One common refrain among rock historians is that 1986 is the worst year in rock'n'roll history. The idea behind this being that it was a year when cheesy synth-driven music ruled the airwaves, and many beloved artists of the 60s and 70s were churning out some of the worst music of their career. The second part is definitely true, as this was the year of such highly questionable albums as Bob Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded, The Rolling Stones' Dirty Work, Neil Young's Landing On Water, and Paul McCartney's Press Play. I may be forgetting a few, but you get the idea. It was a time when rock royalty was routinely embarrassing itself.
But the people who look at 1986 as a bad year for music are missing the complete picture. There were tons of great albums released that year. Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel both released albums that rank among their finest work, with Graceland and So. It was also a great year for rap, as Raising Hell, and License To Ill showed that the genre was rapidly evolving.
Beyond that, 1986 was the best year for two important 80s genres: college rock and thrash metal. The former saw The Smiths and XTC release their masterpieces, with Skylarking and The Queen Is Dead, while R.E.M. inched ever closer into the mainstream consciousness with Life's Rich Pageant. Simply, there was no better time to be a college radio DJ than 1986. As someone who was one in 2011, I'm extremely jealous of anyone who held the position 25 years prior.
Meanwhile, three of thrash metal's Big 4 (Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax, in case you didn't know) released essential albums that year. Metallica released Master Of Puppets, which may be their finest hour, and was certainly their most fully realized album up to that point. Meanwhile, Dave Mustaine proved that he and Megadeth were as heavy as anyone else when they dropped Peace Sells...But Who's Buying. Finally, Slayer, the most terrifyingly evil band of them all, unleashed Reign In Blood, which may be the quintessential thrash album. There was never a better time for headbanging than 86.
Finally, we can't leave out Elvis Costello, who managed to release two of his most brilliant albums with King Of America and Blood And Chocolate. It's a testament to Costello's songwriting skills that the two albums released in such short succession sound absolutely nothing like each other. King Of America is a polished, brilliantly produced record, often considered to have laid the foundation for alt-country, while Blood And Chocolate was a painfully raw record written as Costello was going through a bitter divorce. It gave us plenty of classics, most notably "I Want You," the most biter love song that Costello - and possibly anyone else - ever wrote.
So yeah, 1986 was a pretty great year for music after all. Yes, it was an odd coincidence that so many stalwarts stumbled into the worst work of their career, but the younger acts were on top of the game. If someone tells that 1986 was the worst year for rock'n'roll, they probably aren't thinking too far beyond the Beatles/Stones spectrum, and they shouldn't be taken too seriously.
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