Artist	Song
Gang of Four	At Home He's a Tourist
The Fatback Band	King Tim III (Personality Jock)
Sugarhill Gang	Rapper's Delight
Blondie	Atomic
Donna Summer	Hot Stuff
Van Halen	Dance the Night Away
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers	Refugee
Electric Light Orchestra	Don't Bring Me Down
Madness	One Step Beyond
The Slits	Shoplifting
The Damned	Ballroom Blitz
U.K. Subs	I Live in a Car
Germs	Lexicon Devil
The Dickies	Nights In White Satin
Wire	The 15th
Can	Sunday Jam
Gary Numan	Films
Pink Floyd	Hey You
Rickie Lee Jones	Coolsville
The Clash	The Card Cheat
Neil Young	Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)

Comment:

As we hit the last year of a musically tumultuous decade we get to see an early preview of rock's upcoming '80s revolutions: a more arty side of punk with a "post-" tacked on the beginning (Wire, Gang of Four), the Eno-influenced synth swells of New Wave (Talking Heads, Gary Numan), the last gasp of disco as it prepares to go back underground in an attempt to reinvent itself (Donna Summer), the British-borne resurgence of ska (Madness), a more sludgy, feedback-laden approach to 'classic'-style rock that would eventually catch on amongst college bands (Neil Young), and some slickly produced yet still undeniably pop Top 40 (ELO, Tom Petty, Van Halen). But as important as all those musical shifts were, none of them would prove as radical as hip-hop. Depending on who you ask, the first hit single was delivered either by Fatback (who melded standard funk-style singing with King Tim's rap vocals) or the Sugarhill Gang (who scored big mere weeks later with the first all-rap hit "Rapper's Delight"). Of course, it was initially dismissed as a fad, just another attempt by disco to try and stay fresh- but little did anyone know what would happen in upcoming years...

UPDATE, 12-18-02: Among other changes, I removed the Fall track so I could make room for something from "The Wall". Please forgive me.

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