***** CONTENT WARNING – THIS POST CONTAINS A REFERENCE TO 9/11 *****
These albums are all turning forty-five this year. This list is in chronological order by release date and covers albums released between January and April 1979.
- Armed Forces – Elvis Costello & the Attractions
CHART POSITION: #10 in the US, #2 in the UK, #8 in Canada, #9 in Australia
SINGLES: “Oliver’s Army”, “Accidents Will Happen”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Goon Squad”, “Busy Bodies”, “Two Little Hitlers”, and “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding”
FUN FACT #1: Costello’s label, Radar Records, opted to release the album in the US with different cover art; the original cover (above left), showing a herd of elephants running straight towards the camera, was replaced with a pastel-colored pop art paint drip (above right).
FUN FACT #2: Working titles for Armed Forces, which re-teamed Costello with producer Nick Lowe, included Cornered On Plastic and Emotional Fascism. Armed Forces is the first album to be credited to Costello’s backing band, The Attractions (keyboardist Steve Nieve, bassist Bruce Thomas, and drummer Pete Thomas).
FUN FACT #3: In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, older brother Michael sings a snippet from “Accidents Will Happen” as he comes home from school and looks for a snack in the fridge (just before he meets Elliott’s pet alien). The single is also featured in The Simpsons episode “Treehouse of Horror XXVI”.
FUN FACT #4: “Sunday’s Best” was left off the US version of the album in favor of Costello’s cover of Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding”, the B-side to Lowe’s 1978 single “American Squirm”. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding”, the rare cover to eclipse the original, was written by Lowe in 1974 and recorded with his band Brinsley Schwarz (link below). Costello’s version has become one of his signature songs.
- We Are Family – Sister Sledge
CHART POSITION: #3 in the US, #7 in the UK
SINGLES: “He’s the Greatest Dancer”, “We Are Family”, “Lost in Music”, “Thinking of You”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above
FUN FACT: We Are Family was written and produced by the powerhouse team of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (of CHIC fame). The vocals for the title track, Sister Sledge’s biggest hit and signature song, were recorded by a then-19-year-old Kathy Sledge in a single take.
- Look Sharp! – Joe Jackson
CHART POSITION: #20 in the US and Australia, #40 in the UK
SINGLES: “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”, “Sunday Papers”, “One More Time”, “Fools in Love”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Happy Loving Couples”, “Baby Stick Around”, “Look Sharp!”, “(Do the) Instant Mash”, “Got the Time”
FUN FACT #1: The Look Sharp! cover is one of the most celebrated ever; in fact, Rolling Stone placed it at #22 on their list of all-time greatest album covers. With photography by the legendary Brian Griffin, the cover art received a nomination for Best Recording Package at the 21st Grammy Awards (it lost, rightly, to Supertramp’s Breakfast in America, an album we’ll talk more about later in this post). For his part, Jackson was disappointed in the cover because you couldn’t see his face, and he vowed to never work with Griffin again.
FUN FACT #2: A debut album for the ages (and a personal favorite), Look Sharp! announced the arrival of a brash, brainy new artist. Jackson has been one of the most consistently inventive artists of the past five decades, ever-evolving through genres as diverse as reggae, ska, jazz, swing, and even classical.
- Inflammable Material – Stiff Little Fingers
CHART POSITION: #14 in the UK
SINGLES: N/A
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: “Suspect Device”, “Wasted Life”, “White Noise”, “Rough Trade”
FUN FACT: Inflammable Material was released during the height of “The Troubles” (click here for more info – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles), and every note is imbued with the anger, violence, and brutality of life in Northern Ireland. Although Stiff Little Fingers never achieved the commercial acclaim of their UK punk contemporaries like The Clash and The Sex Pistols, Inflammable Material is one of the most influential punk records ever.
