#777 Ladyhawke – Ladyhawke

Brandishing what must be the best moniker ever (named after a character played by Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1985 film of the same name), and songs which are gloriously storming with 80s pop energy, so uncool they’re red hot, it’s a shock that Ladyhawke is not a worldwide pop sensation. A one-woman band hailing from …

#799 Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons

A band like Lemon Jelly wouldn’t have existed without the likes of Jean-Jacques Perrey in the world, and across the 30 year time-gap there’s a lot these two albums have in common. Aside from the focus on synthesized electronic music, jazzy lounge pop and “Music to Chill Out To” there’s the humour. Perrey prefers musical …

#878 Kylie Minogue – Fever

Kylie has just released a new album, Disco, her 15th. In the UK it has debuted at No 1, making her the first female artist to have a No 1 album in five different decades. When I first read that in the paper, I thought: surely Kylie is not that old? Then I realised that …

#541 Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better

One of the most important things to note about this album is it’s cover, which is based on the famed poster by Alexander Rodchenko (I have a copy framed at home) which, aside from being a brilliantly striking piece of art and a highlight of Russian constructivism, is also the best advert for reading I’ve …

#545 Funkadelic – Maggot Brain

“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time.” And thus begins this epic third Funkadelic album of progressive psychedelic funk. Whether George Clinton expected or predicted that 50 years later Mother Earth would be delivering something so monstrously Calibanesque is, as far as I know, unrecorded. But I wouldn’t be surprised. This is a dark …

#736 Grace Jones – Island Life

Graced with one of the most iconic album cover photos ever, taken by her then partner Jean-Paul Goude, this is Grace Jones’ first compilation album, released in 1985 after the success of Slave To The Rhythm. It contains tracks from 6 of her 7 previous studio albums, the exception being Muse which clearly nobody liked. …

#6 Abba – The Visitors

This is Abba’s eighth and final studio album and, although not as commercially successful as their preceding ones, it really is very good. There’s no Dancing Queen or Winner Takes it All on here, but that’s okay because they’d already written those perfect pop songs. What we do have is a little darker, a bit …

#995 Pet Shop Boys – Introspective

Listening to this, it’s 1988 all over again, which is rather a nice thought: everything was so much simpler back then. Late 80s was the Pet Shop Boys’ “Imperial phase” - a term first coined by Neil Tennant but now used to describe any pop star at the height of their commercial and creative ascendance. …

#1050 Prince – Controversy

I somehow missed this Prince album for a long time. Purple Rain was my entry point, which I had only on cassette tape for a decade, but his follow up Parade was the very first vinyl LP I ever bought. With my own pocket money too, I might add. I explored backwards to 1999 and …

#930 New Order – Best Of

I used to have a copy of Substance, their 1987 compilation of all their singles and many of the B sides up to that point. It was the counterpart to a compilation of Joy Division’s singles released at the same time, also called Substance. It was a double cassette (a double!) which were always rather …