1987 is now 30 years ago. I was 18 in 1987, so should love it, but I don’t usually consider myself a big fan. Too much Hair Metal, Stock Aitken & Waterman, Stadium Rock and Karel Fialka. However, I may have to change my opinion a bit because if you look at the singles released in this year, it may have a claim to be great.
Rent
I’ve always preferred Minor Key PSB (Being Boring, Left to my Devices) over hi-NRG PSB (most of the other ones), and I think Rent is their best song. I recall that when Melody Maker did their end of the year review, Andrew Eldritch listed it as his Single of the Year by virtue of the fact that it was the only single he bought that year. “Really. With your money” sniffed the MM.
Rebel Without a Pause
It’s on It Takes a Nation of Millions, but it was recorded and released between their first two albums in 1987. This might well be the group at their peak, and it was easily the most exciting thing I heard that year, far more so than any of the rock or indie records released. What a bloody racket! The genius of Public Enemy was the combination of Chuck D and Flavor Flav, and it’s at its best here. E.F.F.E.C.T otherwise known as effect, you understand what I’m saying?
Paid in Full
Big year for Hip Hop, 1987. The album version is good, but to be honest it’s the Coldcut remix that really takes this song to the next level, particularly the Ofra Haza sample. Great rhymes too: “a pen and a paper, a stereo, a taper”.
Fairytale of New York
It’s getting overexposed now, and a Xmas when I don’t hear it counts as a success, but it’s still a great song. Didn’t make the no. 1 spot of course; when I saw them at the Edinburgh Playhouse in 1988, Shane McGowan introduced the song as “Here’s one you liked almost as much as the Pet Shop Boys…”
Pump Up the Volume
I actually think that 1987 was another 1965. We’re living in an era defined by dance music and hip hop and 1987 was the year that both really broke through. I’d never heard anything like this before when it hit the charts. Ofra Haza there again.
Fight For Your Right
The album came out in late 1986, so it’s cheating a little bit, but believe it or not it was the 3rd single from the album and didn’t come out till 87. Like most of the first record, it has more to do with Rick Rubin than Ad Rock & co, but who cares? It’s great fun. May have been responsible for Limp Bizkit.
It’s So Easy
The bigger hits would come out the next year, but it all started here, and unlike a lot of other stuff from the album, this one still sounds fresh, probably because it’s so sweary that it never gets played anywhere where sweariness may cause offence.
I’m sure I’m missed stuff. I was hoping to include The Mercy Seat, but that was 1988 apparently, so I may have to reassess that wretched year too. What do you think? Dog of a Year? Or a year of innovation?
My father died in 1987, he was only 59. This song kept me going:
And 1963 on the b-side, a song so good it was later used as an A-side.
This barely charted but was topsa
Excellent work!
It’s a great tune, the album’s a belter too.
I’d forgotten just how good that was. I’d just moved to London, working for the music press and style magazines, and I remember VOTB being slightly sneered at, what with them not being quite as polished and as advertising agency literate as other popsters. Put it like this: they regularly played at Jon Fat Beast’s Timebox night at the Bull & Gate, as far from ‘cool new pop’ as it got, and light years away from the increasingly appealing world of clubbing. Hearing it now, thirty bloody years on, I’m thinking ‘what a waste’. Lovely to hear it anew.
Not my favourite decade musically, but then I have an abiding love for Scritti Politti, and this is as definitively 80s as anything. Hard to believe I actually dressed like that in 87. I had the hair too. It was a beautiful thing…
During the lull between Christmas and new year I listened to all my old Now albums. Volumes 9 and 10 came out in 1987 and 9 was always my favourite of the two, but sadly I had this one on cassette rather than LP so it got chucked out years ago. Here’s the track list: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Now-Thats-What-I-Call-Music-9/release/2002327
Now 10 is a little more variable, and I found it hardgoing in places (especially that bloody Hey Matthew song): https://www.discogs.com/Various-Now-Thats-What-I-Call-Music-10/release/939228
Oof! Wet Wet Wet, T’Pau, Hue & Cry, Johnny Hates Jazz AND Curiosity Killed the Cat!
