The 1980s
The record industry launched its "Home Taping Is Killing Music" campaign in 1980 - though record sales suggested otherwise.
In the UK, the decade's top-selling album was 'Brothers In Arms'; but worldwide success saw 1982's 'Thriller' go on to become the single best-selling album of all time - with current sales somewhere in the stratosphere of 54 million.
Level 42, Toto and Booker Newbury III featured on the first of a new series of LPs, 1983's 'Now That's What I Call Music...'
That same year, Sony, Phillips and Phonogram launched the Compact Disc format, and David Bowie bounced back. One week in July saw no less than ten Bowie albums in the charts - though it was Lionel Richie's 'Can't Slow Down' that won through as the top-selling album of 1983...
The Beatles' catalogue was made available on CD for the first time in 1987 and, two years later, sales of CDs overtook those of LPs for the first time......
Albums by the Police, George Michael, Madonna, Paul Young, Eurythmics, Sade and Prince provide the decade's soundtrack, while Paul Simon's ' Graceland ' (1986) introduced the concept of "world music" to a wider audience.
Compilation albums were excluded from the main chart in the final year of the decade; and 'The Stone Roses' - an album which would resonate well beyond the end of the eighties was released... By the end of the decade, an LP would set you back £6.99; a CD £10.99.
Patrick Humphries
