Hidden Gem Songs That Appeared On Mediocre '80s Albums

From a musical perspective, the 1980s were a decade of immense change. Technological advances brought about the synthesizer, which suddenly became a staple — heck, even Van Halen hopped aboard the synth train for "Jump." Meanwhile, rock splintered into various offshoots ranging from hair metal to new wave. Top-40 radio reflected this eclectic musical evolution, while the launch of MTV placed a new emphasis on how music artists looked, not just how they sounded. Hip-hop, still in its infancy, was growing in leaps and bounds, and would soon be entrenched within the musical mainstream.

Back in those halcyon days before streaming, fans had to trot down to their local record store to plunk down their cash for a vinyl LP, 8-track, cassette, or (eventually) CD, often based on the strength of a single that had been garnering radio play. That experience, however, could be a crapshoot. Sometimes an album was bursting with grade-A material, and other times the hit single was the only worthwhile song on the whole thing.

That wasn't a phenomenon unique to the 1980s. There were some hidden gem songs that appeared on mediocre '70s albums, and the same held true for the decades before and since. When looking back on the '80s, the five songs that we selected are undoubtedly standouts — songs that have remained ingrained in pop culture, still instantly recognizable from their first notes, even though they appeared on otherwise forgettable albums. 

Looking back at the tragic real-life story of The Who, it's clear that the death of drummer Keith Moon soon after the release of the 1978 album "Who Are You" took a toll. The band's follow-up, "Face Dances" (the first with new drummer Kenny Jones), boasted a few notable tracks ("You Better You Bet," "Another Tricky Day") but is mainly memorable for how unmemorable it was. The next, 1982's "It's Hard," was another bland collection of unremarkable songs — save for "Eminence Front."

The song kicks off with a slow electronic drumbeat before a repetitive synthesizer pattern joins in, with tentative guitar notes appearing. Finally, around the 35-second mark, Jones' powerful drumming arrives, followed by Pete Townshend's stabbing guitar lick. Suddenly, the musical tension that had been built was broken, and "Eminence Front" is off and running. Frontman Roger Daltrey sits this one out, with Townshend taking on lead vocals. Beyond the catchy hook, Townshend's lyrics are a scathing commentary on 1980s materialism, where "drinks flow" while people "forget they're hiding," encouraging listeners to "come on, join the party, dressed to kill." 

"I hesitate to try to explain what it was about. It's clearly about the absurdity of drug-fueled grandiosity, but whether I was pointing the finger at myself or at the cocaine dealers of Miami Beach is hard to recall," Townshend told Rolling Stone. "I hated it," Daltrey added, referring to the entire album. "I still hate it."

Opening with an unforgettable bass line (brazenly lifted by Vanilla Ice for "Ice Ice Baby"), "Under Pressure" is one of Queen's most durable hits. A collaboration with David Bowie, the song spent 16 weeks on Billboard's Hot 100, peaking at No. 29; in the U.K., however, "Under Pressure" hit No. 1 — the band's second time at the top of the British charts after previously achieving that status with "Bohemian Rhapsody." And why wouldn't it? With Mercury's soaring falsetto seamlessly blending with Bowie's baritone, the song is as catchy as it gets — thanks to John Deacon's incomparable bass.

Given that "Under Pressure" is the band's 11th-highest charting single in the U.S., it's easy to forget that it was part of the universally reviled "Hot Space" album. An experimental attempt to shift the band's sound in a more disco-like, electro-pop, synthesizer-heavy direction, the 1982 album saw the band chasing the success of the bass-driven, dance-friendly "Another One Bites the Dust," which had rocketed to No. 1 two years earlier.

While "Another One Bites the Dust" may have pushed the band in a different direction, it hadn't entirely alienated the band's core audience of teenage male rock fans; "Hot Space," on the other hand, decidedly did. (It speaks volumes that Michael Jackson has credited "Hot Space" as a major inspiration for the sound he was going for with his "Thriller" album.) Decades later, it's "Under Pressure" that fans remember, not the critically panned album from whence it came.

