The 80 Best Albums of the 1980s

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The 1980s might conjure up images of leg warmers, parachute pants, moonwalking, Flock of Seagulls haircuts and any number of John Hughes movies. But looking back at the decade’s best albums, those years were extremely diverse. They saw the last vestiges of a vibrant punk scene and the beginnings of post-punk and New Wave; the rise of hip-hop and an explosion of great college radio; the brief ascension of rootsy singer/songwriters to mainstream country stardom; and the establishment of some almost-universally beloved pop stars. Today we celebrate our favorite albums that arose from the ’80s. There’s a little bit of rap, folk, country, jazz, pop and a lot of rock ’n’ roll in its various incarnations. Here are the 80 best albums of the 1980s.

60. Camper Van Beethoven – Key Lime Pie (1989)
Cracker was a bright spot on the modern-rock-radio landscape in the early ’90s, but even better was David Lowery’s earlier band, Camper Van Beethoven. The self-described “surrealist absurdist folk” group incorporated world music, psychedelia and Americana into a sound that was completely unique, driven by violins, Greg Lisher’s electric guitar and Lowery’s caustic humor.—Josh Jackson

59. The Fall – Hex Enduction Hour (1982)
In my alternate universe, The Fall would have the top 12 or so slots on this list. If I could only pick one, though, and if that one can’t be an EP (sorry, Slates!), then Hex Enduction Hour would get the nomination after an unusually rancorous brokered convention. Basically it’s classic second-wave Fall at the peak of the twin-drummer/pre-Brix era, a lumbering rock ’n’ roll juggernaut built on plodding repetition and Mark E. Smith’s caustically hilarious lyrics. In classic Fall fashion, both band and record are entirely indifferent to whatever an audience could theoretically want.—Garrett Martin

58. Midnight Oil – Diesel and Dust (1987)
Peter Garrett had joined the Oils more than a decade before Diesel and Dust made the Australian band a U.S. success, and that decade of playing together paid off in concert. Diesel and Dust showcased a band at its peak, full of righteous fury—packaged in four-minute modern-rock gems. There wasn’t much subtlety in Garrett’s screed, but the vitriol at the way his country—like so many others—had treated its indigenous population was well placed. And no artist arguably had a bigger impact on his government as he later joined it, fighting for native rights and environmental protections.—Josh Jackson

57. Fugazi – 13 Songs (1989)
Fugazi stirred up a movement with the strong-handed sense of integrity with which they toured, recorded and released music throughout their career. But it’s not the group’s ethics that should have been getting them press all the time—it was their gymnasium-filling, intelligent brand of punk rock. Released in 1989, Fugazi’s 13 Songs had a title that would only be self-applied by a group of honest musicians that wanted their tracks taken at face value. The album was a compilation of their first EPs, 1988’s Fugazi and 1989’s Margin Walker.—Tyler Kane

56. Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking (1988)
Jane’s Addiction’s major-label debut, 1988’s Nothing’s Shocking, helped inspire the alternative rock movement that would put an end to nearly a decade of cheese-metal. The album introduced the world to frontman Perry Farrell’s quirky squawk, Dave Navarro’s hero-level guitar solos, bassist Eric Avery’s raw compositions and drummer Stephen Perkins’ hammering rhythms. Inspiring the likes of Billy Corgan and Trent Reznor, who would blow up in the next decade, the album fused the best parts of punk, funk and metal with with pin-drop-quiet verses and thundering choruses that showed listeners how dynamically volume could be used. It included the super-popular acoustic bit “Jane Says,” but the album’s real shining moment is the epic Ted Bundy-inspired, seven-minute “Ted, Just Admit It.”—Tyler Kane

