I believe I can go ahead and make a pick now. I'm pretty much into classic 80's pop, which was simply the ultimate era in pop music. I went through everything I had from Madonna to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Police to Duran Duran. I can honestly stand up and say that this is as close to a perfect pop album I have ever heard. And it's made in Finland. Go figure.
The
7th round pick for team
Twist/Shout shall be
Nimeni on Dingo (My name is Dingo) by
Dingo (1984) in the
Pop category.
In the mid-80's Finland there was one band above all: Dingo. In a timespan of a couple of years they sold a ridiculous amount of albums, broke every type of record imaginable, caused so much teenage hysteria that nothing will ever come close again (quite comparable to the Beatlemania in many aspects) and somewhere between all that they managed to create some rather amazing pop-rock tunes. They had pretty much the perfect blend of glam-rock, eighties stadium pop and melancholy stories of love and loss, topped with a vocalist with a quite unique, emotional voice. (Many hated it though
)
You will be hard pressed to find a Finn over the age of six that doesn't know some of these songs. You will propably not find a single Finn between the ages of 30-40 that can't sing along to the biggest hits on this album.
These guys were great. Had it not been for the language barrier, I have no doubt they would've been an international megahit. (You might notice a similarity to Europe's Final Countdown, which came from Sweden a year after this album.)
Autiotalo (Desert House)
Sinä ja minä (You and Me)
Apinatarhaan (To the Monkey House)
Lähetyssaarnaaja (Missionary)
Levoton tuhkimo (Restless Cinderella)