Thread 127798775

ITT: /mu/ in 1985

I got a blowie from Boy George last night AMA

MADONNA'S BIG FAT MILKIES

I WANT MY MTV

Megadeth makes way better power metal than Metallica \m/

>>127798969
too bad that sounds like it was recorded on a portable cassette player

Bruce Springsteen, Nirvana, way before Madonna

>>127798775 (OP)
WE BUILT THIS CITY
WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK N ROLL

hey anyone know an Apple II BBS I can pirate Wizardry from?

>>127799100
Fuck off nerd.

Ah fuck, Fantano is born this year.

>>127799170
when they fully sold out to MTV and embraced pop rock

Go Royals!

>>127799170
Fuckin' sellouts. Metalheads won't accept this! They'll lose their fans and break up in two years!

TURN UP THE RADIO
I NEED THE MUSIC, I NEED IT BAD

GAYS, I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS FECAL DECADE TO END, SO THAT I CAN RELIVE THE «Y 2 K» EPOCH.

CUSTOM KITCHENS, MICROWAVE OVENS

>>127798775 (OP)
You guys heard of this thing called "Annie May"?
Its like Japanese cartoons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZdLO1Oehpo

>>127799234
wasn't that a Playboy model on the cover?

Never one to pay much heed to the plaints of English lads with synthesizers, I assumed I could safely dismiss this one until my ears detected substance beneath the surface--uncommon command of keyboards, Baker Street sax, synthesizers jagged enough to add texture instead of merely effects, even a line that goes "We are paid by those who learn from our mistakes"--not bad. Yet in the end the surface is still annoying, portending a depth and drama that progressive rock has been promising and failing to deliver since the beginning. B-

>>127799295
Nobody except Brazilians cares about this period of KISS.

Rain Dogs

>>127799209
Also it would have been nice if they didn't bury Vince's vocals in the mix.

Rick James was never Mister I.Q. to begin with, but this record is so stupid, not just stupid but stoopid. All of which makes his continuing failure to conquer MTV the more bewildering since between his fop coiffure, dance moves, and relentless sexual self-aggrandizement that's clearly where he belongs--he may be smarmier than Billy Idol, but hey, what's a little grease among professionals? C

>>127799390
Rick took the advice and foolishly decided to do political commentary on the next album.

I'd never claim that this sweet, statuesque woman and her sweet, statuesque voice are victims of exploitation. She obviously believes in this schlock. But not counting the Jermaine Jackson duet from his own Arista debut, only one of the four producers puts any zip in--Narada Michael Walden, who goes one for one. And it could have been worse--they could have sicked Barry Manilow on her the way they did with cousin Dionne. Then the credits could have read: "To Barry Manilow, It was a privilege to work with a talented professional who's made so many millions of dollars for Clive Davis. Together, we can make many millions more." C

If the sentimental fallacy of good American rock and roll is roots, the sentimental fallacy of good British rock and roll is amateurism. Not that these veterans distinguished themselves from themselves before Yank guitarist Brix E. Smith righted husband Mark E.'s feckless avant-gardishness. Still, what they've arrived at now is cunningly sloppy, minimally catchy Hawkwind/Stooges with each three-chord drone long enough to make an avant-gardish statement but stopping short of actual boredom. And yeah, it beats roots by me. B+

>>127799430
>Whitney's voice is
Annoying. We know, damn we know.

>>127799270
That show is quite popular actually

Their knack for the small song and small use for guitar hero costume drama has always made them a hard rock band worthy of the name, not to mention of course being American. But after years of substance abuse and bad albums it was a long road back. And against all odds, the old farts light one up. If you can stand the crunch, the first side has more get-up-and-go than any one of a dozen neogarage EPs. B

>>127799471
the last real Aerosmith album before they sold out to MTV

>>127799478
shit album, shit band. oh wait that's their entire catalog.

>>127799478
Damn at least Steven Tyler was a bit self-aware about statutory rape which is more than you can say for these tards.

The megabuck stops here. Maybe I'll let Bruce Springsteen teach me how to hear John Cougar Mellencamp, but damned if I'm going to let John Cougar Mellencamp teach me how to hear Bryan Adams. From antipunkdiscowave strut to Flashdance homage, he's a generic American hunk, only whiter because he's Canadian. Where Sammy Hagar flaunts his anticommunism and Don Henley flaunts his mouth, Adams flaunts nothing more and nothing less than his young reliable bod. Like all the above-mentioned good and bad he shares a mysterious nostalgia for the recent past with a lot of people who aren't half dead yet, at least chronologically. And more than any of them he has real problems relaxing, which puts him square in the soul-as-will-and-idea tradition of Lou Gramm, Pat Boone, Sophie Tucker, and so many others. C-

>>127799478
Probably their coolest-sounding album (once you skip over track 11) because George Clinton produced it.

>>127799523
namely once you know the story behind that song

In the wiggy abstraction of his self-regard, Robert Smith has evolved into a Brit art-pop archetype. Eccentric though his songs are, they offer nothing arresting in the way of imagery ("like a baby screams" and "it's so smooth it even feels like skin," which latter is admittedly pretty good, are as meaty as it gets), much less character or incident. They're not really observed--it's more like they're experienced at a distance. Yet they're not dreamlike, though while he's at it he does report on his dreams--it's more like he doesn't know the difference between loneliness, solipsism, and satori, with lots of stuff about loved ones (girlfriends, I mean) who one way or another aren't there, or real, or something. His characteristic vocal technique is the unacknowledged sob. Yet his music, which on this album runs from New Order rip and electrodisco pseudo-strings to guitar sounds and many lands, isn't rendered any more normal by its exceedingly skillful deployment. And his originality is winning--he's clearly not just intelligent but hyperaware, at home in his alienation, and hence hero, even sex symbol, to a generation. Or at least its arty, collegiate market share. B

Best band evah
https://youtu.be/OFO5Ye-XLKs?si=E4hss6y7cbki5bFN

>>127799568
eh i never did get into the Cure very much

not a year for aggressive, hooky songs, most stuff out in '85 was a bit "let's slow the pace down a bit"

You can tell these guys are real rock-and-rollers because they sounded so much fresher before they got what they wanted, and you can tell they didn't get it all because their rhymes still make a lot of sense sometimes--especially "You're Blind," a protest for and at the ghetto rather than about it. But their well-timed "You Talk Too Much" routine runs aground on stupid insults ("nagging wife," gosh) and old jokes ("Why don't you find a short pier/And take a long walk," groan). "It's Not Funny" is either a perverse albeit well-named joke or a complete washout. Even the boasts run thin. "Take airplane flights/At huge heights"? I mean, what do sucker MC's do? Just taxi around the runway? B+

Having long wondered what gave this longtime Bowie stablemate the right to speak for the average guy, I've decided it's his talent, which is pretty damn average. That's okay, because the success ratio here, a nice average fifty-fifty or so, just goes to show you what sincerity, hard work, and modest ambitions can do. Mellencamp has half outgrown the fatalism that always underlined the predictability of his Stonesish bandmates, who've gotten tougher with age, an encouraging sign in rich musicians. I wish I knew (I wish he knew) exactly what "Justice and Independence '85" is trying to say. But I'll take "You've Got to Stand for Something" at face value. B+

It seems so simple now that it's happened, but let's face it--she's been trying to sell out this big for at least ten years. And take my word for it--she hasn't done anything near this good in over a dozen. It couldn't have happened without the top-forty revival, and it couldn't have happened without Narada Michael Walden, who unhesitatingly plugged his first legend into one pop format after another and came up with classics almost every time. From lead rocker to hooked ballad to Caribe Richie carnivalesque, these songs go no deeper than Franklin can make them by breathing, but their instant inevitability could keep this album alive for years. And when somebody like Aretha Franklin goes multiplatinum, the world rejoices. A

>>127799643
the state of Indiana owes us a giant apology for this guy

Whadyya mean Van Halen replaced Dave with...no way, it can't be true.

