Once upon a time, two to three singles were considered the max when it came to how many could come from a single album. The 80s blew those rules to smithereens, and artists went deeper and deeper into their albums to mine hits.
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There are many albums we could have listed here. But we chose these four pop-rock classics because they just seemed like they were inexhaustible sources of hits.
‘Born In The U.S.A.’ by Bruce Springsteen
This one was a real eye-opener. Springsteen’s previous output had been somewhat underwhelming when it came to singles success. Six albums into his career, The Boss had managed just four Top 40 hits. That included just a single Top 10 (“Hungry Heart” in 1980). Producer Jon Landau helped convince Springsteen to lean into the commercial material that he had amassed in the several years it took to make Born In The U.S.A. That included keeping songs like “Cover Me” that Springsteen initially thought were too slight. “Dancing In The Dark” opened the floodgates, and the hits just kept on coming. When all was said and done, the album had produced a stunning seven Top 10 hits.
‘Reckless’ by Bryan Adams
Adams had started the ball rolling with the three Top 25 hits that emanated from his 1983 album Cuts Like A Knife. But that barely scratched the surface when it came to what he delivered with Reckless. Canadian artists typically didn’t do this kind of damage on American charts. He started the momentum with the lead single “Run To You”. Adams wisely saved his big ballad for the third single. That song, “Heaven”, went out and soared to the top of the charts. Incredibly, “Summer Of ‘69”, which went on to become perhaps his most beloved song, was only the fourth single on the record. And let’s not forget about the Tina Turner duet “It’s Only Love” that made it six singles from the LP that reached the US Top 15.
‘Scarecrow’ by John Mellencamp
Mellencamp found a sweet spot on the Scarecrow album between commercial concerns and artistic advancement. Remember that this was a guy who was positioned by his record label as a pop star early in his career, a stance that always made him squirm. What he discovered is that the more he concentrated on solid songwriting, the more the audience came with him. That explains how he was able to hit the Top 25 with a song as scorchingly topical as “Rain On The Scarecrow”. Interestingly enough, it feels like Scarecrow could have scored even more than the five Top 40 hits it earned had the label pushed songs like “Minutes To Memories” and “Justice And Independence ’85” even harder. Still, five Top 40 hits are nothing to sneeze at.
‘Fore!’ by Huey Lewis & The News
Let’s take a second to appreciate just what Huey Lewis accomplished over an incredible five-year stretch in the 80s. We could have highlighted Sports on this list, since the 1983 album spun out five Top 20 hits, four of which made it to the Top 10. In the break between albums, Lewis and the News delivered “The Power Of Love”, the soundtrack song that gave them their first ever No. 1. With the whole world waiting, they came back with Fore! and went even bigger. This time, all five singles went to the Top 10, including a pair of chart-toppers in “Stuck With You” and “Jacob’s Ladder”. And they did it all without trying to ride the coattails of any trendy sounds or straying from their R&B-based approach to pop-rock music.
Photo by David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty Images
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