The Lion by Youssou N'dour

The Lion, released in 1989, was the record that carried Youssou N'Dour into shops around the world, the first of his albums to get global distribution. The Senegalese singer had helped build mbalax, and here it gets a cross-continental makeover: Peter Gabriel produced alongside David Sancious and George Acogny, and the players came from both N'Dour's Super Étoile de Dakar and Gabriel's own band.

The result is lush and bustling, rhythms churning under a studio gloss, with N'Dour's voice soaring over the top when the mix lets it. That was the sticking point: the Los Angeles Times grumbled that without solid hooks the whole thing blurred into a pretty wash that swallowed the singer, while Music Week's Nick Robinson loved the joyous voice and bright rhythms and tipped it as a crossover winner. Trouser Press heard the title track as mbalax crossed with the Go-Go's, and found "Old Tucson", his song about museums visited on his travels, a head-scratcher.

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