But apart from that, there was an ominous amount of bad news. Madonna topped the charts with her second album, for whatever that's worth. Singles charts were dominated by MTV-friendly acts like Culture Club, Duran Duran, and Wham!. Chaka Khan recorded her strongest-selling solo album to date, but Bonnie Pointer bombed trying to fabricate danceable synth-pop. k. d. lang debuted, but hadn't yet moved beyond country music. New Wave and punk were near death, and none of the established 60s or 70s rock acts came out with a truly great record. In fact, a lousy compilation of John Lennon out-takes was one of the biggest selling rock dinosaur albums, and living fossils from Ray Charles to Leonard Cohen embarassed themselves with new material. Basically, we were all stuck listening to stuff like Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A., his biggest-selling album ever... (JA)