A History of Pop Music Albums – 1987

A History of Pop Music Albums – 1987

Featured Album: Deacon Blue – Raintown

This is a series of articles looking at albums from 1960 to whatever year we end up in.

I will select a featured album for each year and the link for the whole album, Plus list the songs on it.

As before, it is not just about the songs and tunes, it is very much about memories, and good ones, I hope.

Not everyone will like my choices of course, and you may remember some from each particular year that you feel should have been included, so do please post a link to the song.

In 1987 we left the Army. My troop came round to the married quarters, loaded up a load of MFO boxes, and we drove in convoy from Tidworth to Maidstone.  I had learned to drive at the ripe old age of 33, did a crash course in Liverpool.  Quite good really, you could select any course at all for a max of 28 days.  I could not drive so learned.  Passed in 3 days, had the next 25 days off!

The council house we moved into was bare, all floors were bare wood, a sink in the kitchen and an old cooker were all that was in place.  No money to do anything either yet.  I left the Army on the Friday, started a new job a few days later selling cable TV.  Soul destroying, but with 4 kids, you must work.  My £3,500 terminal pay came in and that paid for beds, carpets, and some furniture.  After 6 weeks of that I managed to secure a job at TML who were about to start building the channel tunnel.  I was bigly into computers and my role would be computer operator helping to manage all assets and maintenance.  It was a hell of a learning curve, I was taking book like DOS 3.1 home to read, so I could do my job the next day!  Happy days!

The featured album for 1987 is Deacon Blue who I think are very much underrated, yet they are in my view a superb band,

Track listing

All songs written by Ricky Ross, except where noted:

Original 1987 album

  1. “Born in a Storm”– 1:33
  2. “Raintown” – 3:50
  3. “Ragman” – 3:08
  4. “He Looks Like Spencer Tracy Now” – 3:50
  5. Loaded” (James Prime, Ricky Ross, Graeme Kelling) – 4:29
  6. When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring)” – 5:05
  7. Chocolate Girl” – 3:18
  8. Dignity” – 4:00
  9. “The Very Thing” – 3:34
  10. “Love’s Great Fears” (Ricky Ross, James Prime) – 3:42
  11. “Town to Be Blamed” (Ricky Ross, James Prime) – 5:19

Deacon Blue

More writings on this album here:  Raintown

So, on we go with 1987:

The top 10 sellers for 1987 are below, another dire year, of an extremely poor decade really.

The Top 10 Albums with a You Tube hyperlink on the title:

Top Tip: Right-click and open in new tab

Top Albums of 1987
   1 Michael Jackson Bad
   2 U2 The Joshua Tree
   3 Whitney Houston Whitney
   4 Various artists (EMI/Virgin/Polygram) Now That’s What I Call Music 10
   5 Fleetwood Mac Tango In The Night
   6 Various artists (CBS/WEA) Hits 6
   7 Rick Astley Whenever You Need Somebody
   8 T’Pau Bridge Of Spies
   9 Original Cast The Phantom Of The Opera
   10 Level 42 Running In The Family

The only album I bought in the top 10 sellers above was Fleetwood Mac.  Much of the music was the Stock, Aitken, Waterman tunes, or rather I should say tune, with a few variants.  I have never liked Michael Jackson or U2, but they were always on the radio interspersed with Kylie and other Aussie TV soap characters.  Shout out to T’Pau, has “China in your hand” and their other hit “Heart and Soul”.

Again, I really could not find many albums I rated for the year.  A very meagre list for this year:

George Michael – Faith – Not bad.

Prince – Sign “O” the Times – a few decent tunes

Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel of Love – I like a bit of Bruce.

Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction – Bit of the heavy stuff, but quite popular.

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris – Trio – Always been a lover of both kinds of music, Country and Western.

The Communards – Red – A Friday special!

Pet Shop Boys – Actually – As it’s a Friday.

Scoring:

As you know I like to review your “tunes” that you post.

*Note. Anyone scoring a Morrissey (lowest score possible) will be reported and blocked.

Hat tips to: these give the top 100 selling charts for each year.

http://www.everyhit.com/chart1.html   these give the top 10 songs for each year.

https://www.youtube.com/  you know them.

Next Time: 1988.  Will it get better?  Forecast: (Sorry, it gets even worse)

Featured image: “Second Chance Sunday: Raintown” by monojussi is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
 

© Phil the ex test manager 2021