After Eight by Taco

After Eight, the debut album from Taco Ockerse, the Indonesian-born Dutch entertainer who goes by his first name alone, came out on RCA in November 1982, and it plays like a tuxedoed time warp, old-time glamour rewired for the early-'80s dance floor. Taco co-wrote five originals; the rest is his take on six classic pop songs.

The one everybody remembers is his cover of Irving Berlin's "Puttin' On the Ritz", a cheeky, stiff-limbed strut that turned into the biggest hit he ever had, landing at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and pulling the album up to number 23 on the LP chart. Taco had started out in Germany, and the whole record has that continental cabaret gleam, part showbiz nostalgia, part synthetic novelty.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.