Billboard Number One Modern Rock Hits 1988/1989

^^^ massive "Desire" fan

hahahah yeah no

"so alive" hit #3 on the pop charts, it was kinda huge. I distinctly recall being freaked out that the dudes from bauhaus were coming out of every radio in america. little did I know what the 90s had in store for me.

the jjjusten top 5:

U2 - "Desire" (5 weeks)
REM - "Stand" (2 weeks)
Lou Reed - "Dirty Blvd" (4 weeks)
Public Image Ltd. - "Disappointed" (1 week)
The B-52s - "Love Shack" (4 weeks)
Tears For Fears - "Sowing the Seeds of Love" (1 week)

Hm, "Peekaboo" is pretty cool.

voted Mayor of Simpleton and regretted it instantly. P-Furs, Reed, The Replacements and the motherfucking Love Shack all deserve it more. I even like that Siouxsie song.

Ha -- on the 1990 poll I don't think anyone admitted to remembering "I'll be Your Chauffeur."

hahahaha i swear i didnt look at DJP predictions until now but yeah pretty much dude kinda knows my tastes yall

LOVE:
Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Peek-A-Boo" (2 weeks)
The B-52s - "Channel Z" (3 weeks)
Camper Van Beethoven - "Pictures of Matchstick Men" (3 weeks)
The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Blues From A Gun" (3 weeks)

OK:
REM - "Orange Crush" (8 weeks)
Elvis Costello - "Veronica" (1 week)
XTC - "The Mayor of Simpleton" (5 weeks)
The Cure - "Fascination Street" (7 weeks)
Love and Rockets - "So Alive" (5 weeks)
Hoodoo Gurus - "Come Anytime" (3 weeks)
Ian McCulloch - "Proud to Fall" (4 weeks)

DONT CARE/BLAH:
Psychedelic Furs - "All That Money Wants" (3 weeks)
Tears For Fears - "Sowing the Seeds of Love" (1 week)

HATE:
U2 - "Desire" (5 weeks)
REM - "Stand" (2 weeks)
Lou Reed - "Dirty Blvd" (4 weeks)
The B-52s - "Love Shack" (4 weeks)
The Replacements - "I'll Be You" (1 week)
Public Image Ltd. - "Disappointed" (1 week)
Kate Bush - "Love and Anger" (3 weeks)

WORSE THAN I COULD HAVE IMAGINED:
Big Audio Dynamite - "Just Play Music!" (1 week)

NOWHERE ON YOUTUBE SO IDK:
Julian Cope - "Charlotte Anne" (1 week)

srsly tho holy shit i cant believe how fucking awful that big audio dynamite song is jesus christ

I find it difficult to believe a BAD song from that time period could be WORSE than I can imagine; I mean, I lived through "Rush".

no me too, look it up on youtube, its astounding!

what the hell is this

we are going to need a new emoticon to accurately capture my reaction to this

i know right?!?

what the fuck is happening in the middle of this fucking song

it's like they decided Starship was too tough and inaccessible for romcom soundtracks and they wanted to show them how you REALLY do it

oh just wait it keeps coming, right around the 3 minute mark it becomes particularly o_O

btw I have been trying very very hard to ignore the blatant trolling at the beginning of the thread but The Knife has fuck-all to do with "Peek-A-Boo"

phew, that made me feel a little better, only I still have listened to that awful awful song

xp: that's what prompted the Starship comment!

nest time somebody gets all the only band that matters about the clash im going to ludovico technique them with mick jones and his dance moves from this video

Alex in NYC (vassifer) wrote this on thread In defense of Big Audio Dynamite on board I Love Music on Apr 4, 2003

Love everything up through The Globe, but am thinking they should now change their moniker to Big Audio Mistake.

situation no win

I don't understand the series of decisions necessary in going from sounding like "E=MC2" to... that

like I guess I understand not wanting to sound like your old band, but if it's a choice between that and sounding like complete and utter shit...?

i srsly cant stop watching that video

This must've been the thing that caused BAD to split and BADII to form.

