If 1982’s 1999was Prince’s breakthrough, 1985’s Purple Rain cemented his superstar status. It also established his reputation as a flamboyant but androgynous sex symbol, particularly due to his sultry music video for the single When Doves Cry. The album was both controversial and widely acclaimed, having been called one of the most influential and skillful albums of all time. It was also seen as the work that established Prince’s signature style of over-the-top, musically complex performances. After a personnel shake-up in 1980 that left Oakey and Philip Adrian Wright the only surviving members of the original Human League (Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware went on to form the British Electric Foundation and then Heaven 17), the band was revamped with newcomers Ian Burden and Jo Callis on synthesizers and Joanne Catherall and Susanne Sulley on vocals. How does Newman feel now about Trouble in Paradise?"It's a pretty good batch of songs," he says. "There are things about it I love. Like the first half of 'Miami.' I like the two ballads, 'Real Emotional Girl' and 'Same Girl.' And 'My Life Is Good'— although if I had to do it again, I might not do it the same way. It might be funnier just with piano." Sting's record company initially questioned the wisdom of his musical expeditions on … Nothing Like the Sun."It wasn't simple enough or directed toward the charts," says Sting. "I said, 'Why underestimate the record-buying public?'" In fact, the album was a commercial success, spawning a hit single in the jaunty "We Will Be Together." Vandross booked time at AIR Studios, on Montserrat, in the West Indies, bringing with him the same musicians he'd used since Never Too Much, his 1981 debut — bassist and coproducer Marcus Miller, keyboardist and arranger Nat Adderley Jr., drummer Yogi Horton and guitarist Doc Powell. He also enlisted Billy Preston on organ and singers Cissy Houston, Alfa Anderson of Chic and Darlene Love.

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There was a lot of pressure on us," says keyboardist and band cofounder Dennis Drew. "If Tribe hadn't been successful, there never would have been another album." Of course, a literal reading of a songwriter as complex as Townshend can be deceptive, as in "Rough Boys" and "And I Moved" (written for Bette Midler), taken by some as confessions of homosexual lust. Townshend said, "A lot of gays and a lot of bisexuals wrote to me congratulating me on this so-called coming out. I think in both cases the images are very angry, aren't they? In 'Rough Boys,' the line 'Come over here, I want to bite and kiss you' is about 'I can scare you! I can frighten you! I can hurt all you macho individuals simply by coming up and pretending to be gay!' And that's what I really meant in that song, I think." Besides some heavy breathing, Smith made a unique contribution to "Wake Up.""If you really listen to the record," Smith says, "you'll hear somebody peeing in the toilet and flushing it. That was me!"Aside from some remixing and minor overdubbing, the tapes were virtually released as is. Brown helped Lovett select ten songs (the rest have appeared on subsequent albums) with an ear to country radio. Four made the C&W Top Twenty. Initially, Reed gave each member of the band a bare-bones demo of the songs for The Blue Mask, with Reed singing and strumming an electric guitar. There were no rehearsals as such before the band went into the studio in October 1981. According to Robert Quine, "We'd just go in every day and do at least one, maybe two songs. We'd start to play and the arrangement would take shape." Elektra suggested doing a familiar song as the lead single, resulting in a cover of Cat Stevens's "Peace Train." The gambit failed to break the group, and the song was later removed from the album after Stevens — a converted Muslim — called for the death of Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie. The Maniacs ultimately scored with their sadly lilting second single, "Like the Weather." It took two years for In My Tribe to go platinum, but even the band agrees it was better late than never.

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Making Movies was recorded in six weeks, but, Iovine says, "it basically happened on the first six days of the sessions. The right people were in the room together. It really was making a record in the pure sense of the term. The whole thing sounds like one song. But you know what that is? That's the writing, the guy who wrote it. He wrote the album like that; he wanted to make the album like that." When it came time to cut Scarecrow, the band members employed the lessons they learned from their Sixties studies. The idea, according to producer Don Gehman, was "to learn all these devices from the past and then use them in a new way with John's arrangements." Mellencamp would make comments like "I want this to be like an Animals record…. And I want the overall record to have this kind of a tone, like maybe it was a modern-day Dylan record." Indeed, Dylan himself hadn't been that bitingly topical in years. "You've gotta stand for somethin'/Or you're gonna fall for anything," Mellencamp sings, and on Scarecrow, he dug in and made a stand. Most radio stations were just as puzzled by the Nevilles' style, which didn't fit easily into any programming format. "We just couldn't get any airplay," says Dorn. "It was the kind of record where I wished I could have gone door-to-door and said, 'Here — listen to this record!'"It was bloody hard work," says Finn, "partly because it was all so new to me — new producer, new band, new record company, new town, new everything — that I was really cautious every step of the way. I was wary of what Mitchell was suggesting and second-guessing him, and he wasn't completely confident with us, either."