End of the Century by The Ramones

End of the Century, the Ramones' fifth album, came out on Sire on February 4, 1980, and it's the sound of the Forest Hills speed merchants handing the keys to Phil Spector. Spector had offered to help them years earlier; this time he took the whole job, making it the first Ramones record with no Tommy Ramone involvement at all. He'd quit the drum stool in 1978 but stayed on to produce Road to Ruin. Now Marky Ramone was behind the kit, with Joey out front, Johnny on guitar and Dee Dee on bass.

Spector worked at Gold Star Studios and he worked slowly, stacking overdub on overdub, soaking everything in echo chambers and running up a bill of around $200,000, a small fortune next to the band's earlier sessions. For a band used to bashing records out in a hurry, the painstaking pace grated, and the tension between the two camps is part of the record's story. The songs were aimed squarely at a bigger audience, easing away from punk toward pop, while the lyrics cover drug habits and life on tour. There's a cover of the Ronettes' "Baby, I Love You" drenched in Spector gloss, plus sequels to "Judy Is a Punk" and "Havana Affair", and "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" is a gleaming, nostalgic blast.

Reviews were mostly kind but cooler than before, with critics grumbling about the production and the band's obvious hunger for the mainstream. And yet it's the highest-charting Ramones album ever, reaching number 44 on the Billboard 200 and number 14 in the UK, and both singles charted in Europe.

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