Topping the UK charts upon its 1981 release, the Sheffield band’s debut album melded string arrangements with disco and funk, plus some Trevor Horn production magic. The result? Ten peerless pop tunes that looked at love through a cinematic lens...
Like a lot of bright, shiny things, ABC and their defining debut album, The Lexicon Of Love, were created out of something a good deal less glamorous. The grim-up-north narrative that is wheeled out as a backdrop to so much provincial punk and post-punk can be overstated, but there’s no doubt that when Stephen Singleton and Mark White’s avant-garde electronic outfit Vice Versa morphed into ABC with help from former fanzine writer turned frontman Martin Fry, they wanted to offer an escapist vision of pop for trying, recessionary times. They also rejected old school approaches to music-making.
Arriving just a year after their 1986 debut Please, the British electro-pop duo's second album solidified their chart-topping status, thanks to a bigger production influenced by ZZ Top, a guest appearance from Dusty Springfield, and some classic tunes...
It's a malaise almost as old as pop music itself. Second album syndrome – the crisis faced by an artist writing the follow-up to a hit debut LP, when they realise that after having had their whole lives to come up with the contents of their first offering to the world, they now only have a few months to rustle up a fresh batch of equally strong material for the follow-up.
A spot of R&R in Jamaica, followed by a lakeside recording set-up back in Blighty, was all it took for a disillusioned John Martyn to recapture his music mojo. The resulting album, released in 1977, mixed folk, electronica and the sound of geese...
For much of the '70s it was customary for bands or recording artists to retire to a rural bolthole for a spell, hoping the country air would help them get their head together. Disillusioned and burnt out from recording and touring, in 1976 John Martyn tried this himself. But in his case the destination was another country, halfway across the world.
Released in 1987, with a new producer in tow, this album saw the one-time post-punks leaning into radio-friendly rock, albeit without airbrushing their left-field instincts. The result was the beginning of a decade of commercial and critical success for the group
There comes a time in every band's career when the only way is pop. Having slowly built a loyal cult fanbase and a burgeoning critical reputation on the back of three albums (and an early EP) that intertwined artful post-punk and lopsided, Paisley Underground-adjacent guitar rock, by 1987 R.E.M. were ready to paint with broader strokes, albeit while retaining a pronounced polemical edge and one foot firmly in an angular, left-field musical lineage.
This 1985 album from the Manchester-based outfit proved they were more than just a singles machine, and cemented both their fusion of rock and electronica and their unconventional approach – right down to putting the drummer on the front cover...
It's hardly surprising that a band formed from the ashes of tragedy should take a while to truly find their own musical identity. But after singer Ian Curtis's suicide brought Joy Division to a premature end in May 1980, New Order had shown intermittent moments of brilliance on a string of singles, but not across a whole album.
For the follow-up to their debut record The Hurting, the philosophically inclined pop duo built a 24-track studio and battled their label's desire for a commercial synth sound. The eight-track album that resulted put them in a prime position to rule the world...
No pain, no gain may be a familiar mantra across the arts, but it's hard to imagine an act today weaving pop gold from the teachings of psychotherapy. Yet Tears For Fears managed to top the charts with not one but two collections of songs based around such themes.
When five young friends from Athens, Georgia began jamming on borrowed instruments and writing songs about lobsters and mystical planets, they didn't imagine it would lead to an album deal with Warner Brothers and global fame... or the attention of John Lennon
Some bands are born great. Some achieve greatness. And some have greatness thrust upon them. So (nearly) wrote William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, but he probably hadn't spent the evening sharing a giant flaming volcano cocktail at Hunan Chinese restaurant in Athens, Georgia. So maybe that's why the formation of The B-52's (or B-52s, as it has been since 2008) seemed to fit none of those three headings very tidily.
The young singer-songwriter saved his career with this sophomore album, recorded in Los Angeles in a matter of mere days and bumped up to 11 tracks at the last minute to secure a label payday. Fifty-two years later it's lost none of its explosive power
No pain, no gain. It's fair to say that you don't have to be sad, or mad, to make a multi-million-selling singer-songwriter album – but sometimes it helps. And before his career-igniting second long-player was recorded at the end of 1969, Boston-born James Taylor had endured moments where both adjectives applied.
With its stripped-back arrangements, confessional lyrics and unflashy sleeve art, the singer's debut album was an antidote to the sounds and style of the Summer of Love. It also laid the foundation for the poet-turned-musician's celebrated 50-year career
Necessity, a wise person once wrote, is the mother of invention. And for Leonard Cohen, she also performed that role for his reinvention from garlanded poet and novelist to singer-songwriter. He once said the idea of becoming a professional songwriter came out of a desire to make a decent living, after realising he was never going to rise far out of the struggling artist garret on the back of written verse and prose.
After the end of her relationship with Graham Nash, the Canadian singer-songwriter travelled to Crete in search of inspiration, relaxation... and a guitar. Her experiences there would lead her to write and record her starkly personal – and much loved – fourth album
It's not uncommon for people in their 20s to go travelling around the world, but very few are burgeoning celebrities widely regarded among the finest singer-songwriters of their generation. Yet in 1970, Joni Mitchell did just that after recording her third album, Ladies Of The Canyon.