Tom Petty's problem isn't that he's dumb or even that people think he's dumb, although they certain have reason to, it's the way he can't stop feeling sorry for himself. Defending the South made sense when Ronnie Van Zandt penned "Sweet Home Alabama" but in the Sun Belt era it's just pique. The modernizations of producer Mike Campbell do mitigate the neoconservative aura of side one somewhat. Side two is less consequential and therefore more significant. Do not, however, that its real show-stopper is "Spike," in which a couple of redneck...I mean good ol' boys prepare to whup a punk. It's satire. Yeah, sure. B-

>>127799753
wtf is with this schizo? literally nobody else thought this about this album back then.

Did they ever find those 5 kids that went missing at that pizzeria in utah earlier this year?

History may absolve him. Jeff Beck earns his fucked-up legend here, and Bill Laswell puts together several bands--like Beck-Martinez-Hancock-Shakespeare-Dunbar-Ponce on "Running Out of Luck"--that should only tour. So maybe a hundred years from now folks who've never read People will admire the timbral virtuosity and breath control of the man atop the tracks. But Jagger has become such an overbearing public presence that I for one find it impossible to care about his romantic vagaries no matter how hard he leather-lungs. It would be going too far, unfortunately, to say he's a joke. But the only thing left for him to do with his persona is burlesque it, which is why the title track is the only one that's any fun. And as my wife complains, he probably thinks it describes the way things are with him and Jerry. C

>>127799904
yeah this was shit. was the entire point of this thing to prove he could still score young women?

Compare this to the others in your head and you'll be hard-pressed to specify what's missing, but slap on Talking Book or Hotter Than July and you'll hear how cushy it is--polyrhythmic pop rather than polyrhythmic rock. Stevie's effervescence is so indomitable that it's a pleasure even so, but nothing rises far enough out of the stew--"Land of the La La" is no "Living for the City," "Part Time Lover," no "I Just Called to Say I Love You," etc. Then there's the infectious "Spiritual Walkers," in which Stevie gives it up to Hare Krishna and witnesses for the Witnesses. B+

>>127798775 (OP)
It's fucking OVER, bros. Hank needs to fuck off with his shitty poems and someone needs to tell Greg to stop smoking so much dope and lay off the Black Sabbath because this shit is ASS

Dude, Rod just got a copy of this band called Dramarama, you don't sell it there, it's kind of rare that's what Rod says. Jan's got some blow, Jakes got the glue, wanna come over and listen to it? It's got that hawt chickadee babe from Andy Warhol's factory on the cover. Rod says we should hear this song Anything, Anything song. Can't wait, invite Sarah over but don't tell her I said that, ok. I tried calling but your hag mom kept picking up so I dropped this letter at the record shop. Burn this after reading, don't be a dick, Mike, or I'll take these beers over to Chuck's. Smoke out

Sincerely
J

>>127800023
yeah yeah 80s SW isn't as good as 70s SW, we know

>>127798775 (OP)
Wtf is going on in Sweden for something this evil to come out of that quaint little country?

>>127798775 (OP)
Metallica was touring for ride the lightning and writing master of puppets, with Cliff.

What a year.

Rob Halford moved to Arizona this year, Priest were working on Turbo, and his gay boyfriend committed suicide in front of him after they got into a violent alcohol and drug fueled fight. Rob realized he'd better get off drugs before it was too late and checked into rehab.

>>127799478
Know lots of these songs. totally forgot

In a pathetic attempt to convince the world he makes a difference in the record business, Warners touts this as his country move, but he doesn't and it's not. He's been making country moves ever since "Oh Lonesome Me" without once showing any flair for the literal narrative and pungent sentimentality the country audience goes for, though his modestly engaging melodies are the equal of any Music Row tunesmith's. So what you get when he's on is a catchy ditty that starts off like an utter cliché but soon jogs a little to the left lyrically, almost of its own accord. "Old Ways" are divided into bad (substance abuse) and not so bad (workaholism). "Are There Any More Real Cowboys?" hails "workin' families" who resist encroaching developers, "Bound for Glory"'s trucker abandons wife and kids for a hard-lovin' hitchhiker with new ideas and a dog. B

New album WHEN? It's been 5 goddamn years.

>>127800185
yeah he's washed as fuck

"Money For Nothing" is a catchy sumbitch, there's no getting around it, and side one moves with a simple generosity not often associated with this studio guitarist's ego trip. We know Mark Knopfler's working-class antihero is a thicky because he talks like Randy Newman and uses the same word for homosexual that old bluesmen used, a word that, by the way, he's managed to sneak onto the radio with absolutely no static from the PMRC. But it's too late for the old bluesboy to suck us in with his ruminations on the perfidy of woman and the futility of political struggle, and "Money For Nothing" is also a benchmark of pop hypocrisy. I mean, why "See that little faggot with the earring?" Why not "See that little nigger with the spitcurl" instead. Mark? And while we're at it, just how the hell did you end up on MTV? By spelling its name right? C

>>127800239
A shame that's the only good song on there

Where my /yuppie/ bros at?

>>127800185
Not sure if reviving Gogi Grant was a good idea even if he's more tasteful than the schlock classic original was.

>>127800185
Tell Mr. Young a Southern man don't need him, anyhow.

>>127800158
Hey did you hear that old bag said Van Halen were degenerate music and shouldn't have been booked at Farm Aid?

>>127800276
This is just music that CEO's put on while sniffing coke out of their secretaries butthole

First two tracks are power packed if conventionally anarchic neo-no-wave hostility, though the guitar barrage keeps building. Second side is music to play loud when you feel like going out and stealing a pneumatic drill. Climax is a trash-compacted version of "The Big Payback"--James Brown, white-rage style. A-

>>127800319
Says the dropout poorfag

>>127800314
don't like it, Grandma? go march in a PMRC protest. you were a square back in '55, let alone now.

>>127800370
Just like BIA, only one good song.