- Spirits Having Flown – Bee Gees
CHART POSITION: #1 in thirteen countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia
SINGLES: “Too Much Heaven”, “Tragedy”, “Love You Inside Out”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Spirits (Having Flown)” and “Search, Find”
FUN FACT: Spirits Having Flown was the first album released by the brothers Gibb since their contributions to the blockbuster Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Though it only sold half as many copies as its predecessor, Spirits Having Flown was a huge success nonetheless, shooting to the top of the charts in thirteen countries, selling 20 million copies worldwide, and winning the American Music Award for Best Pop/Rock Album of 1979.
- George Harrison – George Harrison
CHART POSITION: #14 in the US and Canada, #39 in the UK
SINGLES: “Blow Away”, “Love Comes to Everyone”, “Faster”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Here Comes the Moon” and “Soft-Hearted Hana”
FUN FACT: George Harrison, the former Beatle’s eighth solo album but his first to be self-titled, was written during a period of personal contentment for Harrison (in 1978, he married Olivia Aras and she gave birth to their son Dhani). Guest musicians on the album included Steve Winwood, Gary Wright, and Harrison’s BFF Eric Clapton.
- Rickie Lee Jones – Rickie Lee Jones
CHART POSITION: #3 in the US, #18 in the UK, #1 in Australia, #11 in Canada
SINGLES: “Chuck E.’s in Love”, “Young Blood”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963” and “Easy Money”
FUN FACT #1: “Chuck E.’s in Love” was inspired by Los Angeles musician Chuck E. Weiss, with whom Jones and her then-boyfriend Tom Waits spent time at the Tropicana Motel. Weiss once called Waits from Denver to announce that he had fallen in love with a woman there; after hanging up, Waits announced to Jones, “Chuck E.’s in love!”
FUN FACT #2: At the 22nd Grammys, Jones took home the Best New Artist Award, beating out The Blues Brothers, Dire Straits, The Knack, and Robin Williams.
- Force Majeure – Tangerine Dream
CHART POSITION: #26 in the UK and Australia
SINGLES: N/A
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: “Force Majeure”, “Cloudburst Flight”, “Thru Metamorphic Rocks” (that’s the entire album)
FUN FACT: Remixed excerpts of “Force Majeure” and “Cloudburst Flight” – titled “Lana” and “Guido The Killer Pimp” respectively – were utilized in Tangerine Dream’s score for 1983’s Risky Business, while a snippet of “Thru Metamorphic Rocks” was reworked as “Igneous” for Michael Mann’s Thief.
- No. 1 in Heaven – Sparks
CHART POSITION: #204 in the US, #73 in the UK, #63 in Australia
SINGLES: “La Dolce Vita”, “The Number One Song in Heaven”, “Tryouts for the Human Race”, “Beat the Clock”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Academy Award Performance”
FUN FACT: After the disappointment of their previous two efforts, the wonderfully weird Sparks—brothers Ron and Russell Mael—were ready to move their music in a new direction. They called upon the legendary Giorgio Moroder to co-write, produce, and perform on the album, and a synth-pop classic was born. Joy Division has named “The Number One Song in Heaven” as a primary inspiration for their single “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. And Paste magazine placed No. 1 in Heaven at the top of their list of the greatest synth-pop albums ever.
- Breakfast in America – Supertramp
CHART POSITION: Top five in fourteen countries, #1 in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada (in the US, it was the fifth-most-popular album of 1979)
SINGLES: “The Logical Song”, “Breakfast in America”, “Goodbye Stranger”, “Take the Long Way Home”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Gone Hollywood” and “Oh Darling”
FUN FACT #1: Breakfast in America, Supertramp’s biggest-selling album, spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 and has sold an estimated 20 million copies worldwide.
FUN FACT #2: “The Logical Song”, the band’s highest-charting hit, was inspired by Roger Hodgson’s time in English boarding schools. Paul McCartney named “The Logical Song”, which won Best Song at the prestigious Ivor Novello Awards, his favorite single of the year. And Paul Thomas Anderson later used “The Logical Song” and “Goodbye Stranger” in his 1999 opus Magnolia.
