COUNTDOWN: Top 50 Music Albums Of All-Time.

The first songs recorded for Rio were demo recordings of "Last Chance on the Stairway", "My Own Way", "New Religion", "Hungry Like the Wolf", and "Like an Angel", all recorded at EMI's Manchester Square studio in August 1981,along with demos of "The Chauffeur", "Save a Prayer", and "Lonely in Your Nightmare" recorded by engineer Bob Lamb at his home studio.

"My Own Way" was originally released as a single in November 1981, with "Like an Angel" as the B-side. The single version had a production influenced by disco and American R&B. It was re-recorded for the album with a significantly different arrangement and production.The rest of the album was recorded in the early months of 1982 at Air Studios in London with producer and engineer Colin Thurston.

The band experimented with different sounds to record the album. On the song "Lonely in Your Nightmare" John Taylor plays fretless bass to give the bass a more melodic sound. The ballad "Save a Prayer" was built around a delicate and complex sequencer track. "New Religion" has been described as containing "a rapping, schizophrenic Le Bon in conversation with a funky rhythm section". The intense "Hold Back the Rain" was edited down from the original almost ten minute recording. "The Chauffeur" is an all electronic piece created by Nick Rhodes with lyrics and vocals by Simon Le Bon.

The recording of the album also included the use of various sound effects such as tapes played in reverse (the opening of "Rio"), the sound of ice cubes dropped into a glass and excerpts from a BBC recording of nature sounds ("The Chauffeur").

In 2000, Rio was ranked #98 in Q magazine's "100 Greatest British Albums". In 2003, it was listed at #65 in the NME "100 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2004, CMJ ranked it as #1 in their "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1982". In 2008 it was ranked 24th best British album of all time in a joint HMV Q poll. It ranked #95 in Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, and is included in the list 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

In April 2013, Rio was voted number 3 in BBC Radio 2's Top 100 Favourite Albums of all time.

Three decades later, bassist John Taylor still held the album in high regard. "The writing on Rio is fantastic, all out. Essential Duran Duran," he recalled in his 2012 memoir, In the Pleasure Groove. He also had high praise for the band's musicianship. "Every one of us is performing ... at the absolute peak of our talents," he wrote. "There is no showboating. Every part is thoughtful, considered, part of a greater whole."

Deleted User wrote: »

It’s brilliant Reberetta- you’re so good for doing this- thank you so much-

I don’t know about other posters but I wouldn’t mind a slow down on the postings as we go from 20-1- give us time to digest- after all your hard work a bit of suspense and time to assimilate is very much fine with me especially if the top 10 were spread over next week - either way, you’re just brilliant so thanks again

The album's goal, set out by Lange, was to be a hard rock version of Michael Jackson's Thriller, in that every track was a potential hit single.Songs were therefore written with this concept in mind, disappointing heavy metal fans who clamoured for a straight sequel to Pyromania. One song, "Love Bites", was already mostly written in the vein of a country ballad by Mutt Lange when he brought it to the band's attention.

While Pyromania contained traces of Def Leppard's original traditional heavy metal sound found on their first two albums, Hysteria removed them in favour of the latest sonic technology available at the time (best displayed on "Rocket", "Love Bites", "Excitable", and "Gods of War"). As with Pyromania, every song was recorded by every member in the studio separately instead of the whole band. The multiple vocal harmonies were enhanced by Lange's techniques, even pitching background vocals on all tracks. Guitar parts were now focused more on emphasising melody than hard rock's more basic and clichéd riffs.

The band used the Rockman amplifier, developed by guitarist Tom Scholz from the rock band Boston, to record the album. Engineer Mike Shipley described the Rockman as "a ****ty little box" with "a godawful sound" that "had no real balls to it", but it was used because the other amplifiers used had an excessively "crunchy" sound ill-suited to layering guitars and which Lange did not think was "commercial" enough.

In addition, all of the album's drum sounds were samples recorded by Lange and the engineers, then played from the Fairlight CMI. In a 1999 interview with Mix Magazine, Shipley noted, "Pyromania was done the same way, on cheesy 8-bit Fairlight technology where we had to figure out how to record everything at half speed into the Fairlight to make it sound like it had some tone to it, and we'd be stacking up a bunch of snares and bass drums." Shipley also noted that the drum sounds were dealt with last because each song's structure could change so radically, and because of technical difficulties. This unique approach sometimes led to painstaking lengths of time in the recording studio.

The smash single, "Pour Some Sugar on Me", was the last song written but was quickly finished within two weeks. In sharp contrast, the final version of "Animal" took almost a full three years to be developed but was not as successful as other singles despite reaching number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Their best-seller to date, it sold in excess of 30 million copies globally and 12 million in North America, standing out as the "51st best-selling album ever in the states." Hysteria spent 96 weeks in the Top 40-a feat shared only by Born in the U.S.A.

Much of the album was written by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, whereas "You Give Love a Bad Name", "Livin' on a Prayer", "Without Love", and "I'd Die For You" were co-written with Desmond Child, and "Wild in the Streets" was by Bon Jovi alone. This was the first time Child worked with Jon and Richie. He came to New Jersey, where they worked on the four songs in Sambora's mother's basement.

Jon Bon Jovi explained, "I liked what Bryan Adams had done with Tina Turner so I suggested we do something similar: I write a song for someone like her, and then we do the song together. But that got changed, and our A&R guy came up with Desmond's name ... He hasn't tried to change what we are, but to refine it slightly; to suggest extra ways that we could wring a bit more out of what we had."

Jon Bon Jovi was initially reluctant to include "Livin' on a Prayer", believing it was not good enough. Guitarist Sambora convinced the singer it was a hit in the making, and so the band rerecorded it, releasing the second version on the album.

Slippery When Wet was met with mixed reviews. Writing in The Village Voice in September 1987, Robert Christgau said, "Sure seven million teenagers can be wrong, but their assent is not without a certain documentary satisfaction. Yes, it proves that youth rebellion is toothless enough to simulate and market. But who the hell thought youth was dangerous in the current vacuum? Would you have preferred the band market patriotism? And are you really immune to 'Livin' on a Prayer'?"

In 1990 in Rolling Stone, Jimmy Guterman thoroughly berated the band and the album. "Jon Bon Jovi and his band serve up condescending sentiment, reducing every emotional statement to a barefaced cliché – either because they think that's all their audience can comprehend or because that's all they can comprehend. On Slippery When Wet, Bon Jovi sounds like bad fourth-generation metal, a smudgy Xerox of Quiet Riot."

Nevertheless he album is ranked 44th in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of the Definitive 200 albums of all time and has sold over 28 million copies worldwide.