"Hats" by The Blue Nile
80s Week continues with an exquisite album that not enough people know about.
Programming note: It’s 80s week! I'm spotlighting some of my favorite records released between 1980 and 1989. Like previous decade-themed newsletter posts, I've selected albums that cover multiple genres and deliberately avoided the well-worn titles that top all "best of" lists for this decade. In other words, no Thriller, Purple Rain, and so on.
Hope you enjoy it!
Hello! 😊👋
Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!
Today's 80s music pick is one of the best albums not enough people have heard of—a lush impressionist painting in music form.
Genre: Rock, Pop
Label: A&M
Release Date: October 16, 1989
Vibe: 😍
Some records grab you by the collar from the second they begin, while others are a much slower burn, pulling you inch by inch, moment by moment, until you're not quite sure where the soundscape ends and the natural world begins. Hats, the exquisite 1989 album from The Blue Nile, is a work that falls into the latter category, full of precise craftsmanship that conjures up vivid pictures of neon-soaked city streets on nights where unabashed romance or unrelenting loneliness seem equally plausible. Shimmering synths and horns swirl around frontman Paul Buchanan's voice like traces of smoke off a late-night cigarette, sounding lush and cold simultaneously. It's an album about love that's at times so uncertain and timid that it comes closest to capturing the feeling many of us have felt, but few can put it into words. Teetering on the edge of total vulnerability, it lives in the moment either right before you confess your emotions or bottle them up inside.
Buchanan's lyrics communicate a heartfelt longing that becomes the glue holding the atmospherics together. On standout “The Downtown Lights,” he confesses, “Sometimes I walk away/When all I really wanna do is love and hold you right/There is just one thing I can say/Nobody loves you this way.” Self-confident or cripplingly self-conscious? Or both? Later, on "Let's Go Out Tonight,” Buchanan drops what could be considered the album's mission statement: “I pray for love coming out alright.” It's a statement that, like the previous one, can be taken as either hopeful or doomed, depending on your headspace. That kind of moody mystery is a quality that lives on in many pop and adult contemporary records today, stubbornly refusing to direct your emotions to a convenient destination. Instead, like all great art, you're meant to sit with this album and internalize it. Confide in it. Lay your secrets on top of the ones it may never fully reveal to you.
👉 Don't forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