After the tentative first steps of ‘Movement’, New Order’s second album ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’ saw them truly begin their post-Joy Division journey.
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 Although they hailed from the comparatively affluent neighbourhood of Hollis in Queens, the trio Run-D.M.C., consisting of rappers Joseph “Run” Simmons and Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels and music Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell were arguably the most respected and authentic voices back in the mid-1980s of the then-embryonic genre now known as hip-hop.
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
by Ed Biggs Although it quickly earned itself a reputation as being one of the most outrageously loud guitar debuts in pop history, it’s impossible to understand the last 30 years of British rock without an appreciation of Psychocandy, the first album by The Jesus & Mary Chain. Before, ‘noise’ wasn’t really a distinct concept in pop music, simply a function of the volume at which guitars were played.