55. David Bowie – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
“There’s a brand new talk,” David Bowie sings on Scary Monsters’s “Fashion,” “but I don’t know its name.” That sense of being slightly disconnected from the punk crowd of the late ’70s and the nascent New Wave scene echoes throughout the album. It’s Bowie trying to figure out exactly where he fits in at that moment in time, and for that reason it’s one of his most underrated albums. While it didn’t produce any massive hits, it did see the return of his Major Tom character on “Ashes to Ashes,” and Bowie manages to work in a dig at the new kids on “Teenage Wildlife”: “A broken-nosed mogul are you/One of the new wave boys/Same old thing in brand new drag.” In short, it’s a legacy artist reminding us that while fads come and go, he’ll always remain relevant, and in that sense, it’s a roaring success.—Bonnie Stiernberg

54. Steve Earle – Guitar Town (1986)
If Bruce Springsteen had grown up in Texas, listening to Lefty Frizzell on the radio in a beat-up pick-up truck, he might have sounded a lot like Steve Earle. Earle has the Boss’s ability to tell blue-collar stories with just the right details and just the right guitar licks, but Earle sets his tales in small Texas towns and gives his riffs a tell-tale twang. Earle, who once played bass for Guy Clark, cut some singles for Epic that went nowhere, but 1986’s Guitar Town was his debut album, and he never topped this country-rock evocation of the forgotten kids too small for a football scholarship, too restless to stay home and too tough to give up. Co-producers Emory Gordy and Tony Brown turned four of them (“Hillbilly Highway,” “Guitar Town,” “Someday,” and “Goodbye’s All We’ve Got Left”) into Top 40 country hits.—Geoffrey Himes

53. Los Lobos – By the Light of the Moon (1987)
In 1987, Los Lobos released not only the finest album of their career but also their sole top-20 single, the #1 “La Bamba.” The single came from a totally unrelated project, the soundtrack for the Ritchie Valens biopic, and had the unfortunate side effect of eclipsing By the Light of the Moon, the ’80s equivalent of The Band. Here was an album that asked the big questions about the American dream and answered them not with grand slogans but with tightly drawn vignettes about gun-filled streets, unemployed veterans, disappointed immigrants and single mothers, all translated by lovely, stoic singing and impeccable picking. These songs were framed by an old Mexican folk song that echoed the past and a rollicking rock ’n’ roll number, “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes,” that imagined a better future.—Geoffrey Himes

52. Squeeze – East Side Story (1981)
By 1981, Squeeze had three progressively better-selling albums under their belt, and songwriting partners Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook were building a budding career as New Wave tunesmiths with hits like “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” and “Another Nail in My Heart”—but they chucked all that for their fourth release, adding keyboardist/blue-eyed soul singer Paul Carrack to the lineup and working with Elvis Costello and pub rockers Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe on the sessions for “East Side Story.” The result was one of their most consistent albums—smoothly polished, but not lacking for sonic warmth, and boasting arguably the band’s definitive hit, the Carrack-sung “Tempted.” Unfortunately, “Story” wasn’t quite the gateway to greater success that it sounded like at the time—in fact, it presaged a period of massive turnover and generally declining commercial success—but for fans of Difford and Tilbrook’s indelible melodies and rueful, acerbic humor, it remains a high point.—Jeff Giles

51. John Hiatt – Bring the Family (1987)
By 1987, John Hiatt had been on the verge of Next Big Thingdom for over a decade, with seven commercially disappointing albums and a pair of ex-labels to show for it. Without a U.S. deal and on the verge of walking away from the record business, Hiatt took a small advance from his UK label, holed up in the studio for four days with McCabe’s booker John Chelew, and emerged with the album that saved his career: Bring the Family. Recorded with a crack band that included Jim Keltner on drums, Nick Lowe on bass, and Ry Cooder on guitar, Family is a 10-song suite of songs borne of disappointment, loss, and a nagging, persistent belief in a better tomorrow. For anyone who’s ever closed a dark chapter in their past, taken a deep breath and tried to start again, Bring the Family bears the sting of familiar, hard-fought truth—and although he’d go on to record better-selling albums, none of them sound quite as real, raw, or earned as this.—Jeff Giles