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The 80 Greatest Albums of 1980

What came out of all this was, arguably, the greatest year for great albums ever

Rolling Stone

It was the end— the end of the Seventies — and everyone was more than a little antsy to get going on whatever was about to come next. In terms of music, the new decade started off like someone had fired a starter’s pistol.

It’s fitting that the Clash’s London Calling, which is ranked Number One on our list of the best albums of 1980, came out in January of that year, and if you listen to the records that follow it on the list, there’s a palpable sense of clearing away the past to invent the future. Every style of music was fragmenting and evolving in ways that would’ve been hard to imagine just a couple of years ago, especially punk and New Wave, which were mutating into synth-pop, post-punk, goth, the New Romantic movement, the two-tone ska revival, the very beginnings of indie rock, and more. Funk and disco were getting streamlined. Metal was getting meaner, faster, and sharper.

Meanwhile, the classic artists who’d defined rock, country, and R&B were going strong, either by responding to the changes around them (Pete Townshend, Genesis), sticking to their guns (Van Morrison, Neil Young), or getting even weirder than they were in the Seventies (Bob Dylan).

What came out of it all this was, arguably, the greatest year for great albums ever. If you walked into a record store on October 8th, and you only had enough cash for one record, you were really in a bind, because Prince’s Dirty Mind (Number Three) and Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (Number Four) both came out that very same day. This kind of consumer crisis came up all the time in 1980. July 18th was an especially rough day for mopey punk fans, who were forced to choose between Echo and the Bunnymen’s Crocodiles (Number 72) and Joy Division’s Closer (Number 10), and headbangers had it rough on April 14th, the release day for Iron Maiden’s self-titled debut (Number 41) as well as Judas Priest’s British Steel (Number 18).

Getting our list down to 80 was a real struggle (sorry, Dire Straits’ Making Movies and George Benson’s Give Me the Night). But it was a joy to revisit so much great, groundbreaking music.

From Rolling Stone US

80. Hall and Oates, ‘Voices’

Ever savvy about the marketplace, H&O left their Philly soul and folkie periods in the dust and went all New Wave. The makeover forced the duo to tighten up and sharpen their hooks. (If not their lyrics: In “Africa,” Hall feels the need to visit that country and rescue his model girlfriend, on a photo shoot, “before the lions and tigers try to jump on her bones.”) You know the taut, punchy hits — “Kiss on My List,” “You Make My Dreams” — but “United State” is the best Cars knockoff you’ll ever hear. And only these guys could have pulled off the blend of street-corner harmonies and proto-MTV pop in the semi-title song. —D.B.

79. The Cramps, ‘Songs the Lord Taught Us’

“I cut your head off and put in my TV set/I use your eyeballs for dials,” Lux Interior proposed on “TV Set,” which opened the Cramps debut. The Cramps tore up the New York punk scene with their leopard-skin vampire look and a psychobilly sound that went way beyond the kitschiest moments of the Ramones or Blondie and into a whole new realm of garage-trash novelty. Recorded in Memphis with Big Star’s Alex Chilton producing, Songs staggers and stomps from “Garbageman” to “Zombie Dance” to “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” like a sock hop in hell you won’t want to leave. —J.D.

78. Rod Stewart, ‘Foolish Behaviour’

Stewart was at the height of his Hollywood excess when he made the wonderfully trashy Foolish Behaviour. As he confessed, “Too much partying, too much booze, and a few too many dabs of recreational cocaine might have had something to do with it.” But the sleaze smells sweet in “She Won’t Dance With Me” and “Oh God, I Wish I Was Home Tonight” — even in the much-maligned hit “Passion,” where he belts, “Even the president needs passion!” He later wrote in his memoir, Rod, “‘Passion,’ on the Foolish Behaviour album, has the distinction of being my mum’s least-favorite song of any that I wrote. In other words, it was a song not even a mother could love.” —R.S. 

