We begin 1988 in a very delicate manner. On 16 February, the debut album of All About Eve, called simply All About Eve, was released. Above, you can listen to Martha's Harbour which is my favorite track on it and was also a moderate hit as a single, reaching #10 on the UK album chart. Why the official music video cannot be found in YouTube, I don't know; I am aware that one at least used to exist since I saw it plenty of times in 1988. Another favorite song of mine on the album is called What Kind of Fool.
All About Eve were a British group playing mostly mellow, acoustic soft rock and pop with noticeable folk influences. The singer Julianne Regan was formerly a journalist. The group went on to release four albums in quick succession between 1988 and 1992; this self titled debut turned out to be their biggest hit, although the second one came quite close.
Next, let's move a couple of weeks ahead. On 1 March, the American supergroup Toto released their seventh studio album, fittingly titled The Seventh One. This was once again proof of the eighties' greatness in the genre of simple pop music. I had been paying close attention to Toto's output already at the end of the seventies, but it wasn't until now that they completed their most satisfying album. The Seventh One is full of quality pop and has the same outstanding production values that the group is so well known for.
By only a very small margin, my favorite track on the album is the rocking Home of the Brave, embedded above. It was not a self evident choice; there are also two near perfect pop songs Pamela and Stop Loving You, as well as a couple of more thoughtful ballads Mushanga and A Thousand Years to choose from. Oh, the quality of the eighties pop was simply incredible. Toto IV (1982) may have been the group's most successful and best known release, but in my mind, The Seventh One is their best.
I associate the Toto album with my final months in the army, and it was only two months later, on 3 May, that I had once again earned my freedom. Soon after that, my adult life began in earnest when I moved to Helsinki and started my first permanent job on Monday, 16 May. Strangely enough, there was very little in the way of great new albums for building a soundtrack for those times. The Toto album had come out on 1 March, and the John Farnham album wouldn't be coming out until as late as 25 July.
So, let's fill that empty space of nearly five months with two mostly instrumental albums of almost incomparable beauty, whose exact release dates in 1988 are unknown to me. If you clicked Saint Tom above, you will already know that Brian Eno created some of the most stunningly beautiful melodies of his career this year. Music for Films III contained also other great tracks such as Asian River and Theme from 'Creation' but Saint Tom is the pinnacle of this particular release. It is the best thing Eno wrote in the eighties - although An Ending (Ascent) topped my short track list the year it was released, and Saint Tom will not.
The other mainly instrumental album I was referring to above is the Irish new age group Clannad's greatest masterpiece Atlantic Realm which in its flawlessness is obviously one of the best albums of the year - yet it has no chance of winning that title or even getting second place in a year like this. In any case, there are really no weak tracks on this atmospheric collection, so I was more than happy to find a video in YouTube that combines two of them. In Flight and Moving Thru are tracks number 6 and 3 in a collection of 13 minor masterpieces.
And then we jump straight to the end of July. It is this exceptional emptiness of significant releases for several months that has allowed me to contain an entire year in a single blog entry, even though it isn't a weak one. I already mentioned pop singer John Farnham above; his album Age of Reason borders on not being worth mentioning at all. But I decided to include him anyway, because his album is a pretty decent pop album and the title track as well as Blow by Blow, Listen to the Wind and Beyond the Call are all high quality eighties pop. Let's not embed anything and move on.
In August, we were treated to a new album by French electronic music composer Jean-Michel Jarre called Revolutions. This is also an album that wouldn't be worth mentioning at all, were it not for its outstanding opening sequence called Industrial Revolution Overture. Embedded above is the entire album: start from the beginning and listen to it as long as you can. It is truly great at the beginning, then slowly peters out to meaninglessness.
I had been aware of the American heavy metal group Metallica for some time now, but had not paid much attention. Before 25 August, I remembered them best for a comment that someone made to me upon hearing the opening riffs of Almost Like Love by Yes: that it was amusing how the progressive rock supergroup suddenly sounded like Metallica. The metal favorites already enjoyed a following that was way too large to be called mere cult. I have heard fans call ...And Justice for All the best album of all time.
I can't quite agree with that claim, but neither can I deny the power of One, embedded above. One of the most impressive anti war statements ever, it became Metallica's first genuine MTV hit, in spite of its extremely grim subject matter. The heavy metal song is simple in structure as well as arrangement, but uses the storyline of the pacifistic film Johnny Got His Gun (1971) to great effect and leaves you both impressed and strongly moved.
