4 Incredible 1982 Albums Whose Stature Has Grown With Time

You can’t tell if an album is a classic by the immediate reaction to it. Nor can you judge by how well it sells right off the bat. Time eventually reveals all, and the passing years will make it clear where an LP stands in terms of its legacy.

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These four albums, released in 1982, didn’t necessarily set the world on fire right off the bat. But these days, they’re widely recognized as towering pieces of work.

‘Shoot Out The Lights’ by Richard & Linda Thompson

Richard and Linda Thompson didn’t purposely set out to write an album about the end of their marriage. All of that kind of happened after the recording of Shoot Out The Lights. Still, it’s impossible to listen to this marvelous album without hearing the strains and stresses that tug at a longtime relationship. Even without listening to the lyrics, you can hear it in Linda’s voice, wounded yet resilient, and in Richard’s guitar, a whirlwind of bluesy licks and cathartic crescendos. When they’re harmonizing on the glorious closer “Wall Of Death”, you’ll believe that all the pain and sorrow was worth it. A fitting punctuation mark to their incredible work as a duo.

‘Tears Before Bedtime’ by Elvis Costello & The Attractions

You can tell that Elvis Costello didn’t love the way people responded to Imperial Bedroom by the way he followed it up. He hired trendy producers and went for hit singles on his next few albums (a move he later regretted). Imperial Bedroom might not have sold as well as previous Costello records. But the album now stands out as a masterwork, as some of his strongest songwriting meets up with The Attractions at their most versatile and bold production flourishes. Highlights are plentiful on this record. The opener “Beyond Belief” twitches and feints vibrantly, “Tears Before Bedtime” is a winning 60s soul pastiche, and “Man Out Of Time” might be Costello’s best song ever. And that’s really only the beginning.

‘Marshall Crenshaw’ by Marshall Crenshaw

You can look at Marshall Crenshaw’s entire career as being criminally underrated. To be fair, his self-titled debut performed better than any of his other releases in terms of its album charts’ position. Of course, that chart position was only No. 50, so it wasn’t exactly tearing it up. The album also contains the only Top 40 song of his career. But “Someday, Someway” only made it to a modest No. 36. Regardless of that tepid commercial success, you can look high and low through the Marshall Crenshaw album, and you’ll find nothing but ace songwriting and spirited performances. As a matter of fact, take a gander through Crenshaw’s entire recorded career, and that’s what you’ll consistently discover.

‘Peter Gabriel’ by Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel never did himself any favors in terms of his commercial prospects. The confusion caused by refusing to give his first four albums a title beyond his own name was the start. And a general willingness to go to weird places with his music, stuff that made it difficult to court radio, didn’t help. He’d finally play the game a bit with So in 1986, and the floodgates opened. His 1982 album, sometimes called Security to separate it from the others, was the last of that opening quartet. It included his first foray into the US pop charts with “Shock The Monkey”. Gabriel’s off-kilter rhythms and bold musical swings, evident throughout the record, might not be for the masses. But if you get on this album’s wavelength, you’ll be richly rewarded by his art-rock brilliance.

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