77. Jim Carroll, ‘Catholic Boy’

Has any punk rocker ever killed off as many memorable characters in one song as Jim Carroll did in “People Who Died”? No way. Carroll was a New York City poet and hustler, author of The Basketball Diaries — you can hear him in the crowd on the Velvet Underground’s Live at Max’s Kansas City chattering about tuinals. Catholic Boy has sardonic satires like “It’s Too Late.” (Second line: “To fall in love with Sharon Tate.”) Carroll died in 2009, but “People Who Died” lives on, a litany of casualties from drugs, war, gang violence, leukemia, hepatitis, bikers, and overdosing on Drano. Spoiler: Tony couldn’t fly! Tony died! —R.S. 

76. Bob Dylan, ‘Saved’

If Dylan fans didn’t get the message of his Christian reawakening on 1979’s Slow Train Coming, he really powered the point home the next year on Saved. Lyrics like “By His truth I can be upright/By His strength I do endure” seemed to come right from a hymnal, obscuring the brilliantness of music to many non-believing fans. This is Dylan at the peak of his vocal powers, and he’s rarely played with a better bunch of musicians. To hear the ultimate versions of these songs, check out the 2017 Bootleg Series edition Trouble No More, where you can hear Dylan performing these songs in front of hostile audiences. —A.G.

75. Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, ‘Against the Wind’

Around 1974, blue-collar rocker Bob Seger made a vow to his frenemies in the Eagles: “I’m gonna catch you fuckers!” With 1980’s Against the Wind, he finally did, sort of, seeing his greatest commercial success up to that point with his sleekest and most laid-back album to date. Opening with the goofy “The Horizontal Bop” was a feint — much of the album is devoted to poignant reflections on aging, most effectively on the title track, one of Seger’s masterpieces, which manages to be even more agonizingly nostalgic and freighted with loss than “Night Moves.” —B.H.

74. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, ‘Organisation’

Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark were one of the most inventive groups to emerge from the U.K. synth-pop wave, with hits from “Electricity” to “Telegraph” to the Pretty In Pink prom theme, “If You Leave.” Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys were by no means averse to lofty artistic conceits — their next two albums were titled Architecture & Morality and Dazzle Ships. Organisation has OMD’s first and best U.K. smash, “Enola Gay,” an electro-throb dance-floor melodrama that’s about both coming out and nuclear destruction. —R.S. 

73. ELO & Olivia Newton-John, ‘Xanadu’

Olivia Newton-John starring in a Hollywood musical? With songs by Jeff Lynne? Now that’s poetic cinema! The Xanadu soundtrack was a pleasure dome with glitzy hits from Olivia (“Magic”) and ELO (“All Over the World”). It defined the 1980 hit parade for some fans — including John Lennon. “I love commercial music,” he said that fall, right before his death. “I like Olivia Newton-John singing ‘Magic’ and Donna Summer singing whatever the hell it is she’ll be singing. I like the ELO singing ‘All Over the World.’ I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business.’” Now we are here, in Xanadu. —R.S. 

72. Echo and the Bunnymen, ‘Crocodiles’

Echo and Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch was a post-punk wallower with a cocky edge, merging the images of Lou Reed and Jim Morrison into one doomed, swaggering spirit moaning his black-leather blues into the cold, hollow night. On their thrilling debut Crocodiles, the rest of the Bunnymen back him up with the pushy bleakness of Will Sergeants’ ice-dagger guitar and Les Pattinson’s spelunking bass, making “Rescue” and “Pictures on My Wall” the perfect invitations to crawl down into Ian’s hot pit of despair. —J.D. 

71. Kurtis Blow, ‘Kurtis Blow’

The first rap album released on a major label, Kurtis Blow’s debut features his classic single “The Breaks” and, on the funky “Hard Times,” some very little light social realism (“like the cream of the crop and the crop of the cream/beatin’ hard times that is my dream”). The CD reissue also adds his great 1979 hit “Christmas Rappin’,” which followed the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” as one of hip-hop’s very first hits. Blow’s attempts to sing, which include the interesting inclusion of a cover of a BTO’s “Taking Care of Business,” show just how embryonic hip-hop was in album form in 1980. —J.D.

