The following lists the top 40 (end of decade) charting albums on the Australian Album Charts, for the 1980s. These were the best charting albums in Australia for the 1980s. The source for this decade is the "Kent Music Report", known from 1987 onwards as the "Australian Music Report".
| # | Title | Artist | Highest pos. reached | Date Reached |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Whispering Jack" | John Farnham | 1 | Nov 1986 |
| 2. | "Brothers in Arms" | Dire Straits | 1 | May 1985 |
| 3. | "Thriller" | Michael Jackson | 1 | Jun 1983 |
| 4. | "Born in the USA" | Bruce Springsteen | 1 | Oct 1984 |
| 5. | "Whitney Houston" | Whitney Houston | 1 | Jun 1986 |
| 6. | "Can't Slow Down" | Lionel Richie | 1 | Jun 1984 |
| 7. | "Too Low for Zero" | Elton John | 2 | Aug 1983 |
| 8. | "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" | Midnight Oil | 3 | Dec 1982 |
| 9. | "Business As Usual" | Men At Work | 1 | Dec 1981 |
| 10. | "Kick" | INXS | 1 | Oct 1988 |
| 11. | "Graceland" | Paul Simon | 1 | Oct 1986 |
| 12. | "An Innocent Man" | Billy Joel | 3 | Nov 1983 |
| 13. | "Revenge" | Eurythmics | 2 | Aug 1986 |
| 14. | "Crowded House" | Crowded House | 1 | Jun 1987 |
| 15. | "Love Over Gold" | Dire Straits | 1 | Oct 1982 |
| 16. | "Colour By Numbers" | Culture Club | 1 | Oct 1983 |
| 17. | "No Jacket Required" | Phil Collins | 1 | May 1985 |
| 18. | "Like a Virgin" | Madonna | 2 | Jan 1985 |
| 19. | "The Swing" | INXS | 1 | Apr 1984 |
| 20. | "The Joshua Tree" | U2 | 3 | Mar 1987 |
| 21. | "Little Creatures" | Talking Heads | 2 | Aug 1985 |
| 22. | "Back in Black" | AC/DC | 1 | Mar 1981 |
| 23. | "Man of Colours" | Icehouse | 1 | Oct 1987 |
| 24. | "For The Working Class Man" | Jimmy Barnes | 1 | Dec 1985 |
| 25. | "Slippery When Wet" | Bon Jovi | 1 | Jul 1987 |
| 26. | "The Lonesome Jubilee" | John Cougar Mellencamp | 2 | May 1988 |
| 27. | "She's So Unusual" | Cyndi Lauper | 3 | Feb 1985 |
| 28. | "East" | Cold Chisel | 2 | Jun 1980 |
| 29. | "The Wall" | Pink Floyd | 1 | Mar 1980 |
| 30. | "Tracy Chapman" | Tracy Chapman | 3 | Jun 1988 |
| 31. | "Chariots of Fire" | Vangelis | 5 | May 1982 |
| 32. | " The Dream Of The Blue Turtles" | Sting | 1 | Apr 1986 |
| 33. | "Tango In The Night" | Fleetwood Mac | 5 | Nov 1987 |
| 34. | "Scarecrow" | John Cougar Mellencamp | 2 | Jul 1986 |
| 35. | "Sirocco" | Australian Crawl | 1 | Aug 1981 |
| 36. | "True Blue" | Madonna | 1 | Aug 1986 |
| 37. | "Dirty Dancing" | Motion Picture Soundtrack | 1 | Oct 1986 |
| 38. | "...ISH" | 1927 | 1 | May 1989 |
| 39. | "Invisible Touch" | Genesis | 1 | Jul 1986 |
| 40. | "Volume One" | Traveling Wilburys | 1 | Feb 1989 |
These charts are calculated by David Kent of the Kent Music Report and they are based on the number of weeks and position the records reach within the top 100 singles for each week.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, top and/or australia:
“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Lastly, his tomb
Shall list and founder in the troughs of grass
And none shall speak his name.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn’t just ours—it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can’t beat it.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)
“It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.”
—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)