Welcome, boomers! Pull up a chair. VH-1 has videos for you. In this segment, Don Henley will stand in a barley field scowling at the young woman he will sullenly deflower. In another, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ogle each other like a drunk middle-aged couple who remember why they dug each other’s ass cracks. Hours later, Elvis Costello’s sprightly anecdote about his grandma fading into senility. Bob Dylan will also appear in “Everything is Broken,” his “The End of Innocence” with U2’s producer (who appears on this list, inexplicably).
But men and women in the middle of their journeys also had skills. Neil Young and Lou Reed made raucous guitar albums with songs whose verses gave the impression that USA Today was 7-11 reading during a tour pit stop. Post-punk acts The Cure and XTC, a decade into careers that at last showed signs of turning American sales around, released acclaimed albums, only one of which is widely considered their apex by people not me; Disintegration appears in the second category on the strength of every non-“Lovesong” single and “Plainsong.” The JAMC released two of their best singles on an otherwise thudding redundancy of an album. Bizzer Bonnie Raitt would have the last laugh, exploiting a Grammy win for one of rock’s best restarts (you couldn’t even call it a comeback), although the superior album she released in 1991.
Finally, I’m one of those luckless sods who prefers Dean Wareham in Luna and his appearances in Noah Baumbach films to his seminal work in Galaxie 500. And 2015’s biopic Straight Outta Compton reminded audiences, especially younger ones, of Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s canonicity, but the album’s cultural weight supports Eazy-E and MC Ren in ways their verbal imaginations can’t. I recognize the Daisy Age told its own fictions too.
The Hague
Don Henley – The End of Innocence
Meh
The Jesus and Mary Chain – Automatic
The Replacements – Don’t Tell a Soul
Elvis Costello – Spike
Rolling Stones – Steel Wheels
XTC – Oranges and Lemons
Tracy Chapman – Crossroads
Daniel Lanois – Acadie
Sound, Solid
Prince – Batman
Terence Trent D’Arby: Neither Fish Nor Flesh
Tom Petty – Full Moon Fever
The Neville Brothers – Yellow Moon
Bob Dylan- Oh Mercy
Lou Reed – New York
Soul II Soul – Keep On Movin’
Aerosmith – Pump
Quincy Jones – Back on the Block
Caetano Veloso – Estrangeiro
Galaxie 500 – On Fire
Roy Orbison – Mystery Girl
Bonnie Raitt – Nick of Time
The Cure – Disintegration
Queen Latifah – All Hail the Queen
Good to Great
Beastie Boys – Paul’s Boutique
Janet Jackson – Rhythm Nation 1814
The Mekons – The Mekons Rock ‘n Roll
De La Soul – 3 Feet High and Rising
Madonna – Like a Prayer
Neil Young – Freedom
Fine Young Cannibals – The Raw and The Cooked
Neneh Cherry – Raw Like Sushi
N.W.A. – Straight Outta Compton
Pere Ubu – Cloudland
Bob Mould – Workbook
Pixies – Doolittle
Boogie Down Productions – Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip-Hop
Kate Bush – The Sensual World
Jungle Brothers – Done By the Forces of Nature
The Jury’s Out
NRBQ – Wild Weekend
Lyle Lovett – Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
Humanizing The Vacuum 