My Top 50 Albums of 1988
Last month I posted my favorite 1989 albums and singles, so now we continue backwards through the '80s. Here's my Spotify playlist with a deep cut from each album.
1. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
2. Slick Rick - The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
3. Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
2. Slick Rick - The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
3. Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
4. Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
5. Cowboy Junkies - The Trinity Session
6. Steve Earle - Copperhead Road
7. Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking
8. N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton
9. Big Daddy Kane - Long Live The Kane
10. They Might Be Giants - Lincoln
11. Eric B. & Rakim - Follow The Leader
12. Sade - Stronger Than Pride
13. Biz Markie - Goin' Off
14. EPMD - Strictly Business
15. Tony! Toni! Tone! - Who?
16. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper
17. Crowded House - Temple of Low Men
18. Fishbone - Truth And Soul
19. The Posies - Failure
20. Metallica - ...And Justice For All
21. The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues
22. Pet Shop Boys - Introspective
22. Pet Shop Boys - Introspective
23. MC Lyte - Lyte As A Rock
24. Too $hort - Life Is... Too $hort
25. Ultramagnetic MCs - Critical Beatdown
26. Living Colour - Vivid
27. New Edition - Heart Break
28. Bobby Brown - Don't Be Cruel
29. Ice-T - Power
30. Dinosaur Jr. - Bug
30. Dinosaur Jr. - Bug
31. R.E.M. - Green
32. Run-DMC - Tougher Than Leather
33. Pixies - Surfer Rosa
34. Mudhoney - Superfuzz Bigmuff EP
35. Kix - Blow My Fuse
36. Little Feat - Let It Roll
36. Little Feat - Let It Roll
37. The Traveling Wilburys - The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1
38. Camper Van Beethoven - Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
39. Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman
40. Ciccone Youth - The Whitey Album
41. The Dead Milkmen - Beelzebubba
42. The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good
43. The Bangles - Everything
44. U2 - Rattle And Hum
45. Prince - Lovesexy
46. Lemonheads - Creator
47. Stetsasonic - In Full Gear
48. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Ooh Yeah!
49. Boogie Down Productions - By All Means Necessary
50. Salt-N-Pepa - A Salt With A Deadly Pepa
Compact discs outsold vinyl for the first time in 1987, so albums were starting to get longer in 1988, but most albums were still sequenced to fit on one LP, sometimes with bonus tracks or remixes added to the CD and/or cassette editions. So I think of Daydream Nation as the last great double LP of the vinyl era, the last time an artist who had previously been making 35-minute albums ramped up their ambition enough to justify the additional expense and resources to spread 70 minutes of music across two slabs. After that, it became normal for artists to make a 50 or 60 or 75-minute album every time, throwing on every song they had, and I think it took a couple decades for albums to recover from CD bloat effecting so many albums in the '90s.
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