Making a revolutionary impact on the American underground scene in the late 1980s, Dinosaur Jr.’s second album ‘You’re Living All Over Me’ is an indie landmark.
The Smiths’ fourth and final album ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ is the sound of Morrissey and Marr trying very hard not to repeat themselves, and succeeding handsomely.
Guns N’ Roses first album ‘Appetite For Destruction’ is still the highest-selling debut in American history, and caused an upheaval in rock and youth culture.
Prince’s 1987 masterpiece ‘Sign O’ The Times’ was arguably the last of its kind – the four-sided vinyl blowout.
The album that catapulted them from household names to global superstars, U2’s career-defining album ‘The Joshua Tree’ turns 30 years old.
One of the most significant building blocks in what we now know as ‘indie’, The Smiths’ 1984 debut album was the start of a short but dazzling career.
The runaway success of Beastie Boys’ 1986 debut album Licensed To Ill marked the point at which rap and hip-hop truly went overground, becoming a mainstream phenomenon for the very first time. Along with Run D.M.C.’s similarly classic Raising Hell just a few months previously, it represented a watershed moment for the genre, finding a home on MTV when previously it was confined to the underground and those in the
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New Order had little left to prove with ‘Brotherhood’, but their fourth album shows that their songwriting was getting sharper all the time.
by Ed Biggs By 1986, nearly three years of quality singles and equally great albums and compilations had established The Smiths as one of the most consistently brilliant and distinctive guitar bands of the eighties, but they had yet to make an undisputed masterpiece – one of those instant, all-time classics that cement an artist’s place in pop history. 1984’s sepia-tinged, self-titled debut had established their trademark sound – jangly guitar
by Ed Biggs Behind the production desk, Steve Albini is one of the most celebrated creative forces in alternative music, with a reputation for helping craft music as harsh and uncompromising as his own attitudes towards what he regards as bullshit, or too mainstream. As a man who has repeatedly turned down major labels and artists unless he shares some kind of artistic simpatico with them, Nirvana’s In Utero and PJ