Best Albums 1989
Walberto Kennedy
The highest-selling albums and EPs in the United States are ranked in the Billboard 200, which is published by Billboard magazine. The data are compiled by Nielsen Soundscan based on each album's weekly physical and digital sales.[1] In 1989, 15 albums advanced to the peak position of the chart.
The Raw & the Cooked, the second album by rock and soul band Fine Young Cannibals, had the longest run among the releases that reached peak position in 1989, spending 7 consecutive weeks in the top position.
1989 was not only a pivotal year but also stood at the end of a hugely important decade. Of course, there was plenty of political upheaval making headlines, but also a massive musical revolution, from hip hop to balearic to acid house, that made the year so memorable too.
Partway through 1989, a bunch of teenagers released a slightly offbeat rock album called The Real Thing. Something a little bit punk, with some sense of groove and strong melodies against unconventional structures. Faith No More are as morphic, sound-wise, as their charismatic frontman Mike Patton. His extraordinary vocals have shaped the sound of the band over the years and stood out even on their earliest effort.
Weird lyrics, dramatic dynamics and a penchant towards the melancholy have seen The Real Thing called metal, rock, indie and everything else anyone can think of to box it into. Probably because at the time, with the end of glam and an emergent grunge scene in the US, calling it what it is would've been hard.
The Real Thing is a glorious, incendiary alt-pop album. Epic, at the heart, is the kind of song you can't really imagine coming back from having written as a teenager - surely anything after could never be as cocksure, as masterful, as straight-up catchy?
Debut albums are always statements of intent. Pretty Hate Machine is surely one of the most intense, fully-formed, bone-rattling, fist-shaking, genre-reinvigorating, parent-upsetting and rabble-rousing first albums ever released. Careening effortlessly between devil-may-care rock, the most heavenspun metal, and bleak electronic symphonies, Trent Reznor let the world know he was here and set out his stall in pulsing, gargantuan, all-capital letters.
Club Classics Vol. One is the kind of title you can only give a record that definitely will be a classic. Soul II Soul's debut has held up to that - not only shaping the sound of the next decade of British R&B but credited with defining a UK Black sound and style.
Singles 'Keep On Movin' and 'Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)' were massive hits - the latter was the fifth best-selling song of 1989, in the UK. They pioneered a distinctive sound that combined dance and electronic elements with soul and funk rhythms, creating an irresistibly confident, modern style.
The band changed its line-up with each subsequent album, so in a way this is the only album they ever released as this iteration. Between Caron Wheeler's distinctive vocals and the slickly confident interweaving of styles across the record, it feels like a standalone, titanic event.
It's almost impossible to believe that it could have been a debut record. The influence of Club Classics Vol. One is still visible on UK R&B and pop, a reach extending across three decades of lush sound.
At the time of De La Soul's debut release on 3 March 1989, much of hip hop sounded very different to what the trio had produced. Less than 12 months after Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions and N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton, 3 Feet High and Rising was a light-hearted, zany alternative from three high school friends with samples ranging from Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Commodores and Johnny Cash.
Hats is a record that draws you in and holds your attention, taking you through a cinematic, wistful soundscape of slow-building 80s pop with lyrics exploring love, loss and longing across seven succinct tracks. The expertly crafted album is understated minimalism whilst feeling big, it is melancholic and moody but at times euphoric and powerful.
The Scottish group take their time over each album, having only released 4 albums since forming in 1981. Hats followed five years after their debut album A Walk Across the Rooftops, and during this time they endeavoured to create a body of work they were happy with, leading them to return to their home city of Glasgow. It was here that the band flourished and soon the critically-acclaimed Hats was produced - and you can hear influences of the city everywhere in the album.
The old guard managed to hold its own with important records, even as alternative rock moved into the commercial mainstream, grunge began to bubble up and hip-hop continued its golden era. Both Guns N' Roses and Motley Crue rose all the way to No. 1 on the U.S. album chart, despite this increased competition.
Records by Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were hailed as career comebacks. Lou Reed released his bestselling album ever in the U.S. Five of the following artists also made it onto Billboard's year-ending Top 100 Songs of 1989 list.
