Recording

Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops
Cocteau Twins

Independently chosen for2 of our lists. Here is what each of them said.

Released

1984

Label

4AD

On

Dream Pop and The Eighties

Updated

2026-08-29

1. 02

   Ranked No. 2 in Dream Pop

   Fraser singing words that are mostly not words, over a guitar tuned to something like happiness. Meaning is carried entirely by timbre, and it works better than most lyrics do.

2. ·

   Picked by The Eighties

   4AD was Ivo Watts-Russell's shop-front operation and it let a band invent a vocabulary — no lyrics anyone can transcribe, a guitar treated as weather. No A&R department in 1984 would have commissioned this and none had to.