Now Yearbooks 80-84 "The Final Chapter"

The business of welcoming in the New Year and seeing the old out is very much over with all the fireworks being set off.

This takes back to where we were last year with the Now Yearbooks  where after late last years Now Yearbook 1985 had been issued that we reviewed, a surprising series of announcements were made of which we'll keep to the one that's most relevant.

We were informed this series, started in 2021 by Now in conjunction with Sony Music had performed better sales wise than they had anticipated and that they felt they could issue a special edition  - "The Final Chapter" - that rounded up a further batch of hits and some much talked about minor hits of merit covering the initial batch of five Yearbook releases from 1980 right the way through to 1984 when by the end of the next year musical tastes had substancially changed.

As with the previous offerings of the main edition this came out in book form with forward, quiz and background capsule notes, a plain jane card mount cd set or a special 3 lp set edition.

That was one of the presents I had for Christmas so I didn't get to talk about until now.

Some artists just aren't represented such as David Bowie which means Fashion, Scary Monsters, Let's Dance, Blue Jean et all are all missing which is a great pity.

Each disc covers the whole period so for instance across this set, Rock is represented by the utterly brilliant Human Touch by Rick Springfield, Robert Wyatt, Chicago with Hard Habit To Break from their 17 album, Modern Girl by Meat Loaf and Run To The Hills by Heavy Metal legends Iron Maiden.

The early eighties were very much the era of the New Romantics who are very well represented on this cd by Blancmange with 1982's Living On The Ceiling, We are Glass by Gary Numan, Talk Talk, the first single by Talk Talk, Cantonese Boy by Japan and Hang On Now by Kajagoogoo.

It also was a fantastic era for Soul music so Shalamars' Friends from from that years best selling album by them, Love Is In Control by Donna  Summer, Intuition by Linx, Treat Her Like A Lady by the Temptations, Forget Me Nots by Patrice Rushen and Running With The Night by Lionel Richie

Ska with Reggae is well represented by Nelson Mandela by the Specials, Grey Day by Madness , So Lonely by the Police and Our Lips Are Sealed by the Fun Boy Three.

While it was a bit odd this was released, what is contained between the pages is fantastic selection of songs from the early 80's served up well.

In January the legendary Extra set was issued adding a further 63 tracks spread across the period less the major hits but memorable hits nontheless.