70. Genesis, ‘Duke’

It’s almost like Genesis got a telegram on January 1st, 1980 that read: “It’s the Eighties. Buy a drum machine, cut your hair, and write pop songs.” There are some epic prog songs straight out of the Seventies Genesis playbook on Duke, like the 10-minute “Duke’s Travels/Duke’s End,” but radio-friendly tunes like “Misunderstanding” and “Turn It On Again” are the complete opposite of the music that put them on the map during the prior decade. This was a slick Genesis for the MTV era. It left many old fans enraged, but it soon allowed them to make the move from arenas into football stadiums. —A.G.

69. Police, ‘Zenyatta Mondatta’

“It was a very difficult time,” Sting said diplomatically. “There was a sense of urgency and quite a lot of drugs.” The Police cranked out their third album amid crazy deadline pressure and constant fighting — yet it became a smash hit. As Sting told Rolling Stone in 1983, “I really like about a third of it — ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me,’ ‘When the World Is Running Down,’ ‘Driven to Tears’ — but the rest of it I would happily throw in the dustbin.” He hated the Andy Summers guitar instrumental “Behind My Camel” so much, he tried to bury the tape in the studio garden. (Andy dug it up, but Sting still refused to play bass on it.) —R.S. 

68. Peter Gabriel, ‘III (Melt)’

Peter Gabriel inadvertently gave birth to one of the Eighties’ signature sounds on his third self-titled LP when the “gated reverb” effect guest drummer Phil Collins deployed on “Intruder” created a sound that echoed throughout the entire decade, used by everyone from Duran Duran to Bruce Springsteen. Beyond the studio innovations, Peter Gabriel (commonly called Melt or Peter Gabriel III) found the singer leaving the shadow of Genesis for a haunting LP that touches on political assassinations (“Family Snapshot”), the futility of war (“Games Without Frontiers”), and the brutal murder of South African activist Steve Biko (“Biko”). He made more popular albums after this one, but never better ones. —A.G.

67. Neil Young, ‘Hawks and Doves’

Released just one day before the 1980 presidential election, Hawks and Doves is an odd collection of tunes split between newly written country rock songs with a political edge (“Union Man,” “Hawks and Doves”) and tunes from Young’s massive vault of mid-Seventies outtakes (“This Old Homestead,” “Captain Kennedy”). The result is an oddly short record that feels pretty half-cocked, but it was the first release after his disabled son Ben was born, and his priorities were understandably elsewhere at the time. But highlights like the sublime “Little Wing” from the 1974 Homegrown sessions make this an essential listen for Young fans. —A.G.

66. Wipers, ‘Is This Real?’

Coming out of Portland, Oregon, eons before it became a hipster promised land, Wipers was the vehicle for Greg Sage, an Upper Northwest punk shouter/amp punisher, whose playing rivaled better-known indie-punk guitar heroes like Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü or Black Flag’s Greg Ginn; their debut LP brims with relentlessly chugging distortion splurges like “Return of the Rat,” “Tragedy,” and “Mystery,” Kurt Cobain listed it among his favorite albums, and Sage’s songs have been covered by Stephen Malkmus and Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker, among others. —J.D. 

65. Chaka Khan, ‘Naughty’

Chaka’s second solo album wasn’t a hit on the level of her 1978 debut (featuring “I’m Every Woman”) or her Rufus records, but it’s a key part of her Queen of Funk mystique. She sets off her jazzy vocal fireworks in “Papillon (a.k.a. Hot Butterfly),” while a young Luther Vandross tells her something good. “Clouds” is an Ashford and Simpson special featuring vocals from Cissy Houston and her 16-year-old daughter, a promising kid named Whitney. In “Nothing’s Gonna Take You Away,” Chaka describes her romantic ideal: “You go barefootin’ when there’s showers/You like to listen to Coltrane for hours.” —R.S.

64. Adam and the Ants, ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’

“It’s your money that we want! And your money we shall have!” Give Adam Ant credit for honesty. The greatest New Romantic poseur of his era, Adam came on as a dandy highwayman dressed in pirate gear, yowling over the Ants’ faux-tribal drums, with the slogan “Antmusic for Sexpeople.” Kings of the Wild Frontier is just one banger after another: “Dog Eat Dog,” “Jolly Roger,” “Press Darlings.” “Physical (You’re So)” was kinky enough for Nine Inch Nails to cover. “It’s all part of presentation,” Adam told Rolling Stone. “I just hope ‘showbiz’ never becomes a dirty word. I love it.” —R.S. 

