Since my wife bought me my first in iPod in 2003, my music listening patterns could a) be better described and b) highly focused on new music.

I looked at the average listens by decade to prove this out in more detail:

• 2010s:  18.39 minutes per song (965 hours spent listening to music in 2010s) – still too new, but will likely pass 2000s
• 2000s:  25.52 minutes per song (3882 hours spent listening to music in 2000s)
• 1990s:  17.43 minutes per song (1875 hours spent listening to music in 1990s) – impressive since all this music would be old at time of data collection
• 1980s:  9.19 minutes per song (149 hours spent listening to music in 1980s)
• 1970s:  8.87 minutes per song (42 hours spent listening to music in 1970s)
• 1960s:  9.64 minutes per song (32 hours spent listening to music in 1960s)

So, picking favorite albums from decades earlier than 1990s is highly influenced by what I still listen to (not necessarily what I loved at the time).   Anyway, I was curious what my favorite albums from the 80s were and here they are:

1.  REM’s Life Rich Pageant (Capitol Records) – 1986 – 8.302

2.  Shrimp Boat’s Speckly (Aum Fidelity) – 1989 – 8.259

3.  Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs (Island Records) – 1985 – 7.781

4.  REM’s Dead Letter Office (IRS Records) – 1987 – 7.864

5.  The Smiths’ Louder the Bombs (Sire Records) – 1987 – 7.775

6.  Pixies’ Doolittle (4AD) – 1989 – 7.774

7.  Pixies Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim (4AD) – 1988 – 7.530

8.  Camper Van Beethoven’s Telephone Free Landslide Victory (Cooking Vinyl) – 1985 – 7.522

9.  Fugazi’s 13 Songs (Dischord Records) – 1988 – 7.491

10.  The Minutemen’s Double Nickles on the Dime (SST) – 1989 – 7.479