I’m a sucker for top X music lists. The latest I’ve enjoyed perusing is The 100 Greatest Alternative Singles of the '80s from Popmatters. It’s only one person’s opinion and is obviously subjective, and he uses his own rules for defining “alternative” and “single”, so take it for what it is.
My list would have included more songs from some artists (Pixies, R.E.M., Happy Mondays, Joy Division), but I can understand why he limited it to only one song per artist. I don’t quibble with any in the top 10 except maybe Kate Bush - I guess it deserves the ranking, but I was never a fan of that particular song.
But really, the best part is the playlist. I’ll be under my headphones feeling young again for the next few hours.
Thanks, TroutMan. That right there is the sound track of my life (well, of my teens) and I would agree with most of the choices. If you want to hear this stuff all the time you can stream it here/ (KROQ rock of the '80s).
That whole list is pretty much what we’d call “college rock” or “alternative rock” here in the US. That’s not what I would have called mainstream rock in the 80s, and I grew up in the 80s. I probably never heard the vast majority of that list until I hit college in the 90s (or started discovering alternative music in senior year high school, c. 1992.)
He spends three paragraphs trying to define it, and pretty much ends with “you know it when you hear it.”
Some of it might be based on where you were at the time. I lived the first half of the 80s in the midwest, and I heard less than 5 of those bands on radio. Talking Heads (my sister said, check out this weird band), R.E.M. on the late-night alt show, maybe B-52s. Radio for me was Van Halen, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince. I then moved to California where there was an alt station (called modern rock at the time) and a college station, and suddenly bands like Echo & the Bunnymen were everywhere. I’d have thought it was mainstream if I hadn’t come from the midwest.
A lot of this is also the music that has endured from the 80s, and therefore seems more mainstream now than it was at the time.
I grew up on a farm in SD in the 80s. Lots of shitty music. Moved to town my senior year and got cable (still no MTV). I came home late one night and caught an alternative music video show on WGN. They played Dear God and my musical life (and maybe world view) changed forever. The Gibsons store actually had Skylarking on cassette.
Anyway pretty good list (except for Faith No More). I came into a lot of this music late but it’s still a big part of my life. And I’m still always looking for new, interesting music and other things because these bands expanded my horizons.
Where I had quibbles, it was almost always over the choice of the song. I agreed with the band, but in a few cases I would have probably picked another single that I felt better exemplified their sound or influence – but that’s a lot of splitting of hairs.
There are some bands in there that I think of as more iconic 90s bands … but I can’t argue with the release dates. I was disappointed that The Cult is only hovering at mid-list, I think She Sells Sanctuary is almost a perfect example of the 80s alternative sound. (And I remember listening to CFNY’s top 100 of the decade on New Year’s Eve 1989, and Sanctuary was #2 to How Soon is Now’s #1.)
Was Simple Minds not on there at all, or did I miss it?
Oh, Oingo Boingo – good call. Which single would you use?
After Simple Minds, the other missing band that really stuck out to me was Cocteau Twins (I’d go with Lorelei as the single). I was also thinking about Dead Can Dance, but that might be too into the … world music? art music? category to fit into this list so I am less troubled by that omission.
BBC Radio 2 was on in the office today, unusually. In my head that’s a station for middle-aged people. When I was a kid and my mum listened to it, it was the land of Perry Como, with the cutting edge being Demis Roussos and Nana Mouskouri.
Guess which Cult song they played this afternoon? My middle-agedness now rests weary upon my head.
For Oingo Boingo, I’d go with Just Another Day, but wouldn’t complain about Dead Man’s Party.
Cocteaus are in there at #44 with “Carolyn’s Fingers”. I’d have picked “Heaven or Las Vegas” if it had been released a year earlier.
You’re right, SaharaTea - Pogues should be included (If I Should Fall From Grace With God, obviously). Maybe the guy thought they were too folk-y to be labeled alternative. Or maybe he’s just a scumbag, a maggot, a cheap lousy…
Yes, that would probably be the case. Look at the top 40 charts of the 80s to remind yourself what was mainstream. I remember when REM and the Cure was “that weird music” to me. Those two bands kind of defined “alternative” for me personally. Joy Division wasn’t even on my radar until much later. I honestly never knowingly heard a Joy Division song until the late 90s. Hell, most of friends still have no clue who they were. (I mention them specifically because they were #1 on the list.)