*Hagrid Voice* “They were dark days Harry…”
Probably the single that had the biggest effect on me in ’87 was Beat Dis. I’d never imagined that music could be like this…
Yes. Just yes.
The fun we had at school with his name. “Tim Simenenenmemenenommm!”
Got these on the go this evening. They both feature Beat Dis, as does one of the cassette comps I posted elsewhere the other day. These two actually came out in ’88, but have lots of 1987 singles on them.
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/DSCN0046_zpsmn3eplu4.jpg
I think of Beat Dis as a 1988 record, emerging just after Christmas and charting early in the new year. See also the Pogues third album (which I think was rush-released after the unexpectedly big success of the Lousy Faggot record)
My extremely knackered 7″ of Beat Dis ended up behind a radiator (don’t ask) and by the time I fished it out (again, don’t ask) it had gone totally Dali.
That was Aphex Twin’s method on 26 Remixes For Cash…
Terence Trent D’Arby’s debut album came out in ’87. It produced a load of hit singles, the best being If You Let Me Stay. I used that particular belter as the opening track on a mix CD for my niece at Christmas.
I think Sign Your Name is the best single from that album, though it wasn’t released as a single until 1988. I’ve got it on The Hits Album 8 double CD I picked up recently. Now there’s a compilation that’s a tough listen.
Golly, yes! I only ever got one from the Hits series (no.5), but having just looked up the pair released in ’87 it seems like Hits 7 was the better, and the second of three in a row to feature Terence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hits_7
Sign Your Name was debuted (?) as “his new single” on the Lenny Henry Christmas Special, broadcast on Boxing Day.
Around the time of Wishing Well, TTD did a John Peel session which I think consisted of James Brown covers. Probably a bit dated now, but it roared out of my radio in 1987.
What a load of useless shite I carry about in my head.
Wishing Well is my favourite. It’s a cross between Stevie Wonder, Prince and The Rolling Stones. Sexy as f*ck.
The wife’s a big fan of the 12-inch*. As was Paula Yates.
(*) yes, I mean his penis.
Yeah, Sign Your Name just squeezes in as a 1987 release. I couldn’t remember which single versions I have, but after a rifle through the bottom of my wardrobe (where else would one keep one’s car boot 12″s?), it seems I own the 4-track maxi single which has something called Greasy Chicken plus two Stones covers, and also the 10″ Lee Perry Remixes. I also found the 12″ of Wishing Well boasting a remix and a rather meh song called Elevators And Hearts. Here’s a topless TTD (the best kind) in full rock star egomaniac mode doing Under My Thumb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0uUa6GlDxM
He’ll catch his death of cold, poor lad.
Apart from the PSBs at their most Imperial – Rent, Sin, Deserve This, Heart, Mind it was the height of SAW with Rick n that hit plus this banger *resigns*
That is a fantastic record.
*runs*
The English debut of Bjork and the Sugarcubes with ‘Birthday.’ It was a much-needed signal to anglo-indie music to get weirder. Last years ‘C87’ anthology from Cherry Red records overlooked this (along with singles by Loop and Spaceman 3) which seems a misrepresentation of that year.
Speaking of misrepresentations wasn’t Birthday one of those too? I had friends who loved the single and bought the album, only to be be bemused by the male singer (Einar?) talking over a lot of the songs.
Perhaps misrspresentation was in the air. “Freak Scene” by Dinosaur Jr came out, everyone got excited, bought the album and then realised that it was much slower and stoned out than the single.
You’re not wrong about Einar, bless him. You had to respect the band’s sense of artistic democracy, but she was the real attraction (sort of like the way Peter Green used to let Jeremy Spencer take up a Fleetwood Mac gig, perhaps?)
Einar had a trumpet as well IIRC, which he blew when Bjork was singing.
It was part of why I like the Sugarcubes – that totally nutty provocative “this is art not entertainment” approach. Of course this is why I don’t play their records these days, but I appreciated it at the time.
Squelchy, funky, AND a bit rude! What more could a 12/13 year old wish for? Oh yes, that the singer is a leather-clad, designer-bearded hunk. In shades. Wahey!
I’ve still got my treasured 7″ upstairs. (And the single of this, fnarf.)
‘Build’ was also released in 1987, which is my favourite of theirs.
