November 3rd
album anniversaries

Super Trouper’s cover was planned for Piccadilly Circus. When permission for central London was refused, designer Rune Söderqvist invited performers from two local circuses to Europa Film Studios in Stockholm instead.

The songs inside are more grown-up than that picture suggests. “The Winner Takes It All” explored the previous year’s divorce of Björn and Agnetha, while the members’ lives in Stockholm high society coloured the lyrics of “On and On and On”. “Lay All Your Love on Me” brings an electro-dance pulse. Recorded at Polar Studios between February and October 1980, it became the UK’s best-selling album that year.

Wim Wenders filmed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds playing “The Carny” for Wings of Desire, a year after the song appeared here. The album was recorded in July and August 1986 at Hansa Tonstudio in West Berlin and Strongroom in London, with Flood and Tony Cohen producing.

It first came out as a double EP, opening with “Sad Waters”. Mick Harvey, Blixa Bargeld and Thomas Wydler were joined by Barry Adamson on some bass parts, his last album with the band until 2013. Cave later called it his favourite of their records, and it topped the UK Independent Albums Chart.

“Too Good at Goodbyes” opened the campaign for The Thrill of It All, topping the UK singles chart before the album arrived. Sam Smith made the record at RAK Studios in London, with Jimmy Napes and Steve Fitzmaurice as executive producers and Fitzmaurice mixing every track.

The standard edition is brief, ten songs in about 35 minutes. Timbaland is among the producers on “Pray”, and Yebba joins Smith on “No Peace”. “One Last Song” was released as a single on the same day as the album, which went to number one on both the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200.

“Capel Celyn” takes its name from the Gwynedd community that was deliberately flooded in 1965 to make a reservoir, and most of the other titles on Phantom Brickworks also name places in Britain. Stephen Wilkinson built the pieces over more than ten years with a microphone and a loop pedal, using short loops of piano, synthesiser and guitar alongside tape hiss and field recordings.

It was Bibio’s first entirely ambient release, issued by Warp. Wilkinson described the music as a mental portal into real and imagined settings, shaped by the idea that places can be haunted by meaning. The title piece returns in three parts across the sequence, while “Capel Bethania” recalls a chapel in Aberdare demolished in 1991.

Ricky Myers makes his album debut as Suffocation’s vocalist on Hymns from the Apocrypha. The group recorded it over roughly a month and a half at InLine Studio on Long Island, run by two of its own members, with Christian Donaldson co-producing and then returning to mix and master.

“Seraphim Enslavement” arrived first in September, and “Perpetual Deception” followed in October. The closing “Ignorant Deprivation” is a re-recording of a song from Breeding the Spawn, with Frank Mullen as a guest vocalist. The nine songs run to a tight 41 minutes, opening with the title track.

“Seven”, with Latto, arrived in July 2023 as the first single from Golden, followed in September by “3D” with Jack Harlow. Jungkook made this English-language solo debut during the BTS hiatus, with Andrew Watt and Cirkut among the producers, Ed Sheeran among the writers of “Yes or No” and Shawn Mendes among those of “Hate You”.

The title borrows his nickname as the “golden maknae”, the youngest member of BTS. “Standing Next to You” was issued as a single on the day of release, and the album entered the Billboard 200 at number two and the UK chart at number three, the highest UK placing for an album by a Korean solo artist.