63. The Soft Boys, ‘Underwater Moonlight’

Robyn Hitchcock led his Cambridge, England, crew through this psychedelic trip, with jingle-jangle Rickenbackers and surreal Syd Barrett-style wordplay. The Soft Boys were out of step with fashion, yet became cult faves in the U.S., where bands like R.E.M. and the Replacements memorized every lick. The centerpiece: “Insanely Jealous,” building from paranoid whispers to crazed guitar clangs. Hitchcock remains one of rock’s great free spirits, while Kimberley Rew founded Katrina and the Waves. Bassist Matthew Seligman tragically died in the Covid-19 pandemic, in April 2020. —R.S.

62. Dolly Parton, ‘9 to 5 and Odd Jobs’

Dolly Parton pours herself a great big cup of ambition: Nashville’s beloved country queen makes a concept album about class struggle and smashing capitalism. Odd Jobs starts with her hit movie theme “9 to 5,” but she doesn’t stop there. Dolly covers Woody Guthrie for “Deportee” (on immigrant workers), Merle Travis for “Dark as a Dungeon” (on coal miners), and Mel Tillis for “Detroit City” (on the assembly line). In a stunner, she does her feminist version of “House of the Rising Sun,” reminding everyone this song has always been about poor girls. This album is practically Dolly’s Sandinista!, yet she serves it all up with a smile and a cheer. The revolution? Y’all come! —R.S.

61. Bauhaus, ‘In the Flat Field’

As soon as the needle drops on “Double Dare” — vinyl, please, preferably in total darkness, somewhere near a ruined castle — the ritual is underway. Listening to Bauhaus’ debut means the bats have left the bell tower and the witching hour is near. In the Flat Field is one of goth’s founding albums, as Peter Murphy’s vampiric croak meets Daniel Ash’s spectral guitar over the dub-conscious rhythm section. “A God in An Alcove” never fails to summon the black-clad children of the night. —R.S. 

60. Pete Townshend, ‘Empty Glass’

Pete Townshend dabbled in solo work with his 1972 odds-and-sods collection Who Came First and 1977’s Rough Mix, which he created with Ronnie Lane of the Faces, but 1980’s Empty Glass is the true beginning of the guitarist’s career outside of the Who. Pop songs like “Rough Boys,” “Let My Love Open The Door,” and “A Little Is Enough” could have been enormous Who hits, but the fact that he saved them for his own album (and left the dregs for the Who’s 1981’s LP Face Dances) shows where his priorities were at this point in his career. It was no surprise when the group split in 1982. Empty Glass proved he was quite ready to move on without them. —A.G.

59. The Psychedelic Furs, ‘Psychedelic Furs’

The only thing pretty in pink on the Psychedelic Furs’ debut is the album sleeve. Before they became New Wave pinups, the Furs sounded more like experimental, noisy punks, and the album sounds like a grand art project — could they brood and play saxophone? They somehow managed both on “Sister Europe,” trying to out-Roxy Roxy Music, and they came off like a British Jonathan Richman on “We Love You,” as Richard Butler lists his loves (the BBC, Frank Sinatra, bodies that scream). They never sounded as dangerous again. —K.G.

58. The Fall, ‘Grotesque (After the Gramme)’

The Fall have the unique ability to craft impossibly catchy songs that simultaneously sound like they’re shaking apart at the seams — Mark E. Smith’s drone, grunts, and yips woven expertly over Dick Dale guitar lines and crazy grooves. Grotesque showcases the band at its best as Smith contorts his voice into all manner of, well, grotesques, as kazoos, snapping snares, and chugging guitars wrestle it all into some kind of sense. “They say I rip off Johnny Rotten,” Smith pronounces in the nearly eight-minute music-industry takedown “C ‘n’ C-S Mithering” — a statement that seems impossible not only considering the Chuck Berry-from-the-Council-Home ditty “The Container Drivers” that follows it, as well as the next few decades of the Fall’s catalog. —B.E.

