OMG, I own 18 of your 20 picks. On vinyl.

The correct answer for the Psychedelic Furs is "Mirror Moves."

WRONG ON ALL ACCOUNTS.

LOL, Dream Theory in Malaya is great, and I've bought multiple copies in Thrift stores because people are dumb. Stay dumb, people!

Great list Dave!

Interesting lists! I feel like the real value of these lists is not to establish a pecking order, but to turn people onto music they either: a) never heard of, or b) mistakenly dismissed as commercial dreck. In that regard, I found both Dave's and Pitchfork's lists quite helpful.

However, one of the best things that happened in the 1980s is on neither list: the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus.

p.s. I think 'Soviet France' should be 'Zoviet France,' although I've also seen it appear as '$oviet France.'

does Harald Grosskopf's "Synthesist" count?

It's not all my personal favorites, but it's a good list.

@2 I'd second that.

Thin Lizzy's Chinatown came out in 1980. Perhaps they're too associated with the 70's for them to have felt right on this list, but along with Motorhead are uniquely and universally beloved by punks and metalheads (and probably some pop/rock fans) alike.

Napalm Death's album Scum since they seemed to have kicked off a whole... thing that keeps coming back around 35 years later.

Art of Noise's Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise? certainly encapsulated the 80's in a big way, not to mention their avant-garde process; creating pop music from samples, is pretty much the way things are done today.

Look, I know it's fashionable now to think of '80s metal as a bunch of hooey, and the only good things to come out of it were hardcore savants like Metallica and Slayer or records that pointed toward the '90s like Destruction and Nothing's Shocking (and they put that one at fucking one-hundred-and-who-cares? Really?), but Jesus. No Van Halen? Not one Crue record? Rush? No fucking Pyromania? Seriously? I'm happy that something like Spirit of Eden snuck into the Top 25, but c'mon. Let's not kid ourselves. Hair metal fucking ruled that decade, and no amount of pointy-headed reassessment can alter that fundamental truth.

Oh, and you are 100% correct about Straitjacket Fits.

@8 As soon as I closed my browser, I was like... wait, did I really not see Van Halen on there? Their genre was a massive part of the decade and a handful of the records that came out of it are as well crafted as anything their pop contemporaries produced. Is that famous David Lee Roth quote about Elvis Costello still true?

Also, I didn't see anything from that early 80's LA powerpop or paisley undergrounds era, but I guess there's only so much room. If I knew more about jazz, funk, or r&b I'd probably have an analogous complaint. Come to think of it, where the hell is Rick James and Midnight Star?

Also also, I understand why Paul Simon's Graceland is on there, but holy hell that album is a pizza box scraping against freezer ice to me. Once you notice that godawful fretless bass... ugggggh.

@5 The name was Soviet France when Flock came out. They later changed it to :zoviet*france:, because it looks cooler.

I'll grant that "Trust" is a better Elvis album than the tedious, overrated "Imperial Bedroom," but if you want to get really obscure (and of course you do), the man's best '80s albums are his two astonishing B-side compilations, "Taking Liberties" and "Out of Our Idiot." These are the albums I gravitate to today if I'm in the mood for Elvis. One never quite gets to the bottom of them.

If you disqualify those, I'd submit that his best album of the '80s was "Get Happy" for its sheer wealth of hooks and clever ideas, though some may regard it as part of his '70s work (it was released very early in 1980, as I recall) and the shortness of many of the songs was frustrating to some fans of his previous work. "Spike" gets an honorable mention for its amazing range of stylistic variations on a starkly political theme.

Many great additions that should have definitely been on the list. Nice to see some love for that Loop lp, it's so good. And World Domination Enterprises. I dare anyone not to listen to "Asbestos lead asbestos" once and not want to replay it another 50 times.

2 - "Mirror Moves" is great but in no way in the same league as the debut or even the follow-up. IMHO...

somehow i need to cram flux "uncarved block" on there.

Puta's Fever by Mano Negra