- Best album of 1986 easily goes to The Feelies for The Good Earth. Unavailable for many years on iTunes, I actually converted my vinyl to digital format before it finally came out a couple years ago. Here's one song, a very Peter Buck-influenced The High Road.
- Candy Apple Grey by Husker Du is a runner up. The Huskers were starting to get too big for SST records, and this album foreshadowed their move to Warner Bros records the next year. Dead Set On Destruction is an example of a Grant Hart song of the time; Hardly Getting Over It is the more melancholic Bob Mould style.
Singles for 1986:
- Cuyahoga by R.E.M. from Lifes Rich Pageant. That band had almost arrived in the main stream.
- Grandpa (Tell Me 'Bout The Good Old Days) by the Judds
- Walk This Way by Run-D.M.C. & Aerosmith. I think the main value of this song was to legitimize hip-hop to white audiences. This was an enormous step.
- (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party). Speaking of legitimizing Hip-hop, the Beastie Boys weren't quite there yet. They were still adolescents.
- Venus by Bananarama. A cover of the original by the Dutch band Shocking Blue. I prefer the latter version
- Speaking of covers, Stand By Me from 1961 by Ben E. King spent a few weeks on the charts in the US, thanks to the eponymous movie. Flashback to 1961: link
I think I still prefer the Bananarama version better...less hippieish, better bass line, better girl-group choruses....'80s slickness at its finest!
ReplyDeleteooops...I meant to mention the above was about 'Venus', of course!
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