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The 50 Best Albums of 1982
Looking back at 1982 in music, the headline is obvious: Thriller Sells A Bajillion Copies, Becomes World’s Biggest Album. But is it the year’s best album? Funny enough, Michael Jackson‘s sixth LP hardly even affected the charts that year — it snuck out in late November, just as Men at Work’s 1981 blockbuster, Business as Usual, began its commercial stranglehold in the U.S. Only one record on our list, Fleetwood Mac‘s chart-targeted Tusk follow-up, Mirage, hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. (Doesn’t it seem weird, looking back, that Prince‘s 1999 peaked at No. 9?) Lots of fascinating shit was happening in 1982, and you didn’t always find it on the radio. On our list, we included everything from early hip-hop (Grandmaster Flash) to horror-punk (Misfits) to lo-fi synth-pop (Solid Space). Revisit...
The 10 Best Punk and Alternative Bob Dylan Covers
Bob Dylan is one of the most widely covered artists in popular music – hit versions of his songs by the Byrds and Peter, Paul and Mary helped make him famous, and Dylan covers by Jimi Hendrix and Guns N’ Roses permanently remain in rock radio rotation. And even artists from the punk and alternative scenes that tend to have less reverence for ‘60s nostalgia been drawn to the Dylan songbook, often giving his compositions dramatically different arrangements. With Dylan’s first collection of new songs in eight years, Rough and Rowdy Ways, out now, here’s a look back at 10 Dylan songs that were memorably reimagined by punk, post-punk, indie, alternative, avant jazz and industrial artists. 10. My Chemical Romance – “Desolation Row” “Desolation Row,” the mighty 11-minute closer from 1965’s Highwa...