>>127800331
this smacks pretty hard if you completely ignore what Steve was doing outside of music back then

>>127800060
>>127800419
>release FIVE (5) albums between '84 & '85
>all of them shit
Where's the fucking punk? I don't want to hear this greasy metalfag shit

As someone of more culture than the average Van Halen fan, it didn't impress me to hear him cover the Beach Boys and The Lovin' Spoonful and "Just a Gigolo" just irritated me, reaffirming my earlier suspicion that he chose heavy metal because Vegas wouldn't have him, even though Vegas is where he'll end up if this solo bid stiffs. But "Mean Streets" and its accompanying video's panoply of grotesque caricatures are positively catatonic in this bland musical moment. This soundtrack is an adequate testament. C+

>>127800490
Time traveler here, it doesn't get any better

>>127800490
Record label milking for everything that it was worth. Problem with indie label bands was they didn't sell records at a Michael Jackson or Springsteen rate so they needed to whip them into making like 4 albums in two years to turn a profit.

>>127800504
Or, you know, maybe Dave just wanted to cover some of his favorite childhood songs from the 60s for the fun of it. Not everything is part of some backhanded conspiracy. Sheesh.

>>127800276
I'm reading Philip K Dick. He mentioned things about things I simply can't grasp with my level of thinking, way above me. However there was one name that kept coming up in his writing, in regards to Tears For Fears a song that played from one of the pages, there was this name, that name was Donnie Darko. I'm too busy with football, so I haven't looked into it. I'm busy with football like I said, plus I'm dating Justine, yeah that Justine, the head cheerleader Justine. I'm taking her to the prom and soon after the Halloween bash at Ray's I'm gonna ask her to go steady. But I have this weird feeling in my gut, like I've said and done these things and an airplane crashes into my parents house, or it's twin towers some kind of building, idk, everyone lives on in a memorial or they live but yeah but, but I died. Drew Barrymore was there holding books, she looked older but still hot, weird I remember Poison Ivy. idk, I got a paper to write with Tears For Fears helping me get through it, I'm pushing through so I can finally have mom and dad stop nagging me about going to Army or Penn. I'm stoked for Ray's Halloween bash, it's going to be super excellent. My sister Julie just caught me thinking about wormholes, idk what that is, "idk" is that even a thing? lol I just made it up

They're sure to disagree--what else are they good for? But despite the clanging brutality of their late-industrial guitars and the sincerity of their manic (if hackneyed) depression, in the end the music merely serves as a vehicle for their usual sociopathic fantasies and the result isn't ugly or ominous or bombs-bursting-in-the-air, it's merely interesting. B-

>>127800506
that includes Henry's solo albums btw

>>127800570
These fags are ripping off Creedence wtf

What would you say if the Four Lads got back together and covered songs by Boy George and Stevie Wonder on the same album? Betcha they still harmonize pretty good, too. C

>>127799578
>BLOOD IN THE FIELDS
>WORKING CROPS FOR ALL IN THE VILLAGE
>A MIGHTY VIEW, STRETCHED FAR AWAY
>WORKING THE FIELDS OF LABOR
>BEFORE THE SNOW COMES DOWN

>EAST GERMANY, EAST GERMANY
>*TWANG TWONG STRUM STRUM*
>EAST GERMANY, EAST GERMANY
>THE LIGHT NEVER SETS BEHIND US

lol killingjoke

>>127800600
Yeah this is trash.

Extended single padded out with Lydia Lunch feature plus pieceashit outtake from their current LP. Available in stores that stock such arcana. Suck their dicks (or pussy, such as the case may be). D+

>>127800089
Thanks, Dee, but that still doesn't absolve you from turning into the heavy metal 1910 Fruitgum Company.

>>127800723
or the fact that he'd spend the next several decades pretending he was anything more than the heavy metal 1910 Fruitgum Company

With a new crop of beautiful losers arising out of the latest bohemia as inexorably as ailanthus out of a vacant lot, the man who wrote the book is worth attending, because he's not bitter. After all, righteous anger has never been his long suit, and what does he have to be bitter about? At fifty, he's still living comfortably off the fruits of his spiritual torment. Of course, not every loser is so talented, or resilient, The hymn "If It Be Your Will" and the fable "The Captain" are as rich and twisted as anything in his career, and "The Law" does justice to his patented romantic irony, which by now has a soothing glow. If you're sick of hearing him whisper in your ear that to be a roue is a religious calling, so be it--me, I think this is a better advertisement for middle-aged sex than Dynasty. B+

Title tune's pretty slick as rock and roll heaven songs go, but ever since Lionel--who they could have used on "The Woman in My Life"--they've been too tame for their own good. A new singer from Heatwave obviously isn't going to change that. When they thank Dennis Lambert "for being so good at what you do," you should remember that what he does is schlock. C+

>>127800158
For a frightening second I thought that was a cover of "Sugar Walls." Thank god it wasn't.

>>127799325
their voices are annoying

It's pretty strange, given that he looked like a visionary not long ago. But this arrested adolescent obviously don't know nuthin about nuthin--except maybe his own life, which for all practical purposes ended in his adolescence, since even for a pop star he does his damnedest to keep the world out. So while his sexual fantasies are outrageous only in their callous predictability and his ballads compelling only as shows of technique, they sure beat his reflexive antinomianism and dim politics. Which suggests why the solid if decidedly unpsychedelic musical pleasures our young craftsman makes available here don't wash. Only the crass "Raspberry Beret" and maybe the crooning "Condition of the Heart" are worth your time. B-

Money for Nothing is it

>>127800899
Prince always was overrated tbqh.

>>127800158
and then there's the other (admittedly classier) grand old lady of jazz.

New wave's answer to Shirley Bassey is finally connecting with those of us who won't settle for voice-plus-hooks not because she shows signs of having a soul, but because she shows signs of having a brain. Of course, the two go together--her lush, brassy emotionalism is more coherent partly because it's grounded, less taken with alienation as a way of life. Dave Stewart's guitar doesn't hurt either. And neither do Aretha, Stevie, or Elvis. B+

The reflectiveness of her interpretations has never extended to her choice of material--the honest journeywoman in her must prefer contract songwriting. So she does what she's always done over "contemporary" settings that don't clash or mesh or otherwise call attention to themselves. Amid the various shades of schlock and dancy compromise, the best songs are those she wrote with her coproducers, Sam Dees and Bubba Knight, and the only notable one is "Strivin'," the most straight-up bourgie boogie since "Bon Bon Vie." Even at its most committed, professionalism can get pretty boring. B-

>>127800570
this band was never good

>>127800504
actually got the wrong cover there but meh. i wouldn't take Dave's singing over Mike Love's, that's for sure.

Time to hang it up, Grandma. Your time is done.

Finally her own award-winning, best-selling woman, she assumes coproducer status and sheds Harold Shedd, whom some would say got her this far. And indeed, with a little help from Jimmy Bowen she refines the formula-no backup choruses, no newfangled keyboards, no bedroom lyrics. She's a lot more her own woman than hot-to-trot centerfold candidates like Janie Fricke. But though occasionally her music defeats country's sex-role divisions--the self-composed I-never-actually-cheated song "Only in My Mind" is so proud and virtuous and deeply regretful it could give a fella bad dreams--she suggests that female country singers are going to have trouble rebelling neotraditionally. Especially with men providing the material. B

>>127801267
country doesn't quite get posted in these threads enough

>>127801229
Madonna giving her the heebie-jeebies it seems.

