the memory (?) of either of their songs (Someone likes them at the repackaging label) might score them as well. The Billy Idol is almost a baseline example of a song I don’t mind hearing but wouldn’t make any effort to seek out. I was amused to mishear the lyrics of the Duran Whiners as “Girls on Pills” on first audition. Is the Talk Talk a cover version of the Animals hit, as the Ultravox is of the Leadbelly? I imagine that those could be at least interesting. The Naked Eyes a bit earwormy for my taste, but it is bouncy.
Aha (not the band), I assumed too much about reusing classic titles in both synthpop band’s records. Clearly I have no memory of either new single. Who the hell wants their song confused with Leadbelly’s hit, the Dubin and Burke composition and widely-covered classic? X recorded the first cover of that song I heard.
Leadbelly: https://youtu.be/n7d6Ukr6d_w
The Ultravox has a nice chord progression, but doesn’t cut it in comparison.
Even Ruth Etting’s rather “straight” recital of the Broadway tune is at least as catchy as the ’80s new song. https://youtu.be/c34U45I_fsg
Todd, thanks for the link!
Todd, I’m not sure I have any songs by Leadbelly on any of my music CDs.
Well, if you have any Weavers, you definitely have some Leadbelly covers…and, of course, all the pop folk bands were mining the Weavers songbook as much as possible…
Todd, Jeff Smith is a big Weavers fan. I’m sure I have a Weavers CD or two around here somewhere.
The Talk Talk song is not the same one as The Animals. Ultravox had a better song with Vienna.
I was living in Los Angeles in the 1980s and listening almost non-stop to KROQ which, at the time, was THE place to hear New Wave/Alternative music, so I am actually familiar with all of these songs. My favorites include China Crisis’s “Working with Fire and Steel”, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill”, Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life”, and Simple Minds’s “I Promised You A Miracle” (my favorite Simple Minds song). This is really one of the more representative collections of what I think of as “KROQ music” (now on SiriusXM as Channel 33 “First Wave/Classic Alternative”—they even have some of the old KROQ DJs).
Deb, I’ll have to check out Sirius/XM Radio’s Channel 33. Diane’s favorite station is Channel 6: The Coffee House. I listen to Channel 66: Watercolors (Smooth Jazz) most.
The only two I really love are the R.E.M. and Kate Bush, both of which require a footnote: I must admit that I’d never heard the Bush song until it became famous again after it appeared in STRANGER THINGS. And any remark I make about R. E. M. should include the fact that I consider them to be the greatest American band.
Michael, I need to listen to more R.E.M.
Here’s some help, George. Try “Losing My Religion”, “Fall on Me”, and the very un-REM like “Shiny Happy People”. If those don’t get you, you’ve at least given it your best shot.
Michael, thanks for the recommendations for R.E.M. songs! I plan to post a review of an R.E.M. album in a few weeks.
Also, the likes of “Rockville” and “Pretty Persuasion”, from their second album, and “Orange Crush”…the irony of “Shiny Happy People” is certainly REM’s wheelhouse, and the B-52s’ (as they borrow a member from that band to sing on that track). As a Byrds and Fairport guy, their grounding in folk and country rock didn’t hurt my feelings any. But I was more drawn to punk and serious jazz-rock (Sade, some of Sting’s when the lyrics weren’t too creepy, Gil Scott-Heron).
Todd, I love Sade and I have several Sting CDs waiting to be listened to.
Start with “Life’s Rich Pageant” which includes my favorite REM song, “Fall on Me”. Then I’d recommend listening to “Out of Time” (which features a couple of their bigger commercial successes, but also “Near Wild Heaven” and “Me and Honey”—both so, so good). I’m not as big a fan of their “Green” and “Monster” albums, although they both have some good songs too.
Deb, I’ll have to find LIFE’S RICH PAGEANT and OUT OF TIME which are around here somewhere. Thanks for the recommendations!
Usual mashup of actual hits and secondary tunes. I like the ones I recognise. I think of the ’80s as the decade of male groups who all tended to sound alike–Spandau Ballet, Thompson Twins, a-ha, Mr. Mister . . . Our older daughter was a big B-52s and REM fan, and on a trip through the South, we stopped in Athens, GA, where she led us through all the REM sites. At 16 she knew more about those groups than the ladies at the city visitor centre did.
Fred, I’m impressed by your daughter’s vast musical knowledge! You did a great job raising her!
16 is an excellent age to conduct and retain a deep research dive. “And this is where they opened for the dBs and Pylon!” Chamber of Commerce employees will be overmatched. (“I don’t have any notes on a band called…was that ‘decibels’?”)
Todd, at 16 I started to have some money to fund my growing book buying addiction and album acquisition.
I might recognize more if I heard them because this was when my kids were listening to rock. Often I am not very title cognizant.
“Patti, I share your title problem. Plus, it doesn’t help when artists like Bob Dylan title their songs like “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35″–not referred to in the song–and even the The Beatles did it with A Day In The Life.”
But in that duo, at least the Beatles song has interesting rather than precious lyrics. (It’s an easy shot ’cause it’s true.)
Todd, The Beatles always knew what they were doing.
That’s simple – No, for the most part. I didn’t listen to that music then and couldn’t identify it if I heard it now. Obviously there are exceptions: Call Me being the first, and the cover of Always Something There to Remind Me being the second.
Jeff, I was watching a lot of MTV in the 1980s so I associate some of these songs with the videos I watched.
Since all good music stopped around 1972, there’s not much here for me!
Bob, I’ll have some 1970s music coming up in a couple of weeks.