Mainstream commercial success had eluded David Bowie until the chameleon-like rocker set his mind on making the most radio-friendly album he could. The result was 1983's "Let's Dance," which sold more than 10 million copies to become his most successful album. Unfortunately, his 1984 follow-up, "Tonight," was a major disappointment that, ironically, wound up producing one of his highest-charting hits: "Blue Jean."

There was a reason for Bowie's creative malaise; the success of "Let's Dance" had kept him on the road for what had been his biggest and most successful tour to date. When his record label, EMI, demanded another album ASAP to cash in, he had little in the tank, and wrote just two new songs — "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean" — while the rest of the tracks were written by others.

"Blue Jean," though, was such a standout from the rest of the aimless and lackluster album that it exploded into the charts, making it to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it spent an impressive 18 weeks. It didn't hurt that Bowie had produced a 20-minute short film, "Jazzin' for Blue Jean," that was among the most ambitious music videos ever made. Despite the song's success, Bowie himself was somewhat dismissive of "Blue Jean." "'Blue Jean' is a piece of sexist rock 'n' roll," he said in a 1987 interview (via Rhino Records). "It's about picking up birds. It's not very cerebral, that piece."

During the course of his 60 years in music, Bob Dylan has recorded 40 studio albums. While several are considered masterpieces, many are decidedly not. Among Dylan's worst-reviewed albums is "Knocked Out Loaded," an odd collection of covers and forgettable originals. Yet hidden amidst all the dross — including a cover of Kris Kristofferson's "They Killed Him" and the tepid "Under Your Spell" (an unlikely collaboration with Carole Bayer Sager, writer of pop songs such as "A Groovy Kind of Love") — is "Brownsville Girl," an epic 11-minute contemplation on love gone bad, the passage of years, and the unreliability of memory.

Bursting with elements both cinematic and novelistic, "Brownsville Girl" is far from a typical Dylan tune. Co-written by actor and playwright Sam Shepard, the lyrics begin with the narrator's recollection of "this movie I seen one time" starring Gregory Peck. That evolves into a sprawling, evolving tale of multiple characters and shifting points of view, with the narrator wistfully declaring, "The memory of you keeps callin' after me like a rollin' train."

Structured less like a song than a sung poem, "Brownsville Girl" is an enigmatic and unusual addition to Dylan's catalog, yet despite its extreme length, it's utterly captivating until the end. "Working with Dylan is not like working with anybody else," Shepard reflected in a 2004 interview with the Village Voice. "All these characters started to pop into the story. Traveling around, visiting these characters, tracking people down."

Let's be honest: The '80s were not a great decade for the Rolling Stones, certainly from the perspective of the band's studio albums. After the triumph of 1981's "Tattoo You," the Stones plopped out what are considered to be their two worst albums: 1983's "Undercover" and 1986's "Dirty Work." 

Recorded at the peak of the intra-band battling between Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, both albums are a mishmash of half-baked ideas, slavish attempts to fit the Stones' sound into then-current musical trends, and a few obligatory Richards-sung reggae tracks. And while "Dirty Work" marked a particularly low point, the single "One Hit to the Body" demonstrated the band could still rock hard when push came to shove.

Some acoustic guitar strumming opens the track, which is immediately joined by Richards' slashing electric riff. Charlie Watts' drums arrive next, replete with that characteristically '80s gated sound popularized by Phil Collins in "In the Air Tonight" (and which now immediately dates a song from that era). What truly makes the song special, though, is the guitar solo, which comes from neither Richards nor fellow guitarist Ronnie Wood, but Led Zeppelin axeman Jimmy Page. According to Page, Wood — an old pal — had invited him to a session, and he wound up laying down that solo. "Keith sent me a magnum of champagne afterwards, which was very sporting," Page told Uncut.