Busted.

>>127800974
My gf loved Adam and The Ants
Told her here babe hold this

Disco domo emeritus Keith Forsey is the great spirit behind this consumer fraud. He even wrote the Simple Minds hit, which in a rare moment of aesthetic perspicuity they've disowned, as well as utterly negligible songs for such artistes as Elizabeth Daily, Karla DeVito, and Wang Chung. Plus one, two, three, four instrumentals. D-

MAKE IT STOOOOOOPPP

This flick isn't an item on my particular grapevine, but between the sculpted pecs on the back cover and the "Only the Young" kickoff inside, I figure it's about Heroic Youth. They're "Hot Blooded," they're "Hungry for Heaven," they're gonna "Shout to the Top," and their idea of inspirational art is some amalgam of pop metal and dance-oriented schlock. Given the basic idea, these tracks are surprisingly okay, but only one fires my corpuscles: Don Henley's "She's on the Zoom," about a Dumb Chick. C+

>>127801444
remember the time Dio sold out and did a gloppy power ballad because his wife told him to?

Lisa got to sing "I Wonder If I Take You Home" because she sounded like the kind of amateur who might put words to the tune of yah-yah yah-yah-yah. At album length her musical comedy training comes to the fore. A Rosie & the Originals for our more pretentious time. C+

Just when you thought there was no more AOR, this overwrought Philadelphia-brand hookarama goes gold on MTV--Love cover, revolutionary propaganda, and all. And about that blond--he may be Finnish (-American), but I bet he dyes his hair. C+

All you cool folks who thought the Go-Go's were airheads, not to mention all you airheads who thought the Go-Go's were cool, will find these troubled relationships and geopolitical concerns very educational. I thought the Go-Go's were more educational pretending to be airheads, not to mention sisters. C+

Quite aware that I don't qualify as a pubescent female, I tried to be understanding. It's not their fault they're blond, after all--they're Norwegian. But though they'd clearly have been better off raised closer to the blues--in Wales, say--the gutturals of fellow Scandinavians from Gasolin' to the Nomads suggest that their precious Yes-gone-Europop accents are chosen freely. Over music they probably exerted less control. C-

Is she rock or disco? Disco, ripostes this farewell label sampler, right up to the Trevor Horn-ghosted autobiography "Slave to the Rhythm." A lot of her best material is simply ignored, and the likes of "Love Is the Drug" and "My Jamaican Guy" succumb to the concept. "Pull Up to the Bumper," it turns out, is the concept. B-

Fortunately there is no Swans album this year.

MAKE IT STOOOOPPPPPP

When you peruse the lyrics, which are of course provided, the rage she directs at evangelists, racketeers, financiers, and so forth seems like the usual none-too-deep left-liberal modernism--a "culture in decline" enthralled by hedonism and rapacity and the image, tsk-tsk. But by taking her mind off her ever-loving self she's broken a long drought. There's no what-shall-I-do ennui in her singing; she isn't musing, she's telling us something, and her interest in these well-expressed middlebrow clichés comes through. Damned if I can tell just what Thomas Dolby has done for her jazzbo sound, but I suspect he helps as well. Maybe he convinced her it was pop music. B+

As I hope you've figured out, the New Soundtrack is no such thing: it's a cross-promotional concept that permits record bizzers and movie bizzers to exploit each other's distribution. But because the film comes first, the music pros work to order whether or not their songs function thematically or appear in the movie at all. So even when the resulting albums don't suffer from the hodgepodge effect that afflicts all compilations and goes double when music is slotted into vastly disparate moods and locales, they still breed hackwork. Which is why this one is such a relief. First of all, it's no hodgepodge: high-register vocals predominate, dance beats mesh. And not only do Teena Marie, Luther Vandross, and Philip Bailey come in at peak form, but REO Fucking Speedwagon produces an actual anthem. John Williams's scion Joseph contributes a nifty pop-funk tune, and Dave Grusin himself strolls sweetly under the closing credits. Bless music consultant Cyndi Lauper, whose two good-to-excellent tracks almost get lost by comparison. B+

If it's amazing that this inexhaustible record machine has never resorted to a live quickie, it's doubly amazing that he's never dared one. Less amazing is the career moment it captures, the period of sobriety that's turned his never-ending stage fright into shtick. "No Show Jones" opens the show, naturally, and this being country music it kicks off with his guitarist's Merle Haggard imitation. Elsewhere there's a set-down-a-spell band feature, a get-it-over-with medley, and the usual quota of you-had-to-be-there cornball, which Jones, whose stage fright isn't altogether irrational, delivers pretty clumsily for a thirty-year-man. And on top of it all there's irrefutable proof of how instinctive his tricks and mannerisms are--you've heard these vocal grimaces and bursts of prose poetry before, but never in just these heart-stopping places. Definitive: "He Stopped Loving Her Today." B

Just as her music says she hopes everyone does, I respect and like this woman. Though it's tempting to slot her with Laura Nyro, you never get the sense she's a fool--she's more circa-Hejira Joni Mitchell. Her best songs can't match their best, but sonically she's magnificent, out-stripping her art-rock mentors, and it would be churlish to deny her to audiophiles and/or young women seeking independent role models. Nevertheless, to be a Romantic with a capital R in 1986 is to be a Victorian like Tennyson, who provides Bush her epigraph. It is deliberately to cultivate a sensibility whose time you know perfectly well has passed. B

"My goal was to transform my music into a more and more personal medium," says this harmless case study in contemporary pop of his first self-produced album, so he must think a lot about "love," a word which appears in seven of the nine songs. The subject is all-important for sure, but tricky to make new, as they say. Loggins succeeded in 1979 with the put-up-or-shut-up epiphany "This Is It." Here he hopes his rhythmic savvy and supple falsetto prove epiphany enough for Contemporary Hits Radio. Which given the promotional budget and catchy arrangement of the confidently entitled title tune, they already have. C+

If I walked into a folk club and came upon this woman strumming her songs, I'd be impressed too--she picks her words with evident care and conversationalizes her chosen vocal tradition with evident savvy. But that's not good enough: great lyricists either dazzle you utterly or sneak the imagery on by, and no folk-based vocal tradition ought to require conversationalizing. Despite her considerable talent, Vega is self-consciously Artistic like so many folkies before her, which means that while a rock and roll production might power her over her affectations, more likely it just wouldn't mesh--the slightly prissy precision of these arrangements is precisely what the songs demand. As for that ersatz medieval ballad (which ain't bad, actually)--it's no anomaly. B-

>>127801374
meh you heard one you heard them all

>>127801718
Took that fucking long to finally get to this one?

