Best Simple Minds Album

We need to run it again and again until Empires & Dance wins.

I'm with you on that!

These results are odd, is Street Fighting really that good?

Ha, this is like when Belfast Child won the Simple Minds singles poll

Tbh Street Fighting years was the first SM album I bought as a frustrated tween and I loved it for sounding "alternative" - a couple of months later I heard The Cure's Disintegration and forgot all about that album

I'm never sure which one is the best, but TPL has endured Once Upon A Time, at long last: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/simple-minds-once-upon-time.html

I'm happy Street Fighting Years almost-won this poll. I discovered SM as a Duranie with 'Don't You' (of course) but wasn't taken by the subsequent singles to such degree as to buy OUAT. I hated the rockist, echo-laden sound of the live album. Then I heard the Belfast Child EP, bought the album and was transfixed. Lost them again with Real Life - I was disappointed with MacNeil leaving. I've never understood the widespread hate for SFY. Yes, it has one or two minor songs, but otherwise the album is glorious (title track and 'This Is Your Land' my fav tracks) and, to my ear, it doesn't sound pompous/overblown/whatever at all. Epic, yes (that's the point). Anyway, 1989 - what a crop year for 'adult pop' albums (Gabriel, Bush, Byrne, Sylvian's 'Pop Song' single..).

What a year for music in general!

how the fuck did street fighting years get so many votes in this poll

very weird, I suspect foul play

It's a great high end stereo demonstration disc, I suspect. Trevor Horn basically going "Well I've done a few huge rock albums in my time, sure why not."

What a Frankenstein's monster of an album:

The lack of equality and unity within the band's ranks soon became evident. Drummer Mel Gaynor was sidelined during the album sessions (apparently after disagreements with Trevor Horn) and was eventually demoted to session player status, with much of the drumming in the studio being performed by Manu Katché (from Peter Gabriel's band) and Stewart Copeland (ex-Police). Bass player John Giblin - who'd joined the band in 1985 for Once Upon a Time and played on the subsequent tours and the Live in the City of Light album - left the band during or immediately after the sessions, despite having made significant contributions to the album (including writing the ballad "Let It All Come Down"). The circumstances surrounding Giblin’s departure are undisclosed (although the band's previous bass player Derek Forbes has hinted that ultimately Giblin simply "didn’t fit in" with the band). Some of the bass guitar parts on the album were played by producer Stephen Lipson.

I do love Wikipedia sometimes. Because when you think Celtic/folk music, you think of fretless bass:

While still maintaining the epic arena rock sense of scale and drama which the band had developed since the mid-1980s, Street Fighting Years also moved away from the American soul and gospel influences of its predecessor in favour of soundtrack atmospherics and a new incorporation of acoustic and Celtic/folk music-related ingredients including fretless bass, slide guitar and accordion.

i can see someone liking it, maybe; but more people really like it than once up on a time?

In the UK, maybe.