US #1s of 1988

haha i had to stealthily watch mtv and the box (a vastly superior music vid channel, if you guys aren't familiar) too.

I wouldn't know "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" note for note if it weren't for The Box.

It's not sleazy as far as I can tell. In "Father Figure" the topic is an impossible task: to become someone else's father! To do "anything you had in mind": anything! And it's not clear that these are demands made by the one being loved: the narrator just wants to give them, out of love. To want to give impossible things: what desire, what love! In early adolescence I struggled to understand what it would be like to love that way. What I was writing about earlier was a nostalgia for that struggle to understand love, particularly love of this kind.

If Guns & Roses wins this thing, I'm gonna be so mad.

But they're gonna do it anyway, aren't they?

I'll have to listen to this George Michael track. I don't remember it, honestly.

it is a song about holding tiny hands

this was the year I first started paying concerted attention to pop

Ha, me too. GnR seems best right now though I like "The Flame".

Poor Winwood. He was out of it for like a decade, then did this very polished, overproduced "comeback"
album with top people like Nile muthafuckin Rogers. The songs were about as good as anything else he'd done, really, and they charted well but have not held up. That is not a cool record to like, I suppose partly because of the dated sounds and because it was aimed solidly at the Top 40. As if Blind Faith etc. were a purely artistic enterprise. But I remember digging his sad, vague voice and burbly PPG synth sounds.

"Roll With It" is an especially problematic track - it is exactly the kind of retro-soul pastiche (horns! standup bass! lots of tambourine! ethnic people for added authenticity!) that is all over the place just now, but because of its cultural moment it's shelved under Dad Rock or some such.

(But, that said, "Need you Tonight" and "Wishing Well" are far better songs than "Roll With It".)

It's kind've hard to believe that "Two Hearts" came out after "Groovy Kind of Love."

It's hard to believe how (briefly) big Steve Winwood was (the album also hit #1). The singles from this era are innocuous, though. I prefer "Valerie" and the 1986-era stuff.

but because of its cultural moment it's shelved under Dad Rock or some such.

More because he was 40 when it came out, I'd think.

wow I like so many of these songs

fuck the Whitney songs and "Kokomo", tho

Looking back at the list I realize that 1988 was the last year in which I listened to the radio.

Yeah, this was when I transitioned from solely listening to top-40/whatever records my brother brought home to whatever albums were on the college and dance charts in the back of Rolling Stone and Spin.

"Roll With It" is a fucking jam, and it was probably my favorite of these songs that I was actually aware of at the time. I was 6 years old in '88, and the songs I definitely heard back then were mainly Winwood, Billy Ocean, George Harrison, the Escape Club, and 2 of the Jacko songs.

I have "Got My Mind Set On You" to thank for serving as my Beatles gateway drug.

Whitney's "So Emotional" is the least emotional song of all time.

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z128/ericzieg/rickslash.jpg?t=1225478145

I was an artist-in-residence at a state university this past fall, and two of the freshmen (likely born in '90) dressed for Halloween as Slash and Rick.

'88 TOP 40 LIVES ON.

i was so hopin that was a scan from a actuall '88 picture

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted for "Need You Tonight" because a) to me it's the best of INXS -- the kind of easy-going menace presented here never surfaced in the more straightforward "New Sensation" or the oddly peppy given its title "Devil Inside" and b) I associated it with beginning to listen to good old WHFS 99.1 in Wash, DC and breaking out of the classic rock cocoon I'd lived in up to that point -- hearing it in my car and suddenly GETTING THE POINT that rock music could do something more than lie around being classic. Of course it then became a huge hit and was on the regular radio stations too, but I stuck with HFS.

Strongly considered "Wishing Well" and GnR here too. Can't hear the Billy Ocean as anything but a joke and considered voting for "Wild Wild West" before I realized I was thinking of "Don't Look Down" by Go West.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

!

fuckin' ILM and its goddamn rickrolling obsession.

who was the bright boy who gave "Where Do Broken Hearts Go?" one vote.

Hah, I am also curious about the "Kokomo" fan.

ARUBA JAMAICA OOOOH I WANNA TAKE YA

J0hn D., amirite?

Haha I probably would've voted for "Never Gonna Give You Up" if I hadn't voted GNR. But what a not-very-good winner.

George Harrison, "Got My Mind Set on You" - 0 votes. This makes me sad. I feel like this was in a lot of peoples' top 5 choices, and yet..

Eh, "Need You Tonight" probably would be my #2 after TTD. It's kind of a boring, telling pick, but I have no problem with it.

for a minute I thought it was Kool Moe Dee "Wild Wild West" which was one of my fave songs at the time

Tiffany, "Could've Been"
Expose, "Seasons Change"
Debbie Gibson, "Foolish Beat"

^^^ LOL, middle school dance

Aside from the rickroll, I agree with the top 3, in order, an ILXPoll first for me.

But see, the Rick Astley song is genuinely better than most of these tracks.

missed this poll, but 88 was a great year innit

(would have voted for inxs)

poison (but I've never heard the will to power)

bump

J0hn D., amirite?

no, mine was "Man in the Mirror"

I stand corrected.

Weird results. I like "Seasons Change" a lot more than the INXS at the top, which sounded corny & forced even in '88.

Oh, I just missed this one. WOuld've voted for Terence Trent D'Arby who not only performed "Wishing Well" on SNL (2/13/88) but came back and did "Under My Thumb" as well!

http://image.listen.com/img/150x100/1/2/3/6/506321_150x100.jpg

lol eleven years later I correct this chart.

I cannot believe those two songs beat "Sweet Child o' Mine".

Apparently, it surprised me 10 years ago too.

I was thinking the other day that the "Sweet Child o' Mine" intro is a really good string-skipping exercise, then learned that Slash originally came up with it as a string-skipping exercise.

fyi, Keith Sweat’s “I Want Her” is Great to Awesome

Rick Astley would win this poll in a landslide with younger generations.

lol eleven years later I correct this chart.

Wonderful wonderful year for balladry (as encapsulated in my prior poll: Greatest Billboard Top 40(-ish) Ballad (1988 edition)).

Chicago's "Look Away" video might be peak half-assed-plot-and-scenes-from-a-movie-I-don't-recognize indulgence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uKLTtVqQpE

Also peak DX7 preset.

But where does "Need You Tonight" rank? ("So Emotional" is also missing, but I know where that one goes in your book.)
― dorsalstop, Monday, March 11, 2019

on the '87 list