Sadly underrated yer Housemartins IMO
My big sis put me off buying Build since I was going to buy the parent album when it came out, and “Why would you want both?”. She’d make a rubbish Afterworder.
And it was her fault I liked the Housies so much anyway. She was the one who bought me Me And The Farmer for my birthday!
I’d always very much liked the Housies, but Farmer was the point at which I fell head over heels.
I now know that only a few weeks later – halfway through the (last) autumn tour – they’d already picked a date to split.
It weren’t me!!
Naturally, I have the 12-inch.
Three b-sides and marvelously loud.
Simply Red released “Men and Women” in 1987 and the single was the brilliant “Do The Right Thing”
I also appreciated the rudies hinted at in this.
If you’re in the mood to take it upstairs, James is on it. Somewhat anomalous at the time, thirty years on this is even more of an outlier for the genre:
(LL Cool J – I Need Love)
Or you could take up Prince’s invitation to “go down” to “Alphabet Street”.
Incidentally @minibreakfast, I notice the NTWICM people were coy about giving The Style Council tune its full title: Wanted (Or Waiter, There’s Some Soup In My Flies)…
I hated I Need Love. It was transparently opportunistic and musically pathetic. OOA clearly A.
However that year he gave us I’m Bad (one of the first great hip-hop uses of the word motherfucker) and the outrageous Chuck Berry-sampling Go Cut Creator Go. Even better, at the end of the year he did Jack The Ripper, easily the best record to result from his long-running feud with Kool Moe Dee.
PS. Those hats still look silly – like a German helmet that doesn’t quite fit (ach Fritz, vot are you doink?)
Your O is probably spot on, but certain records get a pass for being present at “big moments” in one’s life. Dissing Shinehead – 1987 Shinehead! – (as you do below) is a stepping outside matter however..
I didn’t diss Shinehead. For a start I praised an album that he’s all over. I said he was gimmicky, and there’s nothing wrong with that, speshly in a 1987 context when there were bells and whistles all over everything (This Is A Journey Into Sound….)
The NME putting Shinehead on their cover in 1986 was arguably the high-point of the Hip-Hop Wars. Indie kids must have spat out their Pot Noodles in disgust. “That’s not Mowwissey!!”
Thank gawd for that. I just realised I’ve had so many Baileys Magnums I’m incapable of making it off the couch, never mind outside…
After failing totally to get Fables of the Reconstruction, this was the year I “got” REM. And this 30 year old single is a reminder that bad times can pass (and come back again) even if it feels like the end of the world.
1987 was a moving-to-the-next-level year for Depeche Mode. Anton Corbijn began to get involved in the videos and artwork. They called the album Music for the Masses as a joke because the same old people bought their albums. By the time they had finished their 101st date of the supporting world tour the following year, they were playing to 80,000 people in a stadium. This was the opening single, Strangelove – possibly the first time they haven’t looked like awkward nongs in a video.
How about Whitney? The single was good, but this live performance on TOTP is wonderful.
She had a real run didn’t she, “So emotional” was a cracker – I have the 12″ with an 8 minute live version of “Didn’t we almost have it all” on the B side where she emotes magnificently. Many hate it but I think it’s great.
Phenomenal set of pipes, and one of the voices that reminds me of being a kid. Sad how it all panned out.
Indeed. She almost had it all (I’m here all week…).
First appeared in 1982 with Material. Archie Shepp also guesting. Still worth hearing
Rhythm Killers, which I blether on about below, is a Bill Laswell/Material production.
Must have beeen a nice project after the mutually unhappy time he had with John Lydon (though Album was a brilliant, er, album)
The La’s Way Out great single from 87
I still love this and don’t care who knows it.
(Uploader’s title is wrong, it was deffo ’87)
Probably defines the word seminal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GnFvdaEl2Q
Rhythim Is Rhythim – Strings Of Life
Should have been huge…
Win – You’ve Got The Power
The 1987est record in the world is the album Rhythm Killers by Sly’n’Robbie. By which I mean it will never make any sense whatsoever to someone who wasn’t around and (relatively) young that year, and me and my best mate from back then (13-14 in 1987) are the only people on the planet still listening to it.
