1979: Your favorite albums

my birth year

Off The Wall
Tusk
Lodger
Bad Girls
The Wall
In The Heat Of The Night
Eat To The Beat
Candy-O
Back To The Egg

 

Armed Forces - Elvis Costello & The Attractions
George Harrison - George Harrison
Blue Kentucky Girl - Emmylou Harris
Discovery - E.L.O.
Back To The Egg - Wings
Off The Wall - Michael Jackson
In Through The Out Door - Led Zeppelin
The Long Run - Eagles
Survival - Bob Marley & The Wailers
Tusk - Fleetwood Mac
Setting Sons - The Jam
The Wall - Pink Floyd

 

+

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Survival
Peter Tosh - Mystic Man
Bunny Wailer - In I Fathers House

 

Police - Reggatta de Blanc
Motorhead - Overkill & Bomber
Rainbow - Down to Earth
Scoprions - Lovedrive
Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
Thin Lizzy - Black Rose
Patti Smith - Wave
Pink Floyd - Wall
Clash - London Calling
Judas Priest - Unleashed
Tom Petty - Damn the Torpedoes

 

Michael Jackson - Off The Wall
David Bowie - Lodger
Neil Young - Rust
The Cars - Candy O

 

George Harrison - George Harrison
Wings - Back to the Egg
Marianne Faithfull - Broken English
The Clash - London Calling
Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming
Pink Floyd - The Wall
Jethro Tull - Stormwatch
David Bowie - Lodger
Michael Jackson - Off the Wall
Donna Summer - Bad Girls
Blondie - Eat to the Beat
Prince - Prince
Ry Cooder - Bop till You Drop
Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
Dire Straits - Communique
The Alan Parsons Project - Eve
Supertramp - Breakfast in America
Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Armed Forces
Van Morrison - Into the Music
The Police - Regatta De Blanc
Emmylous Harris - Blue Kentucky Girl
Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti
The Beach Boys - L.A. Light Album

 

The Cars - Candy-O
Journey - Evolution
Toto - Hydra
Jefferson Starship - Freedom at Point Zero
Blondie - Parallel Lines
Pink Floyd - The Wall

 

London Calling. Of course. Also the Jam, Setting Sons, is brilliant.

 

Pink Floyd - The Wall
AC/DC - Highway to Hell
Led Zeppelin - In Through the Out Door
The Police - Reggatta de Blanc
Supertramp - Breakfast in America
The Clash - London Calling
Dire Straits - Communiqué
...

 

Leonard Cohen - Recent Songs
Kate Wolf - Safe at Anchor
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Moondog - A New Sound of an Old Instrument

 

The Wall
Hell Bent For Leather
Off the Wall
Overkill
Lodger

 

The Clash: London Calling

Elvis Costello: Armed Forces

AC/DC: Highway to Hell

Pink Floyd: The Wall

The Undertones: The Undertones

Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps

Bob Dylan: Slow Train Coming

 

Lodger
Unknown Pleasures
Fear of Music
Off The Wall
London Calling
Tusk
The Wall
Singles Going Steady

 

1979 saw the Album Decade climax with epic aplomb by the towering triumphs of the cross-generational elite: The Bee Gees, The Boomtown Rats, Brand X, Camel, City Boy, The Clash, Cliff Richard, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Fleetwood Mac, Gary Numan, Graham Parker, The Jam, Jethro Tull, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Magazine, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Marianne Faithful, Mike Oldfield, Peter Hammill, Pink Floyd, The Police, Public Image Limited, Renaissance, Squeeze, Sparks, Steve Hackett, The Stranglers, Supertramp, Thin Lizzy, UK, Wire, XTC.

Sounds ran streamlined (Bruce Woolley & the Camera Club, Charlie Dore, Dollar, Judie Tzuke, The Korgis, Lenny Zakatek, M, Violinski), staccato (Adam & the Ants, Cowboys International, The Cure, Essential Logic, Fingerprintz, Madness, The Slits, The Specials), spastic (Fashion, Fischer-Z, Prag Vec, Punishment of Luxury, Red Noise, Simple Minds, Snakefinger, Toyah Wilcox) and sturdy (Interview, Joe Jackson, Live Wire, The Planets, Runner, The Skids, The Soft Boys, Voyager), while virtuosos mesmerized (Bruford, Chorale, Cozy Powell, Sky) and techies hypnotized (Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, Thomas Leer & Robert Rental, Vice Versa).

Francophones varied...