Nothing like a concept to nudge an interpreter's near misses closer to direct hits, but not any concept will do. On 1984's City of New Orleans, Willie added less than nothing to the self-consciously distanced sentimentality of country songs manqué that had their own integrity coming from Arlo Guthrie, Danny O'Keefe, even Dave Loggins. Here the album is dedicated to his hellraising longtime drummer Paul English and the self-conscious distance is from himself. Backed by his road band and singing three Billy Joe Shaver sure shots and nine mostly pre-CBS songs of his own, many of which you'll be certain you know but fail to locate in your record collection, he comes up with his most unassuming and inevitable album since the ten 1961 demos of 1978's Face of a Fighter. A-

>>127798775 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0&list=RDwTP2RUD_cL0&start_radio=1

LOOK AT THEM YO-YOS

>>127801718
>one good song and filler

what was the bong album with the dudes and the chick on the motorcycle? i know it was an '85 release but i forget what it was exactly.

>>127801769
this is Christfag slop

For an art rocker turned international pop star of the month, Collins is not nearly as hateable as he might be. In fact he's not hateable at all between his self-deprecating videos and good taste in business associates (better Philip Bailey than, say, Steve Perry). But it's going to take more than a stupid love song to win me over. Then factor in the utterly unsurprising lyrics and arrangements and you find yourself wondering just why this is considered a mein of Britpop voices? Because nobody ever wondered what it sounded like unfiltered? C

As I assume you've figured out, this return to basics isn't exactly Talking Heads '77. What the relatively straight and spare approach signifies is that their expansive '80s humanism doesn't necessarily require pluralistic backup or polyrhythmic underpinnings. It affirms that compassionate grown-ups can rock and roll. The music is rich in hidden treasures the way their punk-era stuff never was, and though the lyrics aren't always crystalline, their mysteries seem more like poetry than obscurantism this time out. Anyway, most of the time their resolute happiness and honest anger are right there, and in "Stay Up Late" they come up with a baby song that surpasses "Willie and the Hand Jive" itself. A

Eric Clapton and Phil Collins are two individuals who can count themselves as survivors (Collins and how). Clapton was never the mediocre singer he's been wont to declare himself in retiring moments, but his gift only made sense when laid-back was commercial and here he's not retiring, he's looking for work. For a variety of reasons, including current fashion, Collins mixes the drums very high and then induces Clapton to, um, project. Painful and bad. C-

With its dawn-over-the-lake cover, guitar chimes, and discernible melodies--on as many as ten of the fifteen songs!--this is the Hüskers' pastoral. I suppose a few hardcore urbanists will think it's wimpy or something, but by any vaguely normal standard it's clearly their finest record even if they have turned off the news in pursuit of a maturity I trust they'll outgrow. Not that they haven't matured. Bob Mould's ambivalence gets him two places instead of none, and I love Grant Hart's love objects--one with a big messy room and "a worn out smile that she'll wear some more," another who's heavily into UFOs. Play loud--this is one band that deserves it. A

If you're tempted by Willie and Double K's Songwriter soundtrack, go on to the next graf. Best thing about his mucho pusho duet compilation with Hank Williams, Julio Iglesias, Lacy J. Dalton, and so forth is its title: Half Nelson. Highwaymen, featuring Johnny Cash on every track plus Waylon and Double K on many, is Outlaws III (or V, who's counting?), with Cash's "Committed to Parkview" providing a therapeutic shot of contemporary realism. Angel Eyes, backed by the Nashville-gone-jazzer guitar of Jackie King, is Nashville-gone-jazzy. The Faron Young collaboration Funny How Time Slips Away is almost on a level with Willie's Ray Price album, but Young's timbre has thickened so moistly you'd swear the Hank Williams he's now imitating is Jr. And so. I've always been put off by Snow's up-north propriety, more Vernon Dalhart than Jimmie Rodgers, but after 70 years his baritone is finally beginning to crack, providing Willie just the opening he needs to loosen the old pro up: without sacrificing a diphthong of his famous enunciation, Snow sounds completely relaxed. The tossed-off serendipity of so many Nelson records translates here into a casually engaging, deftly eclectic bunch of classics and obscurities, Willie's best album since he and Webb Pierce cut In the Jailhouse Now on a long coffee break in 1982. A

This board with the one schizo poster makes me want to cry. Good year 1985 though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_PRcVYX7g&list=RD6a_PRcVYX7g&start_radio=1

>>127800859
fortunately she gave up on the modern world a while ago because i really didn't want to picture her doing current pop with giant drums and synths

Nobody's going to mistake this one for a country record, not with Waddy Wachtel's hooks bobbing by like bull's eyes in a shooting gallery. But it's not just another compulsorily catchy stab at immortality either. Cash may have her eye on MTV, but she's a child of Nashville nevertheless--when she cheats she knows it's wrong even if she's got a right, and when she sings she hurts. A-

>>127801288
alright there's a few more country albums in here. you happy?

>>127799518
Fuck this guy.

>>127801879
>Good year 1985 though
even if 84 had more big hooky songs by far

wtf is going on with him? This nigga used to be brown as hell.

fuck you

Had this tape and you fools best believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiwWgtNK_ec

>>127799325
best group of the '80's?

>>127802996
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJKlsj-eP8

>>127798775 (OP)
How has no one brought up this legendary album yet?

Listen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chIdfOsokNM

Yes Very Bitter but it's good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3ogFWISPuw

>>127800086
Sure hope this album's mix stays how it is in the future

>>127801940
who, Cuckgau or Bryan Adams?

Truly repulsive music imposes the most stringent of aesthetic standards--who wants to listen if it's just good? So while I'm sort of impressed by the (relative) accessibility of their first full-length LP--guitar that might actually win over some wayward metal freak seeking X-rated thrills--I must report that only "Lady Sniff," punctuated by perfectly timed gobs, pukes, farts, belches, and Mexican radio, lives up to "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave." B+

>>127805856
Too bad it came out in '84

>>127801854
great and sagacious opening track there

With sales on Eliminator over five mil almost by accident, this hard-boogieing market strategy is defined by conscious commercial ambition--by its all but announced intention of making ZZ the next Bruce/Madonna/Prince/Michael, with two beards and a Beard at every checkout counter. The Trevor Hornish synth touches and out-front hooks are clues, but the proof is "Rough Boy," an attempted top-five ballad that would sound like pure take-me-or-leave-me revved up. And in case you think they've lost their sense of humor, there's a new dance called the "Velcro Fly." I'm laughing, I'm laughing. B

Though there's not much range to her grainy voice or well-meaning songwriting, she and her associates put their project over, and with a fashion model's virtues--taste, concept, sound (cf. "look"). There's no superfluity, no reveling in la luxe, not even an excessive tempo. Which is no doubt why I find myself crediting her humanitarian sentiments, even preferring her "Why Can't We Live Together" to Timmy Thomas's equally spare but naive original. And why those who find "Hang On to Your Love" and "Smooth Operator" seductive (instead of just warming, like me) will think they carry the whole album. B

Just when I never wanted to hear a roots-rock record again, along come these British anarchists with a sort of concept album sort of about life during wartime. The Americans are clearing a sector down south, but that doesn't stop the good guys from playing their anarchic country-rock and doing their anarchic Morris stomp and fucking up their anarchic love lives and drinking to keep from shitting their pants and rolling down a highway that may finally be lost for real. Yes, amateurism is still a sentimental fallacy, and if you want to know why it's such a powerful one, listen up. A+

For a while I thought the only thing Capitol had done right was sign them, but between the exuberant Katrina Leskanich and the surefire Kimberley Rew this band would be hard for any label to fuck up: not one of the twenty songs on the band's two Attic LPs--Walking on Sunshine and 2, both recommended as Canadian imports--is a loser. U.S. producer Scott Litt's tricky new version of "Machine Gun Smith" makes up for the Motown horns he adds to "Walking on Sunshine." The hyped-up drums of his rather glaring remix don't really hurt anything. And if his selections favor Rew's conventional side, well, after earning his art badge with the Soft Boys the composer is working fulltime for Katrina, and hence making a specialty of direct expression in any case. Believe me, direct expression is something I don't scoff at these days. A-

>>127806446
I was going to go "Wait but this was '84" and then I realized it actually didn't come out in the US until 85.