I absolutely detest all of those bands (and luckily worked the entire decade of the 90s in a record store that would never have wanted us to play that crap).
Except for the Cure and MBV, but those were not 90s bands now, were they?
Very good list. Great to see Steve Kilbey and All About Eve in there. Have many of these albums. Surprised Neil Young: Freedom missing.
I love Bleach so no probs there. Tho, I would have The Wedding Present in the top Ten. :)
Once again, I am deeply offended that the results of an web-based poll did not hew specifically to my exact tastes and therefore everybody else is wrong and should bow to my superior intellect on these things.
meh, Sundays one hit wonders. rest bored me, though workable tunes and relatively accomplished lyrics. But I have a couple friends who would disagree with me and agree with you that it was a solid album throughout. Given what I see from this list it should easily be top 30 regardless.
While I will temper your comment about best album ever LOL it may well have been the best of 1989, and I would have voted it so. I really posted to say I love all the rest of your comment as well and echo it.
the cure= mediocre.( Almost no one in the UK was listening to this in 89) Nine Inch Nails are/ were laughable.
This was where it all went sour for alternative/ college rock. Lots of US fans with bad taste buying up crap.
It is weird to think of them waning in the UK at the same time they were definitely on the ascension in the US. We were quite excited here because all of a sudden people were taking them seriously, and you could see them on television and so forth. That had definitely not been the case previously. That tour they did fill Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which probably explains my misimpression.
Strong top 4, but only JAMC makes my top 5 with those. Bleach was mostly terrible. Lou, the Mats, Bob Mould, Camper and The The and XTC would probably round out my top 10 based on what I played most (tie for 10th).
The worst Elvis record. Tin Machine was awful. Bad early GBV. A bottom 3 Ramones record. The worst Swans disc. One of the worst by Laurie Anderson. One of the worst from the bad middle period for Wire. The worst Prince record of the 80s by far.
Wedding Present was good. Bad Religion. Nice Loop and Godfathers discs. One of my top two Mekons records barely makes the list???
1989's commercial success transformed Swift's image from a country singer-songwriter to a worldwide pop phenomenon.[1][2] The album was the second album to spawn five or more US top-10 singles in the 2010s decade,[3] and made Swift the second woman to have two albums each score five US top-10 hits.[4] Its singles received heavy rotation on US radio over a year and a half following its release, which Billboard described as "a kind of cultural omnipresence that's rare for a 2010s album".[5] The academic Shaun Cullen specializing in the humanities described Swift as a figure "at the cutting edge of postmillennial pop". According to the BBC's Neil Smith, 1989 "[forged] a path for artists who no longer wish to be ghettoised into separated musical genres".[6] The album's electronic-pop production expanded on Swift's next two studio albums, Reputation (2017) and Lover (2019), which solidified her status as a pop star.
Retrospective reviews from GQ's Jay Willis,[10] New York's Sasha Geffen,[11] and NME 's Hannah Mylrea lauded the album's avoidance of contemporaneous hip hop and R&B crossover trends, which made 1989 a timeless album representing the best of Swift's talents. Mylrea praised it as Swift's best record and described it as an influence for younger musicians to embrace "pure pop", contributing to a growing trend of nostalgic 1980s-styled sound.[12] Geffen also attributed the album's success to its lyrics offering emotional engagement that is uncommon in pop.[11] Contemporary artists who cited 1989 as an influence included American singer-songwriter Conan Gray[13] and British pop band the Vamps, who took inspiration from 1989 while composing their album Wake Up (2015).[14] Jennifer Kaytin Robinson cited 1989 as an inspiration for her 2019 directorial debut, Someone Great.[15] American rock singer-songwriter Ryan Adams released his track-by-track cover album of 1989 in September 2015. Finding it a "joyful" record, he listened to the album frequently to cope with his broken marriage in late 2014.[16] On his rendition, Adams incorporated acoustic instruments which contrast with the original's electronic production.[17][18] Swift was delighted with Adams' cover, saying to him, "What you did with my album was like actors changing emphasis."[19]
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