...continue reading at the following link:
1979 - Makin' It All Mine »

As for my top 20 (top 2%) of the 921 albums I've thus-far assimilated from 1979, the list goes as follows:
1. XTC – Drums and Wires
2. Cliff Richard – Rock n’ Roll Juvenile
3. Bill Nelson’s Red Noise – Sound-On-Sound
4. Magazine – Secondhand Daylight
5. The Stranglers – The Raven
6. UK – Danger Money
7. Flash & the Pan – Flash & the Pan
8. Tin Huey – Contents Dislodged During Shipment
9. Bruford – One of a Kind
10. Judie Tzuke – Welcome to the Cruise
11. Steve Hackett – Spectral Mornings
12. Albert Marcoeur – Armes and Cycles
13. Peter Hammill – Ph7
14. Atlas – Blå Vardag
15. The Police – Regatta Da Blanc
16. Adam & the Ants – Dirk Wears White Sox
17. The Skids – Days In Europa
18. Fashion – Product Perfect
19. Schicke Führs & Fröhling – Ticket to Everywhere
20. Pekka Pohjola – Visitation
21. Tubeway Army – Replicas
22. The Clash – London Calling
23. Brand X – Product
24. The Specials – The Specials
25. Angela Bofill – Angel of the Night

The remainder of my top 100 (top 11%) of 1979 can be found at this link:
https://www.discogs.com/lists/1979/145250

 

Van Halen II
Ac/Dc Highway to Hell
Journey Evolution
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Damn the Torpedos
Eagles The Long Run
Reo Speedwagon Nine Lives

 

So glad that someone else remembers Cliff´s "Rock´n´Roll Juvenile" from the plethora of great albums from 1979. His best, I think.

 

Wings - Back to the Egg - it's the most hard hitting and exciting album of their career. A McCartney highlight for sure.

The Kinks - Low Budget - punky with only a hint (a successful one, at that) of disco. Great lyrics. This album brought the Kinks up to stadium status (finally.)

 

I believe that a lot more people would like the album — as well as most of Sir Cliff's 1976–1983 output — if they simply familiarized themselves with the music and set aside any stereotypes or narratives that they've been fed about the singer over the years. As for naysayers who live in countries where he's always been famous, I'd advise letting go of bad impressions over lackluster singles from earlier or later parts of Richard's career and focusing instead on his aforementioned album-oriented period.

The entirely of Rock n’ Roll Juvenile can be heard at the link below:
Rock 'n' Roll Juvenile - YouTube »

 

Yes, Broken English is a fantastic, edgy album. Great choice.

 

I couldn´t agree more. As for me, I admire his releases from 1976-1982 in particular, and then the "Stronger" album, "Songs from Heathcliff" and "Something Going On". I wish more people heard those songs instead of "The Millennium Prayer".

 

Parallel Lines is actually a 1978 album, though some singles from it were releaed the next year. Eat to the Beat was released in '79.

 

I'll never forget the light-bulb moment I had when the Cliff bug first bit me back in the fall of 1999. Earlier that year I purchased I'm Nearly Famous and We Don't Talk Anymore (the truncated U.S. version of Rock 'n' Roll Juvenile) from a cutout bin to hear the hits, but I ultimately let the sides of both albums play out and gradually warmed to the rest of the tracks. At the time this was quite a revelation because I didn't imagine that "MOR singers" like Cliff, Olivia, etc. would really care about albums beyond the singles — despite my by-then established belief that 1973—1982 was the foremost era of album-oriented music making across most genres. It occurred to me that Richard's late-70s/early-80s output was probably a goldmine, and so I went out to buy I'm No Hero, which I instantly became addicted to, and I quickly followed that up with Wired for Sound... then Every Face Tells a Story... then Green Light... then Silver, and on and on — I was even lucky enough to locate an import copy of Rock 'n' Roll Juvenile in short order. Within a month, I had his entire 1976–1983 output, minus some b-sides. For the next two years, my playlists were pretty much wall-to-wall Cliff in my apartment and my car.

 

I stumbled upon Cliff because of my sister - she was a fan of his late 60s/early 70s period. (For that reason I still have a soft spot for this period.) But my own fandom started when I heard "We Don´t Talk Anymore" played on TV, and I bough all singles and albums I could lay my hands on. I didn´t know back then that I was lucky enough to have become a fan during his purple patch. I stayed a fan for twenty years, but the hat trick of "Real As I Wanna Be" - which has a great title track - "The Millennium Prayer" and "Wanted" left me disappointed, and I´m only "half a fan these days. But I still love the good stuff - "Ease Along", "Monday Thru Friday", "Count Me Out", "When Two World Drift Apart" and the rest. Glad they were part of my youth.

 

Ian Hunter - You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic
Graham Parker - Squeezing Out Sparks
Talking Heads - Fear Of Music
The Clash - London Calling
Fleetwood Mac - Tusk
Alex Chilton - Like Flies on Sherbert
Elvis Costello - Armed Forces
Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming
Nick Lowe - Labour of Lust
Gang of Four - Entertainment

 

Funny enough, "The Millennium Prayer" became his final U.K. #1 just months after I became a fan in 1999 — 40 years on from his first chart-topper. I found it ironic that his first new album after my conversion would re-team him with Alan Tarney, who I also became a big fan of due to the writer/producer's involvement in the absolute creme of peak Cliff: "We Don't Talk Anymore", I'm No Hero, and Wired for Sound. My Tarney interest led me to pick up the two A&M Tarney/Spencer Band albums, as well as Leo's Living In a Fantasy LP, which all became further turntable favorites in the spring/summer of 2000. I wouldn't learn about the Barbara Dickson or Charlie Dore production work until more info on Tarney's career surfaced on the Internet circa 2001/02.