Billboard's 1st Modern Rock Chart

Stereogum has posted the entire contents of Billboard's first "Modern Rock" chart on its 30th anniversary (it's now called "Alternative Songs.") and annotated them. The results are interesting. I can't imagine songs by the contemporary equivalents of Tracy Chapman, UB40 and Ranking Roger would do so well here today (the lingering hipness of reggae is reflected on this chart, but as far as contemporary rock fans, it's largely vanished beyond everyone who tries pot buying a copy of LEGEND the next week.) Siouxsie and the Banshees at #1 sure kicks the ass of Imagine Dragons' "Natural," who are currently topping this week's "Alternative Songs" chart. Anyway, here is Stereogum's list:[www.stereogum.com]

The chart really is reflective of the power of Classic Rock Radio keeping any artists outside a small group from the listeners ears.

Lots of fine but older 70s artists there for a 1988 Modern Rock chart - Armatrading, Siouxsie, Parker, Harry, Smith, Mick Jones, etc. - or who could have been 60s artists (Edie Brickell, Chapman) that should have told us that something was a bit off, when they couldn't get much traction anywhere else.

That was the first year a hip hop album won mainstream album of the year polls too so a lot is fragmented in the culture and on the radio. The 1988-90 era is great for talking about because it's on the cusp of a lot of stuff but pre "everything" - pre-Soundscan, pre-Alternative "explosion", pre-Internet.

To echo what mats just said, '88 was a crucial year. Not for new wave, per se, but clearly for the road out of it!

I missed '76-'77, just a hair too young. But '79-'80 were my ground zero, where the whole world changed. Post-punk, synth, 2-tone, dub reggae, early rap-- what a time to be discovering music. But by late 80's, the thrill was kinda gone.

So in '88, I was ready for a change... enter ground zero #2. Hip hop in '88 was just amazing. Then came house, acid house, Todd Terry's early singles (brilliant), so much going on!

Was there another year you can think of that was this groundbreaking in your opinion?

Well, this chart is missing out on those movements. Looking back, why did the format stick with Joan Armatrading and Graham Parker (fine artists, but past their peaks in 1988) instead of throwing "Don't Believe the Hype," "Follow the Leader" and "Express Yourself" into heavy rotation? Public Enemy did get a lot of college radio airplay at the time, but I can't say that other hip-hop groups did and my memory suggests that it took till 1991-2 for a lot of rock fans to open up to house music and techno.

I agree that by '88 things were stultifying. The New Wave had crashed on the shores by '84-'85 and a new middlebrow period was once again upon us, but house music was immediately as oppressive as disco had eventually gotten to be and it had taken 3-4 years for disco to become as onerous in its ubiquity. House music? About 6 months! I got so sick and tired of every act having a 12" single with the mandatory house mix of the single that replaced anything I might have liked about the song with rote beats of little variation.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

I think exciting house music has been released this year - A.A. L.'s 2012-2017 (one of 2018's best albums), Peggy Gou's ONCE, Channel Tres' self-titled EP - quite apart from the bastardized version that's achieved mainstream success as EDM. It's become a tradition akin to punk and metal, in a weird way.

I think the early 00s was a great period for Rock not just cause I liked it, but I liked talking about it too - you had several bands, all young, more or less on debuts and kinda great imo, that reflected forebears in good ways and split allegiances along age lines and elitism lines. After that the discussion got a lot duller and so did Rock.

The Strokes are no Velvets (or whatever) and The Libertines are no Clash and Spoon are sort of just doing an update on Costello and The Hives are a gimmick band and The Exploding Hearts are 1977 without having been there man.......that was just really fun to debate or to like or hate any of those bands (and I liked them all).

To me that's the last time Rock was Pop (in the best sense) and was the last sort of crucial period because the Rock that gets really celebrated in that time and shortly thereafter........Radiohead, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, The National, Arcade Fire etc. is a whole lot more mature (unfortunately)..........there's some exceptions but that seemed like a last gasp to me.

Going back to the original post and link....to be honest, as I looked at this chart, the songs were so BLAND that it just really depressed me. Seriously. I recall '88 so well, and that list just hammered home for me why i ran away from 'rock/modern rock' that year. I could only muster four songs on that list I might want to hear: house of love, sugarcubes, primitives and information society. (still think that Information Society was somehow a crucial link between new wave and late 80s NYC club music).

Mr Monk is right about 'house mixes' becoming sickeningly ubiquitous fairly quickly. I thought the MARRS 12", bomb the bass, s'express, coldcut were fantastic. But if I never see the phrase "shep pettibone house mix" again, I'm okay with that. My collection is littered with them!

It's as if I forgot how drab "modern rock" was in the late 80's. Of course it wasn't totally devoid of good stuff, but compared to the watersheds of the earlier 80s??

Again, I implore others to provide other years since '88 they felt were crucial, and why. Birth of grunge in early 90s? The strokes/white stripes era of early 2000s? The late 90s teen pop phenom? What?

Bip - Ha ha! The dreaded "Shep Pettibone House Mix!!!" Four words to strike fear into my heart! They were like mushrooms, back then and only useful as kindling.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

To me, there was something very liberating about what happened to music in the early '90s. There was an explosion of electronic dance music beyond the relatively small audience it reached in the 1980s. Artists like the Orb, Aphex Twin and Orbital making albums intended for home listening more than the dance floor. Even if I'm not a huge fan of grunge beyond Nirvana, Soundgarden, early Mudhoney, and Hole's LIVE THROUGH THIS, it opened up the possibilities of what kinds of rock music could be mainstream. The Flaming Lips, Breeders, Mazzy Star and Butthole Surfers had hit singles, and Pavement and Yo La Tengo sold 300,000 albums. It seems absurd to me that Common was so pessimistic about the state of hip-hop on "I Used To Love H.E.R." in 1994. From our current perspective, classic albums like ILLMATIC, ENTER THE 36 CHAMBERS & THE INFAMOUS had either just been released or were on the way, and the genre hadn't come close to its current state where lyrics that are actually about something serious are largely banished from the mainstream. But maybe I'm romanticizing that period because it coincided with my 20s. I'm well aware that's a very common tendency, coupled with a tendency for middle-aged people to see the present as a fallen age for art, often because they only check out a very popular examples and don't realize there might be a thriving underground music, literature or film scene.

I look at the '90s in a sort of holistic way, and I admit I focus a lot more on what was widely popular during that decade -- from grunge/alternative to more pop hits like New Radicals and Gin Blossoms. For me, I associate that decade with being newly married. So all the music I heard around me every day ended up becoming the soundtrack to learning what it means to be a husband. (Sentimental, I know, but these associations always are personal.)

Anyway, I'm probably not the most erudite critic of '90s music. But that's okay, because Billboard apparently wasn't either.



Post Edited (09-13-18 13:00)

Mats, I love every one of those 21st-century bands you mentioned (and their obvious forebears, of course). Since that early 2000s wave, I agree, rock has gone largely back under the surface. But that doesn't mean it's not worth paying attention to.

I agree, the early-mid '90s and early '00s were periods when rock was pop, to use your phrase ... and I agree, it was in the best way. These days? Maybe rock isn't pop, but it's still the medium that excites me the most. And the one I celebrate every Friday night, with the artists who made it worth celebrating, and as much as possible, the ones who keep it worth hearing. I don't think I do the best possