10 Nearly Perfect 1980s Rock Albums (+ the Songs That Must Go)

The 1980s gave us some truly iconic rock albums, but there are several that are just one song away from being truly perfect. Each of the albums selected in this exercise represents some of the biggest-selling rock records of the decade. That essentially means that fans were mostly on board with what they were hearing, and you can even see the results to some extent in the amount of rock radio hits each of these albums generated.

But an album is not solely the hits. It’s a full-fledged listening experience. The flow is key, and you also want to be sure not to go to the well too much or become too repetitive. While you can never have too many good songs, you do want to make sure it’s the optimal listening experience.

So what albums do we think are nearly perfect? You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone with much to gripe about where Guns N’ Roses‘ Appetite for Destruction is concerned. And what album had more hit songs than Def Leppard‘s Hysteria during the ’80s? Those are just a couple of examples. But do you know which songs you’d eliminate from those records if you could? And how would doing so make an already great album even better?

Join us as we take a closer look at several nearly perfect 1980s rock albums and figure out which songs need to go.