Like last year, September of 1988 also brought four noteworthy albums, and even though they weren't, on average, quite as impressive as last year's quartet, one of them did join the ranks of the decade's absolute best. The album in question was not Peepshow, out on 5 September; but it was nonetheless in my opinion the best album by the British goth rockers Siouxsie and the Banshees. They were another group that I had already noticed but had not paid very much attention to until now. The album's opening track Peek-a-boo, embedded below, is one good example of why I was forced to do so.
As good as that song is, it isn't even the best of the album - I just couldn't resist embedding it because it comes with a cool music video. My number one favorite has however always been the atmospheric, icily beautiful Carousel which I suggest you listen to as well. Other highlights on Peepshow include the beautiful The Last Beat of My Heart and the slowly building closing track Rhapsody.
On 16 September, Talk Talk released their greatest masterpiece Spirit of Eden that simply must have come as a complete surprise to others as well as me. Sure, the 1985 Best short track of the year winner Time It's Time did indicate that some kind of transformation was taking place, but how could anyone have foreseen its results? The former melodic pop group had turned into a blossoming art rock ensemble just like that, without any visible effort. The beauty and calm of Spirit of Eden even defies the use of word rock. Instrumentation is that of a rock band but the music defines a genre of its own.
When Spirit of Eden first came out, I was absolutely certain that I had just heard the best album of the year. This wasn't to be: only a little over one month later such a towering masterpiece was released that Spirit of Eden ended up on second place, even though it would have been a deserving winner in almost any other year in the eighties. This was very much like it was with Within the Realm of a Dying Sun by Dead Can Dance last year. Inheritance, embedded above, is a great example of the album's style.
Three days later, two very different albums came out on the same day. Both of them had an impact on me. On 19 September, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds released their album Tender Prey, whose angry opening track Mercy Seat left an indelible impression on me. I wasn't particularly taken with the rest of the album, but this song certainly packs a punch. The album version is perhaps a bit overlong and repetitive at the end, but that is a minor complaint and doesn't even apply to the video embedded below which plays the shorter version.
And then, Enya became a superstar. On the same day with Tender Prey, the Irish singer's breakthrough album Watermark also came out, and what an album it was. The new age masterpiece did not contain many unnecessary tracks, sold millions, and gave us the singer's first major hit Orinoco Flow. This coincided conveniently with the heyday of music video. It was only Enya's second album following her self titled debut that we mentioned earlier. Her third one would be yet another major hit.
The lyrical, lovely music video, embedded below, entered the power rotation of MTV and other satellite channels of the time, playing in the same feed with the works of the era's best known pop stars. It must have seemed a little out of place, but definitely helped a lot in making the singer a household name. I was convinced: here was a major new talent, and her hit song a minor masterpiece. Perhaps we are getting a little too ethereal; next up, something a bit more raw.
I had never been a big fan of metal, even though I had chosen Ozzy Osbourne's classic Bark at the Moon as the best album of 1983. Here, I have already praised Metallica and there is more to follow. On 11 October, another American metal group Ministry released their third album The Land of Rape and Honey which I suppose became their eventual breakthrough. Those who weren't paying attention in 1988, noticed the aggressive masterwork a couple of years later when its opening track Stigmata featured in the science fiction cult classic film Hardware.
Stigmata is a great heavy metal song and there are also several other memorable tracks on the album. But, instead of Stigmata, my favorite has always been The Missing. Clocking just under three minutes, it is a very compact song but manages to do everything a metal track should in that short time frame. Embedded below is how far I have come from the seventies prog days. But this is how it is: the most inspired musicianship can appear in many different genres when times change, and one must always be ready to follow it.
Finally, there are only two album releases left to discuss. We will get into one of them now. Hence the title 1988, minus one for this blog entry. That second album came out on 24 October and easily won the title of Album of the year. And, just as importantly, it opened with the best short track of the entire decade - the one that in my books beat even Ironbound / Fancy Poultry, last year's classic track by Suzanne Vega.
That album, whose name I shall not mention now, will be discussed in the next blog entry and, only after that, we will compile the traditional year end list of all the best songs and albums. This entry will only discuss one more release, which is once again a showcase of high quality pop music of the eighties. The album Everything by Bangles was released on 18 October and contained the chart topping single hit Eternal Flame which even I liked quite a lot.
But, since I always tend to prefer things that the majority don't, I found my number one favorite on the album in the song embedded above. Something to Believe in still gives me goosebumps and remains my favorite among the Bangles' entire output.