Ah 1988. What an interesting year when I look at the music. I would say for me the album of the year was and is Idlewild by Everything But the Girl. Some fun albums in 1988 that I still often listen to today.
20. One by Metallica
I was never a big Metallica fan, but I love the idea of the song and how they paired it with some old strange movie.
19. Illegal Business by Boogie Down Productions
This album was the first rap album I ever bought, and it still holds up extremely well.
18. Out of Blue Comes Green by a-ha
This would be the last a-ha album I would by on its release. A solid album that had a good month long run where it was with me every day in my Walkman.
17. These Early Days by Everything But the Girl
A great song. Not much else to say about it, but lyrically it has always really hit home with me.
16. If Not Now by Tracy Chapman
I got into this album a few years later, but I do love this album and this song. She is such an incredible vocal performer, I think.
15. Where Is My Mind? by Pixies
I wouldn't discover the pixies for another 8 years or so.
14. Paradise by Sade
A very underrated album from Sade. Just a fantastic song and it really does not sound like it is from the 80's.
13. Everyday Is Like Sunday by Morrissey
This song and this album were big plays for me in 1988.
12. Under the Milky Way by The Church
I saw them live at UK and then the next night at WKU on this tour.
11. Fisherman's Blues by The Waterboys
Great album. Highly recommend listening to it now, it's a fun listen.
10. Chrysalis by The Railway Children
A band that I really do like and still listen to quite a bit.
9. My Philosophy by Boogie Down Productions
The first rap song I ever played for my daughter when she was in 2nd grade, I think. I mean played in the terms of, listen to this song and the lyrics.
8. Dixie Flyer by Randy Newman
I absolutely love the sound of this song. It's the best thing he ever did, though this is a very good album.
7. Haunt Me by Sade
This song has grown and grown on me.
6. A Pleasure by The Railway Children
For a long time when I would go onto Spotify and want to hear the Railway Children they didn't have their first album but this one, their second album. I've listened to these songs a lot more now then I did back in 1988 when I first bought it.
5. Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
I loved this song in 1988 still love it today.
4. Air of December by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians
I had a friend in college who absolutely loved this album, but this song really connected with me around 1992.
3. Don't You Need by Melissa Etheridge
So this song and Air of December were on the same mix tape that someone made for me in 1992, that's all I'll say about that. But they have both stuck with me ever since.
2. Tears All Over Town by Everything But the Girl
Over the years different songs from this album have been my favorite, but this song has consistently been right there for me.
1. Suedehead by Morrissey
This is 1988 to me. I think about working in a green house and picking lettuce and listening to this album or talk radio and that is 1988 to me.
Same on Metallica, same on "One." In my head, that song, which I never seek out, is the opposite in so many ways of "Ain't Got No" by Nina Simone, which I often seek out. I think both are just tremendous pieces of art, and I'm so thankful that both characters were depicted by these artists. Left to my own devices, I tend to avoid seeing/hearing/thinking about actual people represented by the characters.
ReplyDeleteIt's a terrific song, but I do say that, as a parent, I can't exactly groove with Everything But the Girl on "These Early Days." I remember one night when she was about a month old that our daughter was just inconsolable at a level for which there was just simply no relief. The daughter's grief was so complete that it was causing my wife physical pain, and so I took the girl as far away as I could from my wife in the house and sat in the floor just enduring the experience. I've always felt my daughter was just so hacked at her new reality, for which, of course, there was no logical argument for me or any other human to make--just a total Wailing Wall situation.
ReplyDeleteSo, anyway, I really like the song, but "nothing's happened yet that you might ever wish to forget" ... I doubt it.
OK, finally! Finally! Tracy Chapman might've been the only of these artists through all of these great playlists that I legitimately got in with at the popular ground floor. This will be an exaggeration, but it was pretty much after hearing "Fast Car" the first time on the radio that I drove out to the mall in Bowling Green and paid full price for the Tracy Chapman record. It was different, and I liked it, and I wanted it!
ReplyDeleteSo glad she has gotten to make a bunch of new money in the last few years. That dude who did the really popular cover ... really thankful for that dude.
My now-15-year-old daughter is such a big fan of Sade that she actually takes offense when I say anything even the least bit vaguely critical of anything about her--like I prefer this song to that song, and my daughter gets hacked at me that I don't enough like that song. Ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteYour UK/WKU Church back-to-back is one of my favorite events of the 1980s. It's odd I can't exactly place which girl I had a crush on at the time, but I feel somewhat certain it fell in the short window of my crush on the girl to whom I associated "Coming Up Close" by Aimee Mann.
ReplyDeleteThe building in which the Church played at WKU, by the way, in the upper ballroom above which the College Heights Herald was produced, no longer exists.
Waterboys ... wow. I liked them then, but I love them even more now. Love the whole way that Mike Scott formed and has run that whole deal. Loved a lot of the offshoots, especially World Party. Godspeed, Karl Wallinger (19 October 1957 – 10 March 2024)! Great, great band. Thank God for them and the gift of music!
ReplyDeleteCracks me up which songs you pick from the albums sometimes (to wit, "Air of December" from Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars).
ReplyDeleteSomeone put it on a playlist once and so that song has special meaning for me.
DeleteWhen I first heard "Suedehead," I thought we were about to have a decade or so of Morrissey being a giant, giant star. In that same way that it felt so improbable that Sting would have a giant career beyond the Police when he went solo, I was like, wow, here we go with Morrissey vis-à-vis the Smiths.
ReplyDeleteAnother terrific, terrific playlist. Thanks for creating and posting it. What a blast!
ReplyDelete