I’m identifying the best three albums by my fifty favorite rock bands of all time. This blog is for, #18- The Alarm, an excellent alternative rock band from Wales.

Criteria for selecting the best three albums

First, Greatest Hits albums are allowed, You will not see one today even though this band has a good one. Second, no live albums. Third, I am including an honorable mention album for the top 25 bands.

The Alarm albums ranked by ChatGPT

Let’s see what artificial intelligence says about this list. According to ChatGPT here are the top three albums by The Alarm. Basically, their first three albums in a row. Those algorithms are getting pretty good. These are actually the right albums, although I prefer a different rank order.

1. Declaration (1984) – This debut album went gold in the UK and included some of their most popular songs, like “68 Guns.” It is often noted as one of their most critically acclaimed records.
2. Strength (1985) – Their second album was also successful, going gold in the UK, and features some of their best-known tracks, including the title track “Strength.”
3. Eye of the Hurricane (1987) – While it didn’t achieve the sales success of the previous albums, it had the hit single “Rain in the Summertime” and was generally well-received by critics.

Spotify popular releases for this band

I use another data source when pulling together these lists. I factor in the most popular albums on Spotify. Here are the top five most popular for The Alarm. It includes the three albums that ChatGPT identified. I will note that Spotify does have a little bit of a recency bias in their algorithm because their list includes the most recent release singled by this band. I don’t think it’s actually that popular. They’re just trying to drive traffic for that song.

The third-best album by this band is Eye of the Hurricane

The third-best album by this band is called Eye of the Hurricane. It is their third release. I own it on vinyl. It includes “Rain in the Summertime”, one of their more popular songs as well as “Shelter”, “Rescue Me” and “Presence of Love”. Eye of the Hurricane is an excellent album and a good starting point if you haven’t heard anything from this band before.

The second-best album by The Alarm

The second-best album by The Alarm is their excellent debut record called Declaration. This album includes some of their best-known songs such as “Marching On”, “Where were you Hiding When the Storm Broke”, “68 Guns” as well as “Blaze of Glory”. I recently bought the special release 30th Anniversary Edition which comes with an extra disc as well as liner notes. If you love this band I recommend you get that record. When you read the liner notes you’ll learn that the band did not like the way the album was mixed as well as how it was recorded.

Honorable mention album for this band

Here is the honorable mention album for The Alarm. They released Equals about five years ago. It’s impressive that Mike Peters continues to write and release music. Some of it’s actually pretty good. Equals contains several good songs like “Two Rivers” and “Beautiful”.

The best album by The Alarm

The best record by The Alarm is called Strength. I picked it over Declaration because the songs on this album are better which is impressive. It is hard for a band to release a follow-up album after such an excellent debut. Look at U2 who stumbled with October. The Alarm kept climbing with this album. It includes the excellent title track, “Knife Edge”, and one of my favorite songs by them “The Spirit of 76”.

There you have it – the three best Alarm albums. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

I am Doug Keating and this is my letter to my sons.