FUN FACT #3: Breakfast in America‘s cover was designed by Mike Doud and Mick Haggerty, who won the Grammy for Best Recording Package. After 9/11, a bizarre conspiracy theory posited that the album’s cover art predicted the tragic events of that day; for more on this theory, click here:
- Manifesto – Roxy Music
CHART POSITION: #23 in the US, #7 in the UK
SINGLES: “Trash”, “Dance Away”, “Angel Eyes”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Manifesto” and “Ain’t That So”
FUN FACT: “Dance Away,” the album’s biggest single, reached #2 on the UK charts; Blondie’s “Sunday Girl” kept it out of the top spot. The Manifesto cover was designed in part by lead singer-songwriter Bryan Ferry; the typography was inspired by the early-20th-century literary magazine Blast.
- Live at the Witch Trials – The Fall
CHART POSITION: N/A
SINGLES: N/A
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: “Frightened”, “Rebellious Jukebox”, “Industrial Estate”, “Two Steps Back”
FUN FACT: One of the best bands you’ve probably never heard of, The Fall was hugely influential in the post-punk era and beyond, inspiring artists like Sonic Youth, Pavement, Franz Ferdinand, and LCD Soundsystem.
- Evolution – Journey
CHART POSITION: #20 in the US, #35 in Canada
SINGLES: “Just the Same Way”, “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin'”, “Too Late”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “City of the Angels”
FUN FACT: “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin'”, Journey’s first top-twenty hit, was inspired by Sam Cooke’s “Nothing Can Change This Love”.
- Van Halen II – Van Halen
CHART POSITION: #6 in the US, #23 in the UK
SINGLES: “Dance the Night Away”, “Beautiful Girls”, “Somebody Get Me a Doctor”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “D.O.A.” and “Women in Love”
FUN FACT: In Van Halen II‘s liner notes, the band thanks the Sheraton Inn of Madison, Wisconsin. The band had stayed at the hotel during their first tour and essentially destroyed the entire seventh floor, throwing television sets out the windows and engaging in fire extinguisher fights in the hallways (and blaming it all on their tour mates, Journey).
- Just a Game – Triumph
CHART POSITION: #48 in the US, #19 in the band’s native Canada
SINGLES: “Lay It On the Line”, “Hold On”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Movin’ On”, “American Girls”, and “Just a Game”
FUN FACT: Just a Game‘s inner sleeve features an actual game designed by Triumph’s bassist and keyboardist Mike Levine – though he intentionally made it impossible to win.
- Secondhand Daylight – Magazine
CHART POSITION: #38 in the UK, #41 in New Zealand
SINGLES: “Rhythm of Cruelty”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: “Feed the Enemy”, “Rhythm of Cruelty”, “Talk to the Body”, “I Wanted Your Heart”, “Permafrost”
FUN FACT: The album cover’s super cool typography was designed by Malcolm Garrett, an absolute legend who has created iconic covers for ’80s artists like Duran Duran, Culture Club, Heaven 17, Buzzcocks, and Simple Minds. British engineer Colin Thurston, who went on to work with Duran Duran, Talk Talk, Kajagoogoo, and Gary Numan, made his producing debut on Secondhand Daylight.
- Overkill – Motörhead
CHART POSITION: #24 in the UK, #17 in France
SINGLES: “Overkill”, “No Class”, “Louie Louie”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: “Overkill”, “No Class”, “Damage Case”, and “Tear Ya Down”
FUN FACT #1: Metal band Overkill, formed in New Jersey in 1980, named themselves for this album.
FUN FACT #2: Motörhead’s version of “Louie Louie” was released as a standalone single in 1978 but not included on the album because Bronze Records founder Gerry Bron called it “about the worst record I’d ever heard”. “Louie Louie” was included on a 1996 reissue of Overkill, and I’m including it here.