57. Roxy Music, ‘Flesh and Blood’

By the time Roxy Music swiveled into the Eighties, Bryan Ferry was boldly calling their new concept “hairdresser’s music.” Flesh and Blood has sleek Euro-trash synth-pop grooves like “Over You,” while Ferry croons with the brooding-Casanova flair that was already inspiring New Romantic heirs such as Duran Duran and Soft Cell. “Oh Yeah” is the ultimate Roxy torch ballad — Ferry weeps over the song on the radio that reminds him of his secret heartbreak, and he loves every minute of it. Flesh and Blood also upheld the long tradition of the Roxy cover girl, this time with maidens in white togas throwing spears. —R.S.

56. The Gap Band, ‘The Gap Band 3’

The Gap Band 3 represented the Wilson brothers’ breakthrough — it was their first album to reach Number One on the R&B charts, and it included their first Number One single, the hard-nosed “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me).” After funk’s florid ensemble period in the late Seventies, the Gap Band helped point the genre in a new direction, ditching horns and orchestral arrangements to refocus songs around a thwacking, pushy rhythm section that anticipated West Coast G-funk. —E.L.

55. Squeeze, ‘Argybargy’

A year after their cockney skinny-tie disco classic “Cool for Cats,” Squeeze blew up with Argybargy, starring the whip-smart songwriting duo of Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford. They specialized in comic vignettes about boozy London misfits, from “Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)” to “Separate Beds” (“Her father seemed to like me/I helped him fix his car”). Unlike many of their male peers, Squeeze had a knack for creating empathetic, complex female heroines. “You really have to know the characters you’re writing about,” lyricist Difford told Rolling Stone: “The characters in ‘Vicky Verky’ are in ‘Up the Junction.’ They’re kind of a collection of people who drink in a pub across the road from where I live.” —R.S. 

54. Pat Benatar, ‘Crimes of Passion’

“I’m the pretty-girl-who-can-sing stereotype,” Pat Benatar told Rolling Stone. The former Pat Andrzejewski — the pride of Greenpoint, Brooklyn — was a real tough cookie with a three-octave soprano. She also inspired the youth of America to explore the fashion potential of spandex and headbands. Crimes of Passion is where she put the notch in her lipstick case: “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “Hell Is for Children,” and her deeply weird mall-rat version of Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights.” Romantic note: Benatar and her guitarist husband Neil Giraldo are still together after 40 years — proving love may not always be a battlefield. —R.S. 

53. J. Geils Band, ‘Love Stinks’

“I’ve been through diamonds/I’ve been through minks/I’ve been through it all/Love *stiiiinks*.” The Geils gang kicked down the door into the Eighties with a surprise New Wave makeover for Boston’s finest blues-rock party monsters. “Love Stinks” got memorably interpreted by Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, while “Till the Walls Come Tumbling Down” shows off harmonica hero Magic Dick. As motormouth frontman Peter Wolf told Rolling Stone, “I could have put on a three-piece suit and we could’ve gone disco, and maybe have been incredibly successful. It just didn’t feel right. We’ve committed ourselves to doin’ what we’re doin’ — you know, three chords and *unh*! We are not prisoners of rock & roll. We are volunteers.” —R.S.

52. The Cure, ‘Seventeen Seconds’

The Cure were a skeletal Wire-style post-punk band on their 1979 debut, Three Imaginary Boys. With their second album, Robert Smith began his emergence as a goth-pop tunesmith, inspired by Nick Drake and Siouxsie and the Banshees to toy with his gooey, lachrymose aloneness like it was black Silly Putty. Songs like “A Forest” and “Play for Today” are sleek enveloping studies in foppish, deliciously whined mopery that have proved almost impossibly enduring, casting a long pasty shadow over alt-rock history. —J.D.

