Monthly Archives: January 2026

Forty Years On: Favorite Music from 1986 Part I

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There’s been a meme going over on Threads lately about it being the 40th anniversary of several great albums released in 1986, and of course this means that I’d need to get in on that nonsense. That was an interesting year for fifteen-year-old me for a few reasons. One, I would soon be finishing my very first completed novel (aka the Infamous War Novel, a bit of juvenilia with heavy Red Dawn vibes) that would set off a future career that’s still with me to this day. Two, it was right about the time I’d started moving away from commercial pop and rock radio and more towards AOR and other genres. And of course, it was also the pivotal year when I discovered college radio. [And because I wouldn’t do the third until April vacation and thus not discover a lot of bands until much later in the year, several of these songs would grab my attention at that time.]

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The Church, Heyday, released January 1986. I’d heard of the band before, various music magazines having sung their praises for a few years by then, but “Tantalized” was probably the first track I’d heard, most likely on WMDK (the local AOR station I’d started obsessing over) and later when I started watching 120 Minutes on MTV.

The Call, Reconciled, released February 1986. I remember really liking “The Walls Came Down” from their 1983 album Modern Romans, which got some decent play on MTV and WAQY, but it was the song “I Still Believe (Great Design)” that blew my mind. Yes, I know, most of you remember this from The Lost Boys and the be-mulleted/abs-for-days Tim Cappello, but that version doesn’t even come close to the power and strength of the original. I’d pick up the album at Strawberries soon after and listened to it quite often.

Public Image Ltd, Album, released 3 February 1986. Yeah, I know he’s become a bit of a bigoted prick these days (this is what usually happens when your only superpower is being an insufferable contrarian), but back then it was great to hear such a call to arms in the Reagan/Thatcher days like the thunderous “Rise”.

Janet Jackson, Control, released 4 February 1986. Meanwhile, waaaaay on the other side of the spectrum, Michael’s little sister finally breaks the glass ceiling with the help of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and becomes a powerhouse of constant hits that last for years. At the time I didn’t think too much about picking this album up, but all the big singles grew on me and I just couldn’t resist. The whole record is a banger from start to finish.

Stan Ridgway, The Big Heat, released 10 February 1986. The former Wall of Voodoo singer shows up unexpectedly with a leftfield favorite with “Drive, She Said” which got a lot of play on AOR stations like WMDK. This album was really hard to find for me for some reason, and I wouldn’t own it until years later when I found it in a discount bin during my college years.

Talk Talk, The Colour of Spring, released 20 February 1986. This remains on my list of all-time-favorite songs, simple though it may be. I remember kinda liking it but being blown away by the video when it was introduced by one Elvis Costello on MTV one day. It’s also a song I remember crossing over all over the place, not only on the music channel but on rock radio, AOR, and even on the pop stations.

Elvis Costello (as The Costello Show featuring the Attractions and Confederates), King of America, released 21 February 1986. I remember WMDK playing his loungy cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” quite a bit, even though the album itself didn’t do much of anything in the States at the time. It’s an odd one in his discography, done more for his own enjoyment than any attempt at popularity.

The Pogues, Poguetry in Motion EP, released 24 February 1986. Another track I heard a lot on WMDK was “A Rainy Night in Soho”. I’d heard of the band and most likely heard their more spirited tracks from Red Roses for Me a year or so previous, but I was pleasantly surprised by how lovely this track is. I’d pick up the EP on vinyl not long thereafter.

Soundtrack, Pretty in Pink, released 26 February 1986. If anything, this is probably my second favorite John Hughes film, just after The Breakfast Club. I know I’d seen it in the theater and enjoyed it, but it was maybe some time later when I watched it again on video (we’d finally jumped on the bandwagon, bought a VHS player and started renting movies as a weekend entertainment). My copy of the soundtrack was dubbed (Side B of a ninety minute cassette, with The Breakfast Club soundtrack on the other side), but I’d eventually own my own copy later on.

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More to come!

Favorite Songs: Squeeze, “Satisfied”

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This band’s 1991 studio album Play doesn’t get much attention at all for some reason, nestled between the perky but low-selling Frank from 1989 and the moody and also-forgotten Some Fantastic Place from 1993. Not that it’s bad, of course. It’s more likely that it dropped right in the middle of a huge wave of American Grunge and UK Britpop. If you were a fan, you loved it, but if you were a passive one, well…

“Satisfied” was the first single off the album to be released in the US, and to many listeners’ surprise, they sounded and looked slick. They were pared down to a quartet (Jools Holland having chosen not to return, most likely due to his ongoing TV projects) so the album sounds less expansive and more cozy, but extremely well-produced. There’s a dreamlike quality to this song, meandering along at its own pace with sighing guitars and keys, and a simple (and very Difford/Tilbrook) set of lyrics about the simplicity and peacefulness of mutual love.

Interestingly, I equate this song with one of the lowest points of my time in college. My long-term/long-distance relationship was coming to a close, I’d lost contact with several of my friends both near and far, I was creatively frustrated and barely scraping by academically. I really felt as though my life had become a long series of ill-advised decisions made more out of desperation rather than inspiration. This was a song I’d hoped would lift my spirits but instead reminded me of just how far I’d fallen from my wishes and dreams of the future.