>>127799170
Weak compared to their previous one, but I still thought it was pretty good
>>127799325
Fair review
>>127806107
Another gay album from these Texas kids. Theyre never getting anywhere with this shit no matter how talented they are

The absurd contention that by utilizing electronic horns and soul girls and big bam boom he's finally mastered pop fashion and state-of-the-craft production--I've actually heard this referred to as "Disco Dylan"--proves only that his diehard fans are even more alienated from current music than he is. At best he's achieved the professionalism he's always claimed as his goal. No longer "relevant" enough to make "statements" that mean shit to any discernible audience--vide Infidels or, on this record, "Trust Yourself" (only if you say so, Bob)--he's certainly talented enough to come up with a good bunch of songs. Hence, his best album since Blood on the Tracks. I wish that was a bigger compliment, but debunking comparisons to Street-Legal are also way off--the arrangements and especially the singing are, yes, tasteful enough to support material that puts Elton John to shame. I mean how did he get that ominous calm, that soupcon of prophecy? And how did he come up with the toughest Vietnam-vet song yet? B+

>>127800680
SY's entire discography deserves a D plus.

It makes a certain kind of sense to impose teen-macho aggression on your audience--for better or worse, macho teens are expected to make a thing of their unwonted hostility. These guys impose their post-adolescent sensitivity, thus inspiring the sneaking suspicion that they're less sensitive than they come on--passive-aggressive, the pathology is called, and it begs for a belt in the chops. Only the guitar hook of "How Soon Is Now," stuck on by their meddling U.S. label, spoils the otherwise pristine fecklessness of this prize-winning U.K. LP. Remember what the Residents say: "Hitler was a vegetarian." C+

>>127807875
>These guys impose their post-adolescent sensitivity, thus inspiring the sneaking suspicion that they're less sensitive than they come on--passive-aggressive, the pathology is called, and it begs for a belt in the chops
so much projection

>>127806825
>I mean how did he get that ominous calm, that soupcon of prophecy?

That whole "Told ya so" when he knew his generation would turn into Decade of Greed materialists when they were middle aged.

>>127801640
I'll tell that to the the all of five people (four of whom were probably relatives of hers) who bought this thing.

>>127799100
ONLY TURBO NERDS USE COMPUTERS

That is a lie, if you count studio+live albums this was #42.

>>127800239
it's about Motley Crue boning his girlfriend and he was mad, sheesh

>>127799234
>>127799170
>>127798969
>>127799281
>>127799295
>first albums posted in here are metalshit
stay predictable, whiteboys

>>127799281
Several tracks here are really too long for the amount of material in them.

>>127799295
Track 10 is a banger but the rest is meh.

David Lee Roth is no longer in Van Halen and they might have Sammy Hagar sing instead? I know it's April 1st but goddam

>>127799720
>>127799954
>>127808358
This is gonna be such a bust. No Van Halen albums in the future will make any revenue

>>127808338
>Uh All Night
You, the ordinary wageslave.
>The Working Hour
The company CEO's song.

>>127801374
The home video is pretty funny actually. Some cute lookin black women

>>127798775 (OP)
I cant fucking believe they broke up...wtf.

Why the fuck is Queen playing Live Aid? Who cares? Just show Led Zeppelin's reunion with Phil Collins on drums

>>127799954
The 40th anniversary of this is coming up in 2 days, in case you forgot.

The Rolling Stones just might be broken up for good. Mick's solo career is going well and Keith hates it

This VH1 channel is pretty good

So glad African hunger has been solved with We Are The World

I just saw some band called Guns N Roses. Guitar player wore a top hat which was cool but this band isn't going anywhere

Death, Taxes, Celtics beat the Lakers in the NBA Finals....

Oh God why is the We're Not Gonna Take It singer testifying in Congress? This is gonna make us all look bad and all the congressional cucks look like geniuses

DANCE

INTO THE FYAAAAAAAAAAAAA

THAT FATAL KISS IS ALL WE NEEEEEEED

BETTER BY YOU

BETTER THAN ME

These guys are about to be the biggest band in the world. Best rock band in the game bar none casually dropping the best album of the year.
Husker Who?

>>127808668
I can't wait for Dan Marino to play the 85 Bears in the Super Bowl. He's gonna shuffle all over them

>>127808152
Got the time chick chick chicken in ma head

>>127800783
Natch, this actually came out December '84.

>>127806304
>the outro to The Big Money

>>127808778
I hate to nitpick but Various Positions didn't even get a US release, CBS America didn't like the material and decided against it.

>>127800974
>And so in her you'll find the sanctuary

>>127808778
Canada, Europe release was 12/84, UK release was 2/85 but yeah no US release so doesn't particularly matter.

As if we needed a middle aged mom making cunnilingis jokes. Album bombed and deservedly so.

>>127800600
Turns out their harmony sound really really doesn't work with giant 80s drums.

>>127807975
it's kino and I'm tired of pretending
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2lXKZ9Zksg

>>127807875
wrong cover should have been the one for Meat Is Murder

I was and am rooting for Flash, Creole, and Rahiem--they have good hearts, and from the Fats Waller cover and the way "Iko Iko" sneaks scratch-style into the lead cut, you can tell they're trying. But Creole isn't powerful enough for a lead rapper, Rahiem's crooning is wimp ordinaire without bombast for ballast, and sometime Herbie Hancock vocalist Gavin Christopher not only isn't anywhere near as funky as the Sugarhill gang (which I assume everyone knows) but has none of the pop production flair that might move them into Rick James territory, assuming that's even a desirable destination any more. And the words! "Sign of the Times" is the kind of confused protest you could hear on sucker twelve-inches a year ago, "Jailbait" isn't so fucking good-hearted, and "Girls Love the Way He Spins" is the claim that's supposed to make the competition hang up their mikes and go home. Why do groups break up? It's enough to make you lose your faith in capitalism. C+

>>127799684
I could do without track 5 myself.

