Thriller
1982
Quincy Jones and Jackson remixed the whole record because the first version sounded thin, and Eddie Van Halen played his solo for free.
★ 9.5
Browse by time · decade
1980s
1980 – 1989
Showing 72 albums from the 1980s
Hounds of Love
1985
Bush built her own studio at home so nobody could interfere, then gave over an entire side to a woman drowning through one night.
★ 9.0
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
1988
The producers used sirens, squeals and feedback as rhythm instruments, which is why it sounds less like music than like an emergency.
★ 9.0
Remain in Light
1980
Most of it is built on a single chord that never changes, with the interest coming entirely from layers of interlocking rhythm.
★ 8.8
Sign "O" the Times
1987
It was meant to be a triple album and the label refused. Some of it is sung by a sped-up alter ego called Camille.
★ 8.8
Appetite for Destruction
1987
It sold almost nothing for a year until MTV agreed to play Welcome to the Jungle once, at four in the morning. Then it never stopped.
★ 8.7
Back in Black
1980
Their singer had died five months earlier. They hired Brian Johnson, put out a record in an all-black sleeve, and sold fifty million.
★ 8.6
Born in the USA
1984
Reagan's campaign tried to borrow the title song, which is sung by a veteran who cannot get a job. Seven singles went top ten.
★ 8.6
Paul's Boutique
1989
It uses well over a hundred samples, which would be unaffordable to clear today, and it sold so badly the label gave up on them.
★ 8.5
Purple Rain
1984
When Doves Cry has no bass on it at all, which Prince did deliberately. Several tracks were taped live at a Minneapolis club.
★ 8.5
Straight Outta Compton
1988
The FBI wrote to their record label objecting to one of the songs, which did more for sales than any advertising could.
★ 8.5
The Joshua Tree
1987
Where the Streets Have No Name took so long to record that Brian Eno considered wiping the tape to force them to start again.
★ 8.4
The Queen is Dead
1986
The band were in a legal fight with their label while making it, and the title track opens with a clip from a 1962 British film.
★ 8.4
3 Feet High and Rising
1989
They sampled so freely that the Turtles sued them, and the case helped make sample clearance the expensive business it has been ever since.
★ 8.2
Graceland
1986
Simon recorded with South African musicians in defiance of the cultural boycott and was condemned for it. Bakithi Kumalo's fretless bass runs through everything.
★ 8.1
Master of Puppets
1986
No singles and no videos, and it sold millions anyway. Bassist Cliff Burton was killed when the tour bus crashed in Sweden months later.
★ 8.0
So
1986
The Sledgehammer video was shot frame by frame with Gabriel lying under glass for sixteen hours. Youssou N'Dour sings the end of In Your Eyes.
★ 8.0
Synchronicity
1983
The three of them recorded in separate rooms because they could no longer stand each other, and then made the biggest album of the year.
★ 7.9
Bad
1987
Prince was supposed to sing the title track with Jackson and turned it down. Five singles from it went to number one anyway.
★ 7.7
Daydream Nation
1988
A Gerhard Richter candle painting on the sleeve, a double album made on almost no money, and the last thing before they signed to a major.
★ 7.7
Disintegration
1989
Robert Smith turned thirty, decided he was finished, and made the biggest record of the band's life about it.
★ 7.7
Nebraska
1982
He taped it alone on a four-track in his bedroom, carried the cassette around in his pocket, and it ended up released as it was.
★ 7.5
Murmur
1983
Stipe's words are deliberately buried in the mix, and nobody could work them out. Rolling Stone still named it album of the year over Thriller.
★ 7.5
Rain Dogs
1985
Waits had Marc Ribot play guitar as though he had never been taught, and Keith Richards turns up on three tracks.
★ 7.5
Paid in Full
1987
Rakim rhymes inside his lines rather than only at the ends of them, and delivers all of it without ever raising his voice.
★ 7.2
Closer
1980
Ian Curtis killed himself two months before it came out. The sleeve, chosen beforehand, is a photograph of a tomb.
★ 7.0
Double Nickels on the Dime
1984
Forty-five songs, most under two minutes, and the title is a joke about obeying the speed limit. D. Boon was dead within eighteen months.
★ 7.0
Let it Be
1984
They called it Let It Be mostly to annoy people. The songs run from a joke about answering machines to Westerberg howling that he is unsatisfied.
★ 6.9
Pretenders
1980
Chrissie Hynde moved from Ohio to London, worked in Malcolm McLaren's clothes shop and wrote for the NME before getting a band together.
★ 6.8
The Smiths
1984
Johnny Marr knocked on Morrissey's door with a friend to propose the band. Morrissey had been writing letters to the music papers for years.
★ 6.7
Dirty Mind
1980
Prince made it at home as a set of demos, and Warner decided to put them out exactly as they were.
★ 6.5
Document
1987
The record where the singer, Michael Stipe, finally sang loudly enough to be understood, though the words still come far too fast to catch.
★ 6.5
Greatest Hits
1981
The best-selling album in British history, with roughly one copy sold for every three households in the country. Almost every track was a single.
★ 6.4
Legend
1984
Put together three years after Marley died, and it has essentially never left the American catalogue charts in the forty years since.
★ 6.4
Tim
1985
Tommy Ramone produced it, and the band got themselves banned from Saturday Night Live after one drunken appearance a few months later.
★ 6.3
Avalon
1982
Roxy Music's last record, made partly in the Bahamas and finished so smoothly it barely sounds played. Bryan Ferry never made another with the band.
★ 6.1
Brothers in Arms
1985
The first album to sell a million copies on compact disc, and one of the first recorded digitally start to finish.
★ 6.1
Dare
1981
Singer Phil Oakey found two of his backing vocalists dancing in a Sheffield nightclub and put them on stage within weeks. Neither had sung professionally.
★ 6.1
Imperial Bedroom
1982
Geoff Emerick, who had engineered Sgt. Pepper, produced it, and the lyrics were printed on the sleeve as one unbroken block of text.
★ 6.0