That said, it’s a banger of a tune and one of my favorites of the second phase of the band’s career. They were now a band that might not show up in the charts as much as they used to, but they didn’t seem too bothered by that. I can hear this song now without the doom and gloom, instead focusing on the wonder of that simple lyric.

Thinking About: more early 90s techno

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Another thing that showed up in early 90s electronic music was the seemingly misplaced vocal sample that somehow fit perfectly in the song. I used to love those, partly because I enjoyed the game of ‘hey I know that bit!’ and how creative they slid it into the track.

Like “Papua New Guinea” by The Future Sound of London, whose main vocal line was lifted from Dead Can Dance’s “Dawn of the Iconoclast” (a track off my favorite DCD album, 1987’s Within the Realm of a Dying Sun). Several of my classmates at Emerson loved this track, and they’d play it all the time at the clubs on Landsdowne Street.

….or Utah Saints’ “Something Good”, which made liberal use of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting”. I loved cranking this one up in the car when it came on the radio.

Then there’s Apotheosis with “O Fortuna”, lifting the famous choral movement from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. This one I remember well because they’d lifted the sample from a classical recording and hadn’t gotten clearance, making the single hard to find.

And then there’s just the downright silly “Sesame’s Treet” by Smart E’s. Somehow they made this work despite how ridiculous it is. Peak Gen-X retromania here, mixing our present and past into one.

Much later in the decade, a friend of mine introduced me to the equally silly “Speed” by Alpha Team, and I literally had a coworker at the record store writhing on the floor in laughter when I played him the breakdown part of the Hardcore Mix (about 3:30 in).

I suppose this is partly why I eventually latched onto electronic music in the 90s, because it wasn’t always about the scene or the vibe. It wasn’t always serious. Sometimes it was just about having fun being creative with the technology you had, even if the output was more for laughs than anything else.

Thinking About: early 90s techno

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As mentioned a few weeks back, I’ve been catching up on Orbital, an electronic duo that I passively listened to in the 90s. I was vaguely familiar with a lot of their earlier singles like “Halcyon + On + On”, “Chime” and “Lush 3”, but it was 1996’s “The Box” off their album In Sides that caught my attention, especially with its otherworldly and unsettling music video featuring the always intriguing Tilda Swinton as a time-traveling alien visiting the grimier parts of East London. It’s one of my all-time favorite videos of the 90s and was one of the many influences for the Bridgetown Trilogy.

While listening to them, it got me thinking about my experience with electronic music in the 90s. Even then it had all sorts of different genres and names: techno, house, EBM, electronica, chillwave, trip-hop, and everything in between. If I had to pinpoint when I first started paying attention to this kind of stuff, it was hearing “Chime” on the techno show on WFNX during my freshman year in college. It intrigued me, because it wasn’t exactly the melodic synthpop of the 80s that I was so used to, but nor was it the vaguely creative club music that producers like Stock-Aitken-Waterman were churning out on the regular. To me it was somewhere in between: creative enough that you could groove to it at the clubs, but you could also chill out to it in the comfort of your own home. [Mind you, this was also during the height of rave culture so you could do both while completely blissed out, heh.]

Another track that stood out for me, of course, was Moby’s “Go” with its use of Laura Palmer’s Theme from Twin Peaks as the music bed. Creepy and weird yet somehow hypnotic and groovy. This was well before his huge breakthrough with 1997’s Play.

Trip-hop didn’t quite gel with me right away, as it didn’t get a lot of play on the local alternative stations in Boston at the time other than Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy”, which also got a lot of attention for its hybrid of dance, soul, and heavy vibe. It wasn’t just about the lyrics or the melody, it was also about the mood, and that kind of thing always captured my attention. It also helped that its one-continuous-take video was so simple yet so cinematic. A lot of the best electronic music in the 90s strived to capture that.

I could go on, of course, but this is merely an overview, so perhaps it’s time for me to do another WiS series!

New Year, New Music

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It’s been a couple of weeks into the new year, so I’m sure you’re curious as to what my first downloads of 2026 are. So here we go!

Kula Shaker, Lucky Number EP, releases 2 January. They’ve always had that similarity to Oasis but with more mysticism and less drunken swagger, and this one definitely feels like that. I’ve always loved this band since their K album back in 1996, so I’m looking forward to what the new album (curiously entitled Wormslayer…?) sounds like.

DIIV, Boiled Alive, released 5 January. The sludgy-shoegaze band drops a live album/concert film featuring several songs from their 2024 record Frog in Boiling Water, and they sound surprisingly tight and heavy.

SAULT, Chapter 1, released 9 January. I will always check out whatever this enigmatic band releases, because I never know if it’s going to be jazz, gospel, soul, orchestral, alt rock, or something in between. And they are just so flipping amazing at whatever they do.

Dry Cleaning, Secret Love, released 9 January. These 4AD oddballs talk-sing their way through such weird yet catchy tunes that I can’t help but sit back and take it all in, wondering where it will lead.

The Cribs, Selling a Vibe, released 9 January. This band might be known more in the States for having had Johnny Marr as a full member for a few years and kind of riding on the coattails of The Strokes, but they’ve always been a fun listen.