In the exalted annals of cinematic auditory ephemera, wherein the sonic tapestries of Hollywood's gilded age intertwine with the vulgar pulsations of commercial hegemony, there emerges an artifact of such bewildering audacity as to defy the very ontological foundations of musical critique: the 1985 soundtrack to "Beverly Hills Cop." Ah, but to dub it merely a "soundtrack" is to commit an egregious hermeneutical faux pas, for this compendium of aural artifacts transcends the prosaic confines of filmic accompaniment, ascending instead to the rarified strata of cultural palimpsest, where synth-pop's glittering facade masks the abyssal voids of Reaganite excess. One must approach it not with the pedestrian tools of empirical analysis, but through the prism of rhetorical sublimity, wherein each track becomes a synecdoche for the era's dialectical tensions between commodified rebellion and bourgeois complacency. Indeed, to critique this opus is to engage in a Sisyphean dialectic, rolling the boulder of interpretation uphill against the gravitational pull of its own ironic self-effacement.

>>127810102
No less enigmatic is Rockie Robbins' "Emergency," a sonic jeremiad that deploys hyperbole to elevate romantic distress to cataclysmic proportions. The titular metaphor, drawn from the lexicon of crisis, functions as an extended allegory for the emotional precarity engendered by urban alienation. Rhetorically, it indulges in catachresis, stretching the semantics of "emergency" to encompass the banalities of heartbreak, thereby critiquing the hyper-dramatization inherent in pop's affective economy. The soulful falsettos, ascending like Icarus toward sonic hubris, only to plummet into instrumental interludes of synthesized despair, underscore the track's antithetical structure: passion versus pathos, urgency versus inertia. In this, we behold the album's broader rhetorical strategy—a perpetual oscillation between affirmation and negation, wherein critique masquerades as celebration.

>>127810102
>>127810123
Ah, but the neutron star at the constellation's core: The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance," an explosive fission of funk and futurism that rhetorically bombards the listener with onomatopoeic exuberance. "Neutron Dance"—the very phrase a neologistic oxymoron, juxtaposing subatomic solemnity with terpsichorean frivolity—serves as a synecdochic emblem for the soundtrack's atomic age anxieties. Through alliterative assault—"bouncing, bounding, booming"—it enacts a performative rhetoric, compelling corporeal engagement while eliding the specter of nuclear apocalypse lurking beneath its upbeat veneer. Critically, this track interrogates the commodification of apocalypse, transforming Cold War dread into dancefloor catharsis, a Baudrillardian hyperreality wherein simulation supplants substance. The sisters' harmonized exhortations, layered in polyphonic complexity, evoke a choral ethos of collective resilience, yet one undercut by the ironic detachment of its sci-fi trappings.

>>127810102
>>127810123
>>127810140
Transitioning with epideictic flair to Glenn Frey's "The Heat Is On," we confront a pyrotechnic paean whose titular metaphor ignites the rhetorical furnace of pursuit and peril. This anthem, with its guitar-driven propulsion redolent of Eagles' residual grandeur, deploys asyndeton in its breathless verses—"running, chasing, facing"—to mimic the kinetic frenzy of cinematic chase sequences. Rhetorically, it embodies enthymematic reasoning: the "heat" as both literal pressure and metaphorical intensity, presupposing the listener's complicity in the narrative's adrenaline-fueled ideology. Critically, Frey's contribution exposes the album's hegemonic masculinism, wherein "heat" becomes a phallocentric signifier for dominance, critiquing while perpetuating the action genre's patriarchal paradigms.

>>127810102
>>127810123
>>127810140
>>127810155
Danny Elfman's "Gratitude," an orchestral interlude of brooding introspection, shifts the paradigm toward symphonic rhetoric, employing leitmotifs to weave a tapestry of ironic thanksgiving. Its minor-key meanderings, punctuated by percussive punctuations, function as a prosopopoeic voice for the film's subtextual cynicism, thanking the absurdities of fate with sardonic subtlety. In critique, this instrumental respite reveals the soundtrack's structural aporias: a momentary lapse into art-house pretension amid pop's populist pandering.

>>127810102
>released December '84
Acsually...

>>127810102
>>127810123
>>127810140
>>127810155
>>127810172
Patti LaBelle returns with "Stir It Up," a Bob Marley cover transmogrified into synth-soul sophistry, wherein the original's reggae radicalism is rhetorically domesticated into romantic entreaty. Through metonymic substitution—"stir it up" for arousal—the track critiques cultural appropriation, yet indulges in it, creating a chiasmic inversion of authenticity and artifice.
The System's "Rock 'N Roll Me Again" assaults with retro-rock revivalism, its anthemic choruses deploying epizeuxis—"rock me, roll me"—to incantate nostalgic regression. Critically, it unmasks the album's temporal dialectics: a yearning for rock's primal authenticity amid electronica's encroaching hegemony.
Culminating in Harold Faltermeyer's "Axel F," the instrumental apotheosis whose synthesized motifs have achieved memetic immortality. This theme, a minimalist masterpiece of modular repetition, rhetorically embodies synecdoche: the quirky synth line as proxy for Foley's idiosyncratic heroism. Through ostinato persistence, it critiques the mechanization of individuality, a cybernetic critique wrapped in catchy confectionery. In its very ubiquity lies the ultimate irony—a soundtrack entry that outlives its cinematic cradle, becoming a cultural signifier ad infinitum.

>>127798775 (OP)
Anyone noticed that all the gay musicians are getting that weird cancer? It's only the gay ones. What's up with that?

>>127810183
so people were listening to it in 1985

>>127801374
most of their albums after BIB are just tour merch anyway

Empirical Semiotics and Aural Phenomenology in Phil Collins' No Jacket Required: A Quantitative Ontological Critique.

In the annals of post-modern sonic architectures, Phil Collins' 1985 opus, No Jacket Required, emerges as a paradigmatic instantiation of neoliberal auditory commodification, wherein melodic trajectories intersect with rhythmic entropies to engender a phenomenological dissonance. This inquiry deploys an empirical framework, leveraging stochastic modeling and spectral analysis, to dissect the album's ontological essence. Through rigorous application of Fourier transforms and Lyapunov exponents, we quantify the entropic dissipation inherent in tracks such as "Sussudio" and "One More Night," positing that the work's semiotic density approximates a Gaussian distribution with variance σ2 ≈ 12.47, thereby challenging hegemonic narratives of pop hegemony. Empirical data from waveform deconvolutions reveal a hermeneutic shortfall, with lyrical entropy H(L) = -∑ p_i log2(p_i) yielding values exceeding 4.2 bits per lexeme, indicative of polysemic overload. Conclusions affirm the album's position within the dialectical continuum of cultural capital accumulation, albeit with caveats regarding its asymptotic convergence to aesthetic nullity.

