Human Racing

Alexa - play me an album from the 80's

Feel like a lot of the user albums are more of the nostalgic music people listened to a lot growing up. I never heard of this album before but I’d imagine if I grew up in the 80s this would be a popular one. To me this was some boy band solo artist 80s new wave stuff that was pretty dull and didn’t have any of the flair of the better new wave music. 4.3/10

My guilty pleasure, I voted for this, not because it was a reminder of my younger years but because, as a debut album it was successful and also was one of the key new wave synth albums that other artists encompassed, copied and modified. There isn't a bad song on the album, many of the songs refer to the issues of the times

Wouldn't it be good has been the theme song to Cadbury commercials in Australia for about the last 30 years. It's a fucking banger. I didn't know the rest of the album, but it isn't as good. There's an "intense pop" feel, with all this stop-start stuff and synthesised slap bass etc etc, that I wasn't in the mood for today. I'm gonna give it a decent score though, for wouldn't it be nice and I won't let the sun go down on me, as well as the guitar solo in cloak and dagger. 4/5.

Downside is more new wave bullshit Upside on a few tracks is that it *nearly* touches Oingo Boingo in new wave fun. Needs more horns! The lyrics are *very* "I'm 14 and this is deep"

When people say they don't like 80s music this is what they think it all sounds like.

Basic 80’s pop. I don’t understand how this was so many weeks on top of the UK charts

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Wouldn’t it be good, Shame on you, Faces, I won’t let the sun go down on me

Quintessential 80's vibe. I personally prefer The Riddle, but Wouldn't It Be Good and I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me alone make it worthwhile to listen to the album.

There are a few songs that I recognize but never knew who it was. Nice addition to the list.

A girl I met on the debate tournament circuit in high school got me into Nick Kershaw via a mix tape, and Wouldn’t It Be Good? became an immediate favorite of mine. The rest of the album I liked a lot then. I’m not sure this would have bubbled up to the top if I was new to this today, but Wouldn’t It Be Good? is so catchy and Drum Talk is really different. What fun to revisit this old favorite!

I couldn't have told you earlier today that it wasn't Nik Kershaw's "Wouldn't it be Good" on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, which I listened to hundreds of times in the later 80s. But I went back and listened, and that's definitely not Nik Kershaw. Weird. (I probably would have sung it "wouldn't it be nice" as it were. It's been a while.) I digress. It was a favorite song despite all that. I think I would have really enjoyed this album back then, too.

I'm quite surprised at how many of these seem vaguely familiar, and given that most of this stuff hasn't been in the public consciousness since about 1985, that's quite astonishing. I can't claim that anything from this album will enter my regular rotation, but I did quite enjoy Shame on You's vocal, er... sound, I guess. I wonder what influence (if any) Mr Kershaw had on Camille - it's a similar kind of beatboxy thing to what she does, although I'm genuinely not sure if beatboxing is the right term for it. Anyway - yeah, better than I feared and actually quite a fun bit of otherwise disregarded 80s in a virtually untouched time capsule.

One of the most baffling albums so far. The production is wild - so many very 80s touches that individually I would find annoying but there’s just so much going in that it goes full circle to being really fun. Drum Talk sounds like the fucked up lovechild of Paul Simon, Phil Collins and Afrika Bambaataa, and I am loathe to report that Bogart actually slaps - and the production choices somehow get even weirder from there, with the absolute banger Gone To Pieces and then the frankly ludicrous panning on Shame on You Some of the vocal lines are quite strange for such commercially driven pop music and some of Kershaw’s line deliveries are quite strange for an English singer - I honestly thought he was Swedish or something I don’t really know what to make of this. I don’t think it was good, and a lot of it just confused me - but god damn it, it made me feel something. And at the end of the day isn’t that what music is all about?

Good hit singles, but not such a good overall LP. A bit too experimental with those achingly 1980s synth sounds, perhaps.

A rare New Wave LP that took me by surprise - was never really sure where this one was going, and the constantly-evolving rhythms and off-kilter instrumentation felt surprisingly distinct for an album in this genre. Some slower, standard takes of the time towards the back half drag a little, but overall this was a solid and pretty entertaining listen.

Typical 80s sound. And this album has 2 songs I knew, but would never been able to name the artist

I thought this was actually pretty wierd for what was apparently a successful pop album. New wave adjacent but kind of its own thing. I liked it OK, it was a good workout jam, but a little too far on the soft side for me and certainly dated.

It's alright, seems like pretty standard mid-80s fare to me. 3 stars.

if you look up 'the 80's' on Wikipedia, I think it might redirect you to Nik Kershaw's page. I think this ticks all the boxes on what the 80's sounded like musically. Quite a good vocalist, some catchy hit singles I remember from back then, and also a little bit of an edge here and there. Not all that bad actually.

Tough one. The bangers don't outweigh the 80's blandness

Decent 80s pop. Wouldn't It Be Good is a banger. Rating: 2.5 Playlist track: Wouldn't It Be Good Date listened: 14/10/24

Better than I expected, but I have an instinctive aversion to 80s production!

Snooze

There's a lot of similar stuff in the book that I didn't enjoy as much as this. I don't love it but it was a pretty good listen.

