Aliens
Directed by James Cameron
1986
Almost no sequel changes genre and survives it: Cameron turned Scott's haunted house into a war picture, and an action performance drew a rare Academy Award nomination.
★ 8.6
Browse by time · year
1986
Showing 122 works across all media from 1986
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
There is a Light that Never Goes OutThe Smiths
There is a Light that Never Goes Out
1986 · From The Queen is Dead
Marr faked the strings on an Emulator, credited them to the Hated Salford Ensemble, and Britain waited six years.
★ 8.3
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
Blue Velvet
Directed by David Lynch
1986
Lynch invented his own genre here and the word Lynchian dates from it: a severed ear in a field leads into the underside of an ordinary American town.
★ 8.0
Walk This Way
1986 · From Raising Hell
Rubin had to talk Run-DMC into it; Tyler smashed through the video's wall and Aerosmith got a career back.
★ 7.6
Sledgehammer
1986 · From So
Gabriel wanted real brass, hired the Memphis Horns' Wayne Jackson, then knocked his old band Genesis off number one.
★ 7.5
GracelandPaul Simon
Graceland
1986 · From Graceland
Bakithi Kumalo's fretless bass and a Nigerian pedal steel carry it, with the Everly Brothers singing behind Simon.
★ 7.3
In Your Eyes
1986 · From So
Youssou N'Dour improvising in Wolof, and a bassline so deep it had to move up the vinyl.
★ 7.3
You Can Call Me Al
1986 · From Graceland
Kumalo cut one descending bass measure, Halee reversed the tape for the break, and Chevy Chase mimed it on MTV.
★ 7.3
Platoon
Directed by Oliver Stone
1986
Oliver Stone served in Vietnam and made this to correct everyone else's version: no glamour, no clarity, and a platoon that splits between two sergeants and stays split.
★ 7.3
Eric B. is President
1986 · From Paid in Full
By Eric B.'s account he paid Marley Marl to engineer it in Queensbridge; Rakim arrived rapping like nobody before.
★ 7.3
Livin' on a Prayer
1986 · From Slippery When Wet
The band laughed at Sambora's talk box until it opened the record. The last chorus climbs a minor third.
★ 7.1
Nasty
1986
Jackson answered street harassers by demanding respect over a factory preset Jimmy Jam found on an Ensoniq Mirage.
★ 7.0
Stand By Me
Directed by Rob Reiner
1986
Nothing else captures being twelve years old this exactly: four boys walk along a railway line for two days, and the narration knows precisely how much it mattered.
★ 7.0
Don't Dream It's Over
1986
Froom's Hammond solo does the heavy lifting, and Finn wrote the rest as an exhortation to himself.
★ 7.0
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off · 1986
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Directed by John Hughes
1986
Truancy has never looked this appealing: Ferris talks straight to the audience, takes a Ferrari and a parade, and the whole film is completely on his side.
★ 6.8
Red Sorghum
A Novel of China
1986 · 359 pages
Bandits waylay a bride bound for a leprous distiller, and the son conceived in the sorghum grows up under Japanese occupation. Mo Yan makes rural Shandong's violence gorgeous and unbearable at once.
★ 6.8
South BronxBoogie Down Productions
South Bronx
1986 · From Criminal Minded
James Brown horns looped, an answer to MC Shan's The Bridge, and hip hop's birthplace claimed for the Bronx.
★ 6.7
True Colors
1986
Anne Murray turned it down, so Lauper took Steinberg and Kelly's gospel ballad and stripped it to almost nothing.
★ 6.7
You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party
1986 · From Licensed to Ill
Conceived as a satire of party songs, it became the band's only top ten hit, the joke unnoticed.
★ 6.5
No Sleep Till Brooklyn
1986 · From Licensed to Ill
Slayer's Kerry King plays the solo, the title bends Motorhead's, and Rubin welds rap to metal without apology.
★ 6.5
You Give Love a Bad Name
1986 · From Slippery When Wet
A Bonnie Tyler chorus that went nowhere, rewritten by Desmond Child, and suddenly Bon Jovi's first number one.
★ 6.5
Peter Piper
1986 · From Raising Hell
Bells lifted from a Bob James record, nursery-rhyme characters conscripted, and Jam Master Jay finally getting his own showcase.
★ 6.3
Addicted to Love
1986
Chaka Khan's label blocked her from the duet, so Palmer sang it alone over Tony Thompson's drum intro.
★ 6.3
Higher Love
1986
Chaka Khan's backing vocals lift Winwood's first solo number one, and the Grammy for Record of the Year followed.
★ 6.2
The Final Countdown
1986
One synth riff, written years earlier on a Korg Polysix borrowed from Michaeli, went to number one in twenty-five countries.
★ 6.2
Decolonising the Mind
The Politics of Language in African Literature
1986 · 114 pages
Ngugi's schoolmasters caned children for speaking Gikuyu, or hung a plate around their necks reading I AM STUPID. Empire takes the mind through language, he argues, and he abandoned English for his fiction.
★ 6.2
The Way It Is
1986
Hornsby wrote the words first in a Van Nuys garage; that piano figure later became the spine of Tupac's Changes.
★ 6.2
Licensed to Ill
1986
Kerry King of Slayer plays the guitar solo. Rick Rubin built the beats out of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC drums played very loud.
★ 6.0
Fall On Me
1986
Conceived as an acid rain protest, the melody rewritten before release; Stipe called it a general oppression song.
★ 6.0
Live to Tell
1986 · From True Blue
Leonard wrote it as a film instrumental that Paramount passed on; Madonna added the words and kept her demo vocal.
★ 6.0
Raising Hell
1986
Aerosmith had not heard of Run-D.M.C. and were barely working when Rick Rubin got them into the studio to redo Walk This Way.
★ 5.9