National Album Day 2020 celebrates Eighties theme with announcement of additional ambassadors & album releases

As previously announced last month, National Album Day will return for its third edition on Saturday 10 October - and today reveals a second wave of artist ambassadors who will be championing their love for the album between now and the day itself.

Joining the already announced Billy Ocean, Blossoms, La Roux, Psychedelic Furs and Toyah Willcox are T’Pau vocalist and musician Carol Decker, DJ, producer and founder of Soul II Soul Jazzie B, ABC founder and frontman Martin Fry, iconic pop father and daughter Kim & Marty Wilde, and country-pop twin sisters Ward Thomas - who will be marking National Album Day and the release of their brand new album Invitation with an exclusive global live stream headline performance from London's historic Theatre Royal Haymarket on 10th October, featuring a cover of an 80s song in keeping with the theme!

Carol Decker, one of the archetypal female pop voices of the 80s said: “I know that streaming is really easy & convenient, and I too like to quickly dip into a single I just heard on the radio, but when an artist puts an album together they are creating a narrative for their work. In my songs I am often curating my personal thoughts & dreams and laying them out for you to inspect. I labour over the track listing, making sure one song hands over smoothly to the next. I take you on a journey of different tempos and emotions. It is a very raw feeling to let your baby go after months in the studio and see if it makes any friends. I am proud to have been a small part of the most diversely creative era in music and hear its influence on emerging artists. I am honoured to support National Album Day.”

Jazzie B, who, as the frontman of Soul II Soul was behind one of the 80s most enduring R&B songs of the era, ‘Back to Life’, said: “I’ve always loved albums. A good album tells an entire story instead of just giving you a chapter, taking the listener through a series of emotions. To me, getting an album’s track sequencing right to make that story as smooth as possible was one of the most exciting parts of the recording process – similar to when I'm playing (DJ-ing) the Soul2Soul sound system and spinning tunes in a certain order to take the crowd up and down almost without them realising it.” 

Kim Wilde, who reigned the pop charts in the 80s with hit albums and singles including ‘Kids in America’, and her father Marty Wilde, the legendary rock ‘n roll songwriter who wrote a lot of her iconic songs, and who is set to release a brand new album ahead of National Album Day, together commented, ‘An album can be a ticket for the greatest journey that lasts a lifetime!’

Martin Fry, an English music icon of the 1980s and lead singer of ABC, said: "Growing up listening to everything from Bowie to the Buzzcocks there were albums released that, hand on heart, saved my life.”

Ward Thomas, whose second studio album became the first album by a UK country act to reach Number 1 on the UK Albums Chart said: “Albums are so important to us because they are a perfect time capsule showing where a specific artist is at a specific time. By listening to an album in full you can really get to know an artist. There really isn’t anything else that can do that.”

“This year's National Album Day is celebrating the 80s!! Music from the 80s has shaped so many genres of music to this day and personally we loved albums like ‘Graceland’ by Paul Simon. The decade had so many exciting musical cultures blended into one and it inspired us to create music with an open mind. It made us approach music in a way that is never genre specific. Album’s such as ‘Graceland’, ‘New Jersey’ by Bon Jovi, ‘Purple Rain’ by Prince are big albums for us! The musicianship is just unreal and the messages in so much of the songwriting were very philosophical. A lot of music from the 80s has inspired the way we create music now!"

This year’s 80s themed National Album Day creates the perfect opportunity to revisit some of the decade's greatest artists, and on Friday 9th October an exciting array of reissues, limited vinyl and box sets will be available as part of the National Album Day celebrations including Sade ‘This Far’ - a six album vinyl box set featuring all of their studio albums to date, a 40th anniversary picture vinyl of Iron Maiden’s debut album, 12” vinyl releases from Bonnie Tyler and Marillion, coloured vinyl releases from Phil Collins, Cyndi Lauper, Europe and Meat Loaf, and picture discs for the iconic film soundtracks for 80s cinema hits Top Gun and Footloose.

Full product list to date below, with even more confirmed titles to come.

ALREADY ANNOUNCED:

A new "Must See Movies 80s" video promotion is also confirmed to celebrate this year's National Album Day with supermarkets and retailers including Asda, Morrisons, Amazon, HMV and Tesco stocking a range of classic 80s film titles including Big, Blade Runner, Cocktail, Dirty Dancing, ET, Ghost, Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Labyrinth, The Lost Boys, Purple Rain, Robocop, Stand By Me, Top Gun and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

National Album Day is organised jointly by record labels body the BPI (The BRIT Awards and Hyundai Mercury Prize) and the Entertainment Retailers Association (Record Store Day), and is supported across the BBC with highlights available to listen to on BBC Sounds, along with the UK’s recorded music industry including AIM and other trade associations, retailers and digital/streaming platforms, and partners including Classic Albums Sunday – who this October celebrate their tenth anniversary.

Watch out for more exciting announcements for National Album Day over the coming weeks!

With the album already at the fore of the UK music calendar, following the shortlist announcement of the 2020 Hyundai Mercury Prize ‘Albums of the Year’ and in anticipation of the forthcoming Record Store Day Drops, National Album Day creates another opportunity to engage with the much-loved format.  Based on Official Charts data 154 million albums or their equivalent were purchased, downloaded or streamed in 2019 – up 7.7 per cent on the previous year, and even during the first six months of a Covid-hit 2020, album equivalent sales have risen by 6.8 per cent. The format does particularly well on vinyl – with over 4.3 million LP sales in 2019 following 12 years of consecutive growth – and even the humble cassette, the quintessential 80s format, is now finding favour again, with over 130,000 projected sales for this year – the highest sales since 2003.

In the past two years, National Album Day has been supported by a diverse range of artists and musicians including Lewis Capaldi, Mark Ronson, Elbow, Paloma Faith, Alice Cooper, Novelist, Tom Odell, Mahalia and Orbital among many others, and has hosted a variety of events and activities including Classic Album Sunday and Tape Notes events, in-store artist appearances, record store promotions, and two Network Rail exhibitions in major cities across the UK.

Keep track of the National Album Day website for more news, events and exclusive Album Day activities to be announced in the coming weeks. Much more to come!