"Rush" was MASSIVE; heard it in stores, pizza parlors, etc. Ubiquity did not accentuate its charms, though.

Rush was fine. I actually still like that BADII album.

ok i just checked the tracklisting for "Megatop Pheonix" which I have positive feelings toward and am relieved to see that that song is nowhere on there.

holy crap @ that BAD track. It's like something that missed the cut for Miami Sound Machine album filler.

I once had a copy of the "Rush" single.. on cassingle!

'the globe' >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 'rush'

"Rush Rush" >>>>>>>>>> "Rush"

NOWHERE ON YOUTUBE SO IDK:
Julian Cope - "Charlotte Anne" (1 week)

It's as meh as Copey gets and really not worth the effort but here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-wix_pKEE8

my iphone wont recognize that youtube but it might just be mad at me for listening to that big audio dynamite song so many times

dude I'm pretty sure Megatop Phoenix is also fucking terrible

i remember rewind being pretty good and there being some decent cutty pasty sampling stuff going on but its uh been years so i could be really really wrong.

around the girl in 80 days was def a huge piece of shit tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuQOCMd2mI

does this jog yr memory

"Rewind" is all right though, I will grant you that

"This video contains content from Vevo, who has blocked it in your country on ow my head grounds."

hahaha

ok i am rapidly being convinced that an instrumental version of megatop phoenix would be awesome, but such dreams are not to be

ok listened to more of this album uh just never mind

lol

I had forgotten this Furs song and it is pretty good.

holy sh!t these are all untouchable

Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Peek-A-Boo" (2 weeks)
Psychedelic Furs - "All That Money Wants" (3 weeks)
The Replacements - "I'll Be You" (1 week)
The Cure - "Fascination Street" (7 weeks)
Love and Rockets - "So Alive" (5 weeks)
Tears For Fears - "Sowing the Seeds of Love" (1 week)
The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Blues From A Gun" (3 weeks)

The only possible way to choose between these is to narrow it down to "songs that are superb and that I'm worried won't get votes," so it's "Stand" or "Come Anytime" for me. But which? The Hoodoo Gurus are way more forgotten and ignored (not even mentioned on this thread, I think!) and they represent very well this weird genre of straight-ahead rock record that was "alternative" only by virtue of being kind of unpopular (see also: The Smithereens) On the other hand, "Stand" is a masterpiece which is wrongly hated by everyone from REM themselves on down. That chugging run of decending open-E bar chords under "If wishes were trees..." -- amazing!

But I'm not going to change anybody's mind about "Stand" so I'll vote for the Gurus.

It might actually be the case that "Love Shack" is the song I most admire here.

Charlotte Anne

my Top 5 would look something like this:

The Cure - "Fascination Street" (7 weeks)
Love and Rockets - "So Alive" (5 weeks)
The Jesus and Mary Chain - "Blues From A Gun" (3 weeks)
Siouxsie and the Banshees - "Peek-A-Boo" (2 weeks)
The B-52s - "Love Shack" (4 weeks)

Screw you guys, I love "Just Play Music" (Don Letts amateur deejaying and all) and "James Brown" (West Side Story sample is genius) and "Around the Girl in 80 Ways" (Prince ska)! But not "The Globe" or "Rush." P.S. I also wore spandex shorts in 1988.

How did a boring CVB cover of "Pictures of Matchstick Men" make it to modern-rock No. 1? We will agree to disagree. "The Mayor of Simpleton" is nice but to me this list epitomizes the dullness of late-'80s "modern rock" MOR college crap except the B-52 singles, which are transcendent, and maybe "Peek-A-Boo." The rest is just the sound of programmers strenuously ignoring hip hop, metal, house, or punk. "Orange Crush" is timeless, I guess, but it's opaque to the point of seeming pro-war... which was just great for the late '80s.

Pro-war? It's a dude who got poisoned in Vietnam! (I think.)