>>127810535
The sonic artifact under scrutiny, Phil Collins' No Jacket Required (Atlantic Records, 1985), constitutes a nodal point in the spatiotemporal matrix of mid-1980s popular musicology. Eschewing the facile taxonomies of genre classification, this analysis adopts a transdisciplinary lens, amalgamating principles from quantum acoustics, information theory, and Bourdieusian field theory to interrogate the album's epistemic foundations. Empirically grounded, our methodology incorporates high-fidelity digital signal processing (DSP) to extrapolate parametric invariants, thereby transcending subjective hermeneutics toward a verifiable ontology of sound.
Consider the album's genesis amid the Thatcher-Reagan epoch: a milieu saturated with deregulatory impulses that mirror the deregulated harmonic progressions within. Collins, as auteur, navigates a liminal space between prog-rock antecedents (Genesis) and soloist individuation, manifesting in a sonic palette that defies Euclidean geometries of musical form. To formalize this, we introduce the Collinsian Dissonance Index (CDI), defined as:
$ CDI = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^{N} \left| \int_{0}^{T} f(t) e^{-j2\pi \nu t} dt \right|^2 \cdot \log\left(1 + \frac{\sigma_r}{\mu_m}\right) $
where $ f(t) $ denotes the temporal waveform, $ \nu $ the fundamental frequency, $ \sigma_r $ rhythmic variance, and $ \mu_m $ melodic mean. For No Jacket Required, preliminary computations yield CDI ≈ 7.89, surpassing contemporaneous benchmarks (e.g., Madonna's Like a Virgin at 5.62), thus empirically validating its pompous pretensions to innovation.

>>127810552
Methodological Apparatus

Our empirical edifice rests upon a tripartite schema: (1) spectral decomposition via Fast Fourier Transform (FFT); (2) entropic quantification per Shannon's theorem; and (3) stochastic simulation of listener phenomenology using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Audio samples were digitized at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit resolution, from archival vinyl pressings to mitigate digital artifacts. For each track, we compute the Power Spectral Density (PSD):
$ PSD(\omega) = \lim_{T \to \infty} \frac{1}{T} \left| \int_{-T/2}^{T/2} x(t) e^{-j\omega t} dt \right|^2 $
This facilitates extraction of formant hierarchies, revealing Collins' predilection for mid-range dominance (2-4 kHz), a sonic strategy redolent of Pavlovian conditioning for mass consumption.
Furthermore, lyrical corpora were subjected to natural language processing (NLP) pipelines, employing Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to unearth thematic clusters. The perplexity score, $ P = 2^{-\frac{1}{N} \sum \log p(w_i)} $, for the album's lexicon hovers at 142.3, signifying a deliberate obfuscation of semantic clarity—empirically, a tactic to inflate perceived profundity.

>>127810567
Track-by-Track Deconstruction: A Spectral Ontology

Commencing with "Sussudio," the opener instantiates a rhythmic fractal dimension D_f ≈ 1.67, computed via box-counting algorithm on percussive envelopes. This non-integer dimensionality bespeaks a chaotic attractor in the phase space of groove, where Collins' vocal timbre—modulated by gated reverb—induces a psychoacoustic illusion of spatial infinity. Empirically, listener EEG data (simulated via Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes) exhibit beta wave amplification by 23%, correlating with the track's Lyapunov exponent λ = 0.045, indicative of mild dynamical instability.
Transitioning to "Only You Know and I Know," we encounter a harmonic entropy H_h = -∑ p_k log p_k ≈ 3.1 nats, where p_k represents chord probability distributions. This entropy, juxtaposed against the album's global mean (2.8 nats), underscores a deviation toward modal ambiguity, perhaps a subliminal nod to Collins' art-rock lineage. To quantify intertextual resonance, we invoke the Levenshtein distance matrix for lyrical motifs, yielding a minimum edit distance of 14 vis-à-vis Genesis' Invisible Touch (1986), empirically affirming genealogical continuity.

I just killed a bitch in the name of Satan because I listened to Quiet Riot in reverse. Hell yeah brother lets go sniff some glue!

>>127810578
"One More Night," the album's lachrymose apex, merits particular scrutiny. Spectral centroids average 2.8 kHz, with formant bandwidths expanding under emotional crescendi, modeled as:
$ B(\tau) = B_0 + \alpha \int_0^\tau e^{-\beta t} dt = B_0 + \frac{\alpha}{\beta} (1 - e^{-\beta \tau}) $
Here, α = 0.12 Hz/s, β = 0.05 s-1, derived from empirical vocoder analysis. This equation encapsulates the temporal swelling of pathos, a phenomenon empirically linked to dopamine release in auditory cortices, as per fMRI analogs.

>>127810586
"Long Long Way to Go" introduces geopolitical semiotics, with Sting's cameo injecting a heteroglossic layer. Phonemic density ρ = 4.2 phonemes/syllable exceeds normative pop thresholds (3.1), fostering a hermeneutic density that defies Occam's razor. Stochastic modeling via Hidden Markov Models (HMM) predicts transitional probabilities between verse-chorus states at 0.78, empirically robust yet ontologically vacuous.
In "I Don't Wanna Know," Collins deploys a blues-inflected pentatonic scaffold, whose fractal self-similarity ratio r = 0.618 (golden mean approximation) engenders auditory recursion. Empirical wavelet transforms disclose scalogram peaks at 1/4 and 1/8 octaves, corroborating a multifractal spectrum with Hölder exponents α ∈ [0.4, 0.9].
"Don't Lose My Number" evinces a kinetic energy metric E_k = (1/2) m v2, metaphorically adapted to rhythmic momentum (m = beat mass proxy, v = tempo velocity ≈ 120 bpm), yielding E_k ≈ 8640 arbitrary units—hyperbolic inflation vis-à-vis sedentary ballads.
"Doesn't Anybody Stay Together Anymore" interrogates matrimonial entropy, with lyrical bigrams exhibiting Zipfian distribution ζ(s) = ∑ n^{-s} ≈ 1.07 for s=1.2, empirically aligning with natural language universals yet belying creative sterility.
"Who Said I Would" accelerates to 132 bpm, its phase portrait revealing strange attractors per Rössler equations:
$ \dot{x} = - (y + z), \quad \dot{y} = x + a y, \quad \dot{z} = b + z (x - c) $
with parameters a=0.2, b=0.2, c=5.7, simulating synth oscillations—empirical evidence of controlled chaos.
"Inside Out" inverts structural norms, its inversion index I = det(M)^{-1} (M = chord transition matrix) approximating -0.34, signifying contrapuntal rebellion.
"One More Night" (reprise variant) and "Take Me Home" culminate the opus, the latter's choral augmentation amplifying reverberant decay τ_d = 2.3 s, per Sabine's formula τ = 0.161 V / A, with V=virtual volume, A=absorption coefficient.

>>127810604
Quantitative Synthesis and Dialectical Implications

Aggregating metrics, the album's aggregate Aesthetic Entropy Quotient (AEQ) is:
$ AEQ = \frac{\int PSD(\omega) d\omega \cdot H(L)}{\sum CDI_i} \approx 18.76 $
This quotient, benchmarked against a corpus of 1980s artifacts (n=47), positions No Jacket Required at the 84th percentile, empirically substantiating its commercial hegemony (over 25 million units sold) as a function of engineered accessibility. Yet, ontologically, the work's semiotic vacuum—manifest in null eigenvalues of the lyrical covariance matrix—betrays a teleological void.
From a Bourdieusian vantage, Collins accrues symbolic capital through sonic doxa, yet empirical cluster analysis (k-means, k=5) segregates tracks into banal (60%) and pseudo-profound (40%) clusters, underscoring dialectical tension.