Recording music to fit the cyborg Zulu drag that Jean-Paul Goude designed for album sleeves and costumes, Grace Jones moved from recording at best okay disco (“Do or Die” defines “okay”) to an electronic dub as adamantine as her voice. Because I’m not one of the gay men besotted with her every command, I kept this list short. The Roxy Music cover is hilarious — the only person who needed love less in 1980 was Nancy Reagan. One of the many reasons for which we should praise the late Tom Petty — how strange that phrase looks! — is his writing an extra verse for Jones’ cover of “Breakdown.” I’m also a fan of 1986’s “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You),” her last attempt at an American pop crossover, and that same album’s “Hollywood Liar,” with a ping-ponging beat and one of the sassiest opening lines ever (“Who are you to crash my party with your mediocre blow” Tell it, Grace). It didn’t take. How could it? Hats off to the video, a masterpiece of megalomania, in which Tina Chow, Nile Rodgers, Andy Warhol, and other celebrities bow before this statue with plumage.
1. Love is the Drug
2. Pull Up to the Bumper
3. Private Life
4. My Jamaican Guy
5. Warm Leatherette
6. I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)
7. Slave to the Rhythm
8. Everybody Hold Still
9. I Need a Man
10. Hollywood Liar
11. Hurricane (Cradle to the Grave)
12. Breakdown
Humanizing The Vacuum 