The lead-off single was Boops (Here To Go) which was an unexpected hit that summer. A track both gimmicky (because Shinehead) and solid (because Sly & Robbie), it spliced multiple genres in a bonkers jamboree of soul, funk, reggae and hip-hop. It seemed to be at least five records trying to happen at once. Cellos join in. Shinehead whistles Rossini. Bootsy Collins sings the refrain as if he’s reading it backwards, and P-Funk is brought back from the dead.
Hurrah!
Top tuneage.
The excellent book This Is Uncool – The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco (currently 1p on Amazon) has the choices in chronological order. After 1984 I know or like fewer and fewer. 1987 has Prince – Sign Of The Times, there wasn’t a better single in 1987.
Dammit. I have a photographically certain memory of buying the 12 inch of True Faith and the 7 inch of Alphabet Street on the same day, but a quick check reveals you’re right – SOTT was 87 and Alphabet Street was 88. Clearly the first slates are sliding from the roof of my brain…
I have a soft spot for 1987/88, leaving school and starting work and having disposable income to buy albums, if you look for it you can find a rich vein of classic pop also. I’ve had to double check a few before posting as a number fell into the following year including The Adventures Broken Land and the lovely Belinda. However tunetastic options for 87 include :
Danny Wilson – Marys Prayer
Aztec Camera – Somewhere in my heart
George Harrison – Got My Mind Set on You
and of course, Squeeze with Hourglass
In 1987, I could still get away with dancing in a club. I loved Ce Ce Rogers – Someday.
https://youtu.be/vqpoLEbYwIM
Northern Soul may have been past its peak but The Tams never spoke a truer word.
There Ain’t Nothing Like Shaggin’
The Fall continued to brighten a dark decade.
Hit The North
For a couple of years with Brix, the Fall seemed to become a sort of pop group. I remember seeing The Frenz Experiment in somewhere like Woolworths and thinking “…..what?”
Mark E Smith and Brix were on the cover of Record Mirror. He was holding a rose and everything.
Early that year, the last appearance of one of the greatest bands ever to walk the earth*: Ralf, Florian, Karl ‘n’Wolfgang. It wasn’t a great record by their standards but the video is nicely elegaic in its context.
(*or perhaps mostly stand stock still on the earth)
On refection that video seems to be about the DDR. Which still existed then.
1987 was the year that The Sisters Of Mercy finally went gloriously OTT.
https://youtu.be/uqV1tHwoPzg
There aren’t many songs more likely to give my godawful singing a run out. Hey now, hey now now sing this corrosion to me.
There are few songs that have been available in so many versions as This Corrosion. I had this record on 7″, 12″, CD single and, wait for it, cassette single (or as nobody called them, cassingle).
As far as I know, if you want the 7″ version on CD, the only place you can find it is on the mostly rubbish “Left of the Dial” Rhino Box Set of 80s College Radio music.
If you want the 7″ version of Lucretia My Reflection on CD, it’s on The Hits 8 compilation I mention upthread. It’s not on the teeny tiny 3″ CD single, which, of course, I have.
-Helpful Hawk
There’s a version of This Corrosion on the Hits Album 7 CD, but it’s slightly shorter than the 7” version. It remains the only SOM recording I own.
1987, What The F*ck Was Going On?
Affter my computer fuckwittery yesterday I am not sure I should even try, but I love this record so much that I simply have to try & post this utterly sublime song.
Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield – What have I done to deserve this? – gorgeous.
Let’s have some Westworld – I think this is 87, but it might have been 86.
Note the Bo Diddley-esque rectangular guitar and state of the art animation
This house was buzzing around my head on Christmas Day 1986. It had been on The Tube a few weeks previously…
But you’re right, the record didn’t come out until 1987. Like Frankie GTH before them, the Tube showed them before they were even signed.
F888 happened there? “house” – ? Knobhead (as we said in ’87)
Great song, terrific artwork, terrible album.
I tried to make Westworld a thing at school. It didn’t work. Great tune though.
Early in December 1987 I tuned into the John Peel show and heard, for the first time, the two words that were to become the clarion call for my generation…
Yeeeeeeahhhhhhhhhhh BOOOYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!
https://youtu.be/gvJTIu3bWLs
Tom Waits released his Operachi Romantico in Two Acts, “Franks (no apostrophe) Wild Years”. It was virtually the last Waits album I loved.
