Next up in the Eliminator is the second to last of friend Kellie’s proposed songs – 1998s’s Angel by Massive Attack. What a music video, by the way! And it’s up against nothing less than the 80s pop standard creator and pop genre groundbreaker and genre buster Our Lips are Sealed by the GoGos, currently #855. What a high quality showdown!
Here are the two youtubes:
This is a battle of relevance and currency. Yes, I know this Massive Attack song is 22 years old – how current and relevant can it be. Because my other favorite Massive Attack song (Teardrop) was beaten out by the better cover of Teardrop by The Eliminator favorite Aurora, there are no Massive Attack songs in the top 1000 currently. And that needs to be corrected. Angel never achieved much popularity or even critical notice, probably because it’s just kind of a really solid and uninteresting song from a critical perspective. But that baseline and vibe of this song is really quite a thing – this is an earworm for the ages. Once you get it in your head, you really can’t shake it.
Now the same can be said for Our Lips are Sealed. What a truly great 1980s song. “Hush my darlin don’t you cry.” as a vocal overlay and kind of refrain was really truly epic for 1981. You can just hear Madonna and the whole 80s pop movement coming in this groundbreaking song. It’s a classic, really, in its own way. This is no wilting flower of a song for purposes of The Eliminator. This song somehow only got to #20 on the US charts, but was much higher elsewhere in the world. I think the rest of the world knew what it was doing more than the US, which seems to be the case more and more today!
Angel goes in at a pretty high #305. This song is just a great listen and one you should be listening to today. Our Lips are Sealed is 40 years old today and it just doesn’t have that much to offer the modern listener at this point. But it is a classic foundational 80s pop song so look for it on those lists.
Want to learn more about the Eliminator? Or even propose a song? Here’s the links to what the eliminator is all about: the Spotify Playlist, the Youtube Playlist, the Google Sheets List, and the webpage.