51. Joan Jett, ‘Bad Reputation’

The Runaways never took off the way they should have, but that didn’t stop Joan Jett from giving radio rock a much-needed kick in the groin as a solo artist. Jett recorded her debut with producer Kenny Laguna and members of Blondie and the Sex Pistols. When she couldn’t find a label to back it, she released it on her own with enough success that Boardwalk Records decided to rerelease it a year later with the new title Bad Reputation. Mixing glam originals with punked-up covers of classic songs like “Shout” and “You Don’t Own Me,” Jett’s debut was a rowdy, cheeky reintroduction to one of rock’s most beloved fire starters. —B.S.

50. Swell Maps, ‘Jane From Occupied Europe’

The second, final, and best Swell Maps album opens with a burst of random noise that sounds like a factory gone berserk, setting the tone for the playful, rattletrap homemade music that follows. A linchpin between krautrock, post-punk, and low-fi indie rock, the Birmingham, England, basement band, led by pseudonymous brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks, created their own unique strain of giddily disjointed chaos. For proof see “Let’s Buy a Bridge,” a Pavement song more than a decade ahead of schedule. —J.D.

49. Van Halen, ‘Women and Children First’

“And the Cradle Will Rock …” was Van Halen’s first keyboard-centric rock hit, and it shows off David Lee Roth’s wit (“Have you seen Junior’s grades?”), while “Everybody Wants Some!!” was pure psychosexual id, from Roth’s chorus to Eddie Van Halen’s loose-faucet solo. But the real fun here starts after the hits: “Fools” is a jaunty, raucous roadhouse rocker, “Loss of Control” is a frenetic atomic-punk explosion, and the closing track features a rare moment of earnestness from Roth: “Ain’t life grand when you finally hit it?” he asks. “I’m always a sucker for a real good time.” —K.G.

48. Kate Bush, ‘Never for Ever’

Kate Bush’s third album was a turning point — she got deeply into her synthesizers, using the brand-new Fairlight CMI sampler to open new vistas for her songwriting. Never for Ever showed how much her imagination thrived on this level of control — it led to her next two albums, The Dreaming and Hounds of Love, arguably her two best. “Breathing” is her dark fantasy of an unborn baby contemplating the threat of nuclear war, wondering if she should linger in the womb longer; “The Infant Kiss” is a ghost story where Bush plays a Victorian governess in a haunted house. —R.S.

47. Black Sabbath, ‘Heaven and Hell’

The departure of Ozzy Osbourne in 1979 was supposed to doom Black Sabbath, but the remaining three members simply brought former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio into the fold and carried on like nothing happened. Dio brought not only an incredibly rich and dynamic voice into the group, but also lyrics about neon knights, kings and queens, and children of the sea that were unlike anything in the Sabbath canon. It was a fusion of new life for a band that had been repeating itself for the past couple of albums, and one of the great metal albums of the Eighties. —A.G.

46. Donna Summer, ‘The Wanderer’

Disco may have been nearly dead by the Eighties, but that didn’t mean Donna Summer’s reign was quite done yet. After leaving her controlling, exploitative label Casablanca Records, she found herself on a journey of self-discovery and renewed faith in Christianity. Summer signed to the then-new Geffen Records as their first official artist and strutted out of Studio 54 and into the world of New Wave and rock. Her trusted allies Giorgio Moroder and Peter Bellotte came along for the ride, helping the Queen of Disco earn a Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for foot-stomper “Cold Love.” Her faith also takes center stage, with Summer tackling a bit of gospel for closing track “I Believe in Jesus.” —B.S.

45. Van Morrison, ‘Common One’

Every six or seven years, Van Morrison sails into the mystic, as he did on this underrated gem, returning to the blissed-out exploratory territory of Veedon Fleece and Astral Weeks. If you’re the kind of Van fan who likes to hear him stretch out, mumbling about poets (“Did you ever hear about Wordsworth and Coleridge?”) as he worries his syllables to the point of abstraction, “Summertime in England,” one of two 15-minute-plus epics here, is a career highlight. Much of the rest of the track list is taken up with sumptuous ballads bathed in brass, strings, and Pee Wee Ellis’ heart-rending sax. —H.S.