Ooops … I’ve just seen the title of this thread: “Singles of 1987,” and “Innocent When You Dream” wasn’t a single.
Strange, because it’s a lot catchier than the Waits track that was released as a single in 1987, “Hang on St. Christopher”.
According to the tracklisting, Innocent When You Dream is a 78… sort of a single 😉
In 1987 Island reissued In The Neighbourhood as a single in the UK as part of a push of their three (up to then) TW albums – I think ‘Trombone had just been reissued in their 25th anniversary Island Life mid-price series. He was as close as he’s ever been too being a pop star at this time (which isn’t saying much)
I love Bone Machine, Mule Variations, Blood Money and Alice more than Frank’s Wild Years. I think you are missing out, duco!
Bad as Me is ace too. I love Satisfied in particular.
A selection from the database:
– Bad News – Bohemian Rhapsody (although does that really qualify as a “Classic of our times”?
– Cult – Lil Devil (may not to everyones taste, but hey this is 1987 – a stonking riff in a world of plinky-plonky synths)
– The Firm – Star Trekkin (the last hurrah for (decent/listenable) Comedy records at Number 1. It also had the distinction (and may still hold the record) of being the highest chart climber in a single week (60 places))
– New Order – True Faith (an early example of “new tracks written for a best of compilation”. And just as strong as anything else there)
– The Smiths had a good year (or bad year as they didn’t exist by the end of the year) with:
Shoplifters of the World Unite
Sheila Take a Bow
Girlfriend in a Coma
I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me
It’s not all good news though. 1987 also gave us Starship – Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now
I always liked this from 1987 (although the album from which it came was frankly a bit rubbish)
The Hooters – Satellite
Satellite is brilliant – and I’d disagree about the album, although it’s a while since I played it. Didn’t Eric whatshisface write Joan Osborne’s One of Us?
My statement on the album is with some 28/30 years of memory.
I have trouble recalling much of what was on there (apart form the aforementioned song), and so in typical Rigid Digit blasé-ness I have dismissed it.
Maybe I should (and I will) give it another listen.
Guitarist bloke Eric Bazilian did indeed write the song about God being on the bus.
The best version was probably the Dr Evil reading of the text
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD-85ABVkkY
Favourite “new tracks written for a best of compilation” might have original thread potential @rigid-digit..
“Rent” should go down as one of the best 1980s song ever written. So beautiful, in its pure simplicity. Always loved this version from their first shows in 1989…
Actually – this version
This was THE song of 1987 in New Zealand and Australia. From an animated movie “Footrot Flats”, based on the characters in a newspaper daily cartoon. Composed and sung by one of NZ’s great songwriters Dave Dobbyn, with fab Polynesian harmonies from Herbs
Mostly 12″ singles for me in 1987, nearly all of which came from very good LPs:
Prince – Sign o’ The Times
Renegade Soundwave – Kray Twins
Pet Shop Boys – It’s A Sin
Eric B & Rakim – Paid In Full
Schooly D – Saturday Night
Sugarcubes – Birthday
TTD – If You Let Me Stay (2×12″, with a splendid version of Wonderful World)
King Sun D Moet – Hey Love
New Order – True Faith
– Touched By The Hand Of God
M/A/R/R/S – Pump Up The Volume
Public Enemy – Rebel Without A Pause
Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu – All You Need Is Love
– Whitney Joins The JAMs
– Down Town
Happy Mondays – 24 Hour Party People
Age Of Chance – Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Noise
Communards – You Are My World (I think Don’t Leave Me This Way was 1986)
The Fall – Hit The North
– Ghost In My House
I’m sure my 1987 self would be happy with those. The year I started “courting” my wife of 27 years, commenced buying first house, and looked to change from first job.
Somebody other than me mentioned Schoolly D. I am excite.
Also from the intermittently inspired Renegade Soundwave, Cocaine Sex* – best heard in this dub version… and very loud.
(*had a fine time a-googlin’ that)
I’m strictly a white boy indie guitars kinda guy….but this ace.
Criticize…..Alexander O’ Neal.
Flame away but this did it for me.