- Desolation Angels – Bad Company
CHART POSITION: #3 in the US, #10 in the UK
SINGLES: “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy”, “Gone, Gone, Gone”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Crazy Circles”, “Oh Atlanta”, and “She Brings Me Love”
FUN FACT: The album’s title, named for the 1965 Jack Kerouac novel of the same name, was almost used ten years earlier for the second album by Paul Rodgers’ previous band, Free (that album’s eventual title, imaginatively enough, was Free). Desolation Angels was Bad Company’s final top-ten album in the US and the UK.
- Squeezing Out Sparks – Graham Parker and the Rumour
CHART POSITION: #40 in the US, #18 in the UK, #22 in Australia
SINGLES: “Protection”, “Discovering Japan”, “Local Girls”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “You Can’t Be Too Strong”
FUN FACT: Squeezing Out Sparks, which topped that year’s Pazz & Jop critics poll in The Village Voice, was a musical departure for Parker, whose previous work utilized a horn section for a more soulful sound. Producer Jack Nitzsche wanted the album to have a raw sound, which left Parker’s rhythm & blues section free to play on The Clash’s masterpiece London Calling (more on that in volume three of this post).
- Replicas – Tubeway Army
CHART POSITION: #124 in the US, #1 in the UK, #11 in Australia
SINGLES: “Down in the Park”, “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Me! I Disconnect from You”, “The Machman”, and “You Are in My Vision”
FUN FACT #1: I am OBSESSED with this album. When I first heard “Down in the Park”, my tweener mind was blown. Tubeway Army frontman Gary Numan went solo after the release of Replicas, which was heavily influenced by the work of Philip K. Dick (specifically, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner). His solo debut, The Pleasure Principle, was also released in 1979, and we’ll discuss it in undoubtedly great length in part three of this post.
FUN FACT #2: Musically, Replicas was inspired by David Bowie’s Low and Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine, among others. In turn, industrial artists like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson have listed Replicas as an influence on their work.
- Cool for Cats – Squeeze
CHART POSITION: #45 in the UK, #18 in Australia
SINGLES: “Goodbye Girl”, “Cool for Cats”, “Up the Junction”, “Slap and Tickle”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above, plus “Hop, Skip & Jump”
FUN FACT: In 1979, Squeeze was two years away from their US breakthrough East Side Story, which contains the iconic single “Tempted”. But on the strength of four UK hits, including the title track, Cool for Cats is my favorite of the band’s albums. In 1995, Chris Woodstra called Cool for Cats a “pure pop masterpiece” for the All Music Guide to Rock.
- Voulez-Vous – ABBA
CHART POSITION: #19 in the US, #1 in the UK, the group’s native Sweden, and five more countries
SINGLES: “Chiquitita” (in both English and Spanish), “Does Your Mother Know”, “Voulez-Vous”, “Angeleyes”, “As Good as New”, “I Have a Dream”, “Kisses of Fire”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above
FUN FACT #1: Voulez-Vous, ABBA’s first full-fledged disco album, made the year-end top ten in four countries, including the UK and Japan (where it was the 17th most popular album of the DECADE).
FUN FACT #2: For their 1992 EP Abba-esque, Erasure recorded a kick-ass cover of “Voulez-Vous”, which is French for “Do you want?”
- Bad Girls – Donna Summer
CHART POSITION: #1 in the US, Canada, and Finland
SINGLES: “Hot Stuff”, “Bad Girls”, “Dim All the Lights”, “Sunset People”, “Our Love”, “Walk Away”
MY FAVORITE TRACKS: All of the above
FUN FACT #1: A disco masterpiece, Bad Girls was a critical and commercial success. It went to #1 in the US and Canada (it made the year-end list in both countries) and sold four million copies worldwide. At the 22nd Grammys, Bad Girls received five nominations – including Album of the Year – and garnered Summer an award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for “Hot Stuff”.
FUN FACT #2: On June 30, 1979, Summer became the first female artist to have two songs in the top three of the Billboard Hot 100 (“Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff”).
As always, here is the playlist, which will be updated to coincide with future volumes:
PB & Julie + Julie C. Trivia 