44. Pylon, ‘Gyrate’

The coolest band in the college-rock utopia of Athens, Georgia, Pylon gave clipped U.K. dance punk a red-clay makeover, tempering the precise drive of “Feast On My Heart” and “The Human Body” with wide-open agrarian jangle that made their minimalism feel open and fun. The guitar sound influenced R.E.M., among others, and singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay invented a new slacker lexicon when she sang lines like “Working is no problem/Just as long as I keep my mind,” looking past trendy anger and alienation to speak to the real lives of art-school refugees like herself. —J.D.

43. Shalamar, ‘Three for Love’

Shalamar was born out of Soul Train: Two of the group’s members, Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniel, started as dancers on the popular weekly music show. When they entered the studio with the formidable writer-producer-multi-instrumentalist Leon Sylvers III, the result was a steady trickle of hits. Three for Love contains two of their best — “This Is for the Lover in You,” a slinky, funky ballad polished to gleaming, and “Make That Move,” with a bass line that would make Chic’s Bernard Edwards glow with pride. “Make That Move” earned the group an invitation to return to Soul Train — as performers. —E.L.

42. Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, ‘Doc at the Radar Station’

The avant-garde rock great returned to the surrealist primitive attack of his 1969 classic, Trout Mask Replica, on what would end up being his penultimate album before retiring from music. The frenetic free-form tumult of “Dirty Blue Gene,” “Hot Head,” and “Ashtray Heart” found the Captain strikingly in step with post-punk, and “Sue Egypt” is almost a straight-ahead guitar anthem, which makes the serene beauty of the instrumental “A Carrot Is as Close as a Rabbit Gets to a Diamond” all the more striking. —J.D.

41. Iron Maiden, ‘Iron Maiden’

Bassist and lead songwriter Steve Harris has always downplayed punk influences on Iron Maiden’s early music, but there’s a raw energy in frontman Paul Di’Anno’s husky vocals on fist-banging anthems like “Prowler,” “Running Free,” and “Iron Maiden” that feels more like the Clash than Deep Purple. It’s that confluence of Di’Anno’s street-tough singing and the verve with which the band executed Harris’ unusual melodies (“Remember Tomorrow”) and galloping riffs (“Phantom of the Opera”) on Iron Maiden that positioned them as leaders of the so-called “new wave of British heavy metal.” —K.G.

40. Siouxsie and the Banshees, ‘Kaleidoscope’

Siouxsie Sioux had been in the game for a couple of years, but she made her big power play on Kaleidoscope — the album where she claimed her place as a high priestess of rock’s dark arts. One reason: She upgraded her Banshees, recruiting drummer Budgie and one of the Eighties’ unsung guitar masters in John McGeoch, from the band Magazine. His heavily flanged psych-swirl sound colored the trilogy of Kaleidoscope, Juju, and A Kiss in the Dreamhouse. Sioux’s vocal charisma goes through the roof in hits like “Happy House” and “Christine.” —R.S.

39. Rush, ‘Permanent Waves’

Just two short years after their high-concept, progressive-rock masterpiece Hemispheres, Rush redefined what prog would mean for themselves and an entire generation by filtering their unabashedly geeky ideas through New Wave aesthetics on Permanent Waves. What resulted was a pair of future FM staples, the joyous, reggae-tinged “The Spirit of Radio,” and “Freewill”; the beautifully streamlined and openhearted “Entre Nous”; the understated ballad “Different Strings”; and two lengthier tracks that gave prog a sleek Eighties facelift. Permanent Waves would hit Number Four in the U.S. and pave the way for the career-defining Moving Pictures one year later. —H.S.

38. Grace Jones, ‘Warm Leatherette’

How strange to think that in the 1970s Grace Jones was just another Studio 54 disco singer. But she remade herself into the planet’s weirdest New Wave cyborg dominatrix with Warm Leatherette. Jones got herself a butch flat-top haircut and a new Caribbean band with Sly and Robbie. She flexed her severe snarl on tunes by Roxy Music, Smokey Robinson, and Chrissie Hynde. “I treated the songs as though they were already classics,” Jones said. “When I sing a song I need to get into character, because it is all theater for me.” And who was this new character? “A creature that was based on me, that was all me, but made more, made bigger.” —R.S.

37. Billy Joel, ‘Glass Houses’

The music world was changing quickly, thanks to the rise of New Wave, punk, and disco, when Billy Joel cut Glass Houses. But Joel is a rock traditionalist and he responded with “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” and an album of songs that would have worked in any musical era, including the hits “You May Be Right” and “Don’t Ask Me Why,” and the deeper cuts “Sleeping With the Television On” and “Close to the Borderline.” Many of them remain in his set list to this day. —A.G.

36. Smokey Robinson, ‘Warm Thoughts’

Robinson’s long run as a hitmaking writer-producer with peerless gifts for soul melodies was beginning to wind down at the end of the Seventies. But then he engineered yet another burst of ingenuity and commercial success, scoring Top Five R&B hits in 1979, 1980, and 1981. “Let Me Be the Clock,” which opened his Warm Thoughts LP, was the centerpiece of the run, a tender, breathy come-on modeled on the previous year’s classic, “Cruisin’.” “Wine, Women and Song” and “I Want to Be Your Love” were similarly irresistible, proving Robinson’s inimitable, quavering falsetto was as alluring in 1980 as it was in 1960. —E.L.

35. Devo, ‘Freedom of Choice’

Devo spent the Seventies straddling the fine line between punk and art rock, but when the Eighties began they found themselves in the world of mainstream pop, when Top 40 radio embraced their deceptively subversive song “Whip It.” It was one of the most memorable tunes on Freedom of Choice, but there’s truly not a weak one on the entire LP. “Girl U Want” is an ode to teenage horniness, while “Freedom of Choice” sums up the band’s entire theory of devolution in a single frenzied song. The album ultimately destroyed the band because its label demanded “Whip It”-size follow-ups, but for one shining moment in time, Devo teenagers all over America thought Devo were cool, and it was glorious. —A.G.

34. Joan Armatrading, ‘Me Myself I’

Joan Armatrading built her devoted cult by going her own way — “Me Myself I” is a tribute to the joys of being a loner: “I wanna have a boyfriend and a girl for laughs,” she sings, “But only on Saturday/Six days to be alone.” A soft-spoken folkie songwriter, she taught herself guitar growing up in a West Indian immigrant family in England. Me Myself I is her punchiest rock album. Even the love songs celebrate blissful solitude, as in “I Can’t Lie to Myself,” where she shrugs and states “You’re a beautiful person/But just now you bother me.” —R.S.

33. Young Marble Giants, ‘Colossal Youth’

Forming in the isolated seaside city of Cardiff, Wales, Young Marble Giants were inspired by punk’s liberating spirit, but developed their sound in a private world outside of the punk scene — and you can hear their isolated epiphanies all over their debut LP. Singer Alison Statton sang with a tense, hushed prettiness over Stuart Moxham’s muted guitar and his brother Philip’s soft bass pokes, creating an arresting, quiet sound that had influenced generations of shy indie-rockers — and some less shy ones, too, like Courtney Love, who covered “Credit in the Straight World” on Live Through This. —J.D.

32. Rolling Stones, ‘Emotional Rescue’

At the dawn of the Eighties, the Stones were coming off the high of 1978’s Some Girls and dealing with the aftermath of Keith Richards’ arrest for heroin possession and all the distracting drama that followed. That might explain why Emotional Rescue feels a bit tossed-off at times, but that’s part of its charm; the disco-inspired title track and gems like “She’s So Cold” and “Dance (Pt. 1)” prove that the Stones could deliver even when it seems like they’re barely trying. —A.G.

31. Public Image Ltd., ‘Second Edition’

When the Sex Pistols broke up in 1978, Johnny Rotten started using his original name, John Lydon, and immediately got to work violently inventing his new future with Public Image Ltd. PiL packaged initial pressings of their second LP in a tin can and called it Metal Box (conventional pressings in the U.S. and U.K. were released as Second Edition). Improvised in the studio, with Lydon coming up with irony-dripping songs like “Poptones,” “Careering,” and “Swan Lake” over Jah Wobble’s molten reggae bass and Keith Levene’s banshee guitar peels, Second Edition pushed beyond post-punk into a fractured space between demented abstraction and cranky freedom. —J.D.