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Jason Maloney reviews
V o l u m e # 0 5 Week Commencing: 28th February 1983 Online Date: 3rd March 2005
The third album from U2 elevated them into the big league, its debut at #1 in the UK representing a huge step up from the Top 20 success of 1981’s October.
War was preceded by the band’s first major hit single New Year’s Day, which had reached #8 in January.
Another of 1983’s most notable albums, True would eventually top the charts in the wake of its title track’s #1 success as a single in May.
A return to form after the commercial wobble of Diamond (that difficult second album syndrome rearing its head), True housed not only Lifeline and Communication (both already Top 20 hits) but also the aforementioned title song and the future #2 smash Gold.
For the Sheffield heavy rock outfit, both their 1980 debut On Through The Night and its follow-up High’n’Dry had performed respectably without providing a real breakthrough.
All that changed with Pyromania, as America embraced them to the tune of some 7 million copies sold. In the UK the album only just scraped into the Top 20 and stayed on the chart for a couple months, but the groundwork for 1987’s all-conquering Hysteria – which did manage to score big in Britain – was arguably laid by Pyromania and its MTV-friendly singles Photograph and Rock Of Ages.
So much for upward career trajectories. On the back of 1981’s seminal Architecture & Morality album and its trio of consecutive Top 5 hits Souvenir, Joan Of Arc and Maid Of Orleans, O.M.D. were now one of the biggest acts in the UK.
In a move akin to commercial suicide, they eschewed the dreamy pop of A&M and made a record that featured Czechoslovakian speaking clocks and Eastern European radio broadcasts. The singles Genetic Engineering and Telegraph were sprightly enough, even if the former was seriously off-the-wall, but neither did particularly well and Dazzle Ships‘ sales were considerably down on its predecessor.
The Key
A UK Top 10 regular by the early 1980s, Armatrading released two albums during 1983. The Key was her latest studio offering and included the #11 hit Drop The Pilot, the singer/songwriter’s biggest single since Love & Affection in 1976.
Later in the year came a Best Of compilation entitled Track Record, the last Joan Armatrading album (another 1991 retrospective notwithstanding) to enjoy major success.
Page Content copyright © Jason Maloney, 2005.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.