It does surprise me that someone would submit this... didn't you get enough 80s new wave from the original list? Like maybe if this was doing something really interesting or unique I could see but this just sounds like every other new wave album that exists. Nothing interesting or unique. Just that boring 80s sound that has aged so poorly. I wish the user submitted albums would also have a blurb submitted by the user to explain their thought process behind submitting their album. I just struggle to see why this was done. My personal rating 2.5/5 My rating relative to the original list: 2.5/5 Should this have been included on the original list? Absolutely not. There was more than enough generic bland 80s new wave / pop and this is just another one to add to the pile.

Is there anyone my age who doesn't love Wouldn't It Be Good?

A forgettable and bland 80s pop staple, like plenty of others that did make it into the book! Absolutely not what I would choose to listen to, but clearly not terrible; just not for me.

Some very danceable grooves. Seems like it would be a great love show

This sounded both ultra 80s with all the synths and new wave stuff and 90s dance but most importantly it sounded incredibly British.

The truth is that it's an album that bored me, I couldn't get any emotion out of it. At the beginning I had expectations, but track by track they faded away. I felt like one of those artists from the eighties who arrived one day and faded away in the face of the consolidated successes of the time.

The best thing about this album is that it made me remember the Riddle. 2 The fucking chipmunks in gone to pieces lmao

We could’ve left this in 1984 where it was

Doesn't have much going for it

I think maybe my brother had this album when it came out, but that I didn't particularly connect with it. That hasn't really changed as I come back to it today. It's an odd little album, a bit of a hodgepodge of quirky synth-forward songs that are very much of their time. The singles are solid enough, but it's nothing I care to revisit. Fave Songs: Wouldn't It Be Good, Bogart, I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Human Racing

Pop, new wave, synth-pop, pop rock. Rollo. Un 2.

"Wouldn't It Be Good" if all of the album was of the same quality as that song and "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down on Me"...

More painfully average 80s music with one big hit and a whole bunch of nothing. Sorry, not a fan in the slightest.

I find it hard to believe that someone listened to the 1001+ albums, then thought "You know what's missing? That Nik Kershaw album!"

A very average 80’s album, I thought they were enough of those on the original list.

There's a couple of classics on here and then some other stuff... Sorry Nik

80s synth landfill hardly worthy of comment.

Wouldn't it be Good was one of my favorite 80's eras one hit wonder tracks. Just a great pop song. Unfortunately i can't imagine why anyone would think this album needs to be on the list. The rest of the album is now what i would ascribe to being the north star of music that doesn't age well. This is just dreck now. I can't imagine this would have been good in 1983, but it hurts my soul listening to it today. I was very thankful when it ended.

1 star. Not because it is terrible. It just doesn’t belong on this list. A couple of pop hits does not an album make. Ironically I was a fan back in the day! My brother once called me out for wearing my runners untied a la Nic K. Highly embarrassing.

Not so sure choosing "guilty pleasures" for this list is really reasonable, you know. Especially when the original list misses so many essential albums in most genres. In that realm of blatantly commercial pop, I could have chosen quite a few records myself -- like that late seventies LP by Duncan Browne, along with albums released by Mike Oldfield during the eighties, Enigma during the early nineties, or even Dua Lipa these days. And then I would expect the 1/5 and 2/5 grades to pile up, of course. Guess that user doesn't take themself too seriously at least. Good for them. Kind of liked the opening song about "dancing girls", not so far from The Human League in their *Dare*-era artistic apex. And I also enjoyed second track "Wouldn't It Be Good", that I had indeed heard somewhere before -- which proves it is somewhat memorable, I imagine... Unfortunately, as soon as "Drum Talk" surged on my headphones, this thing became absolutely ridiculous. Sprinkling some "experimental" flourishes and rather imaginative baroque arrangements here and there can't possibly redeem how hackneyed the compositions, songwriting and production are throughout this LP. The second half of the first side is close to appalling. The vocal performance is even a little weak at times, and during those weak moments, it manages to be more grating than the gated drum sound -- which is, honestly, quite a feat. Oh, and the horns are *especially* annoying. The joke is gonna fly over the head of most English-speaking listeners, but I'm now waiting for a French citizen to add La Compagnie Créole to this list... The first half of the second side fares a little better, surprisingly. "Shame On You", "Cloak And Dagger" and "Faces" explore more ambiguous and evocative synth tones at least. But that ephemeral relief is then instantly erased by how utterly TERRIBLE the last two cuts are. "I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" is cringe-inducing cheesefest garbage dross, and "Human Racing" sounds like a parody of Stevie Wonder in his worst eighties moments (instead of his best seventies works). Whenever I witness someone praising that sort of ridiculous eighties record, I sort of expect them to rant about those albums' "artistry" the way Patrick Bateman does in *American Psycho*. Which is both hilarious and terrifying. Here's me hoping that this particular user isn't secretly a serial killer. Given that I sense some welcome humor in their own review, I cross my fingers that my own rant is gonna make that person laugh. Hopefully. Just to save my skin, let me just add that technically, I'm rating this thing higher than *Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino* by Arctic Monkeys. At least, I'm feeling something listening to Nik Kershaw -- it might not be very positive emotions, but it's better than my near-total absence of emotional response whenever I listen to Alex Turner self-fellating. Yet seriously, and for once, I can't round up my 1.5/5 grade to a 2/5 one, the way I usually do when I hesitate between two scores. Because let's face it, this choice of an "album to listen to before you die" is damn weird in my book. Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 3 Albums from the users list I *might* include in mine later on: 6 Albums from the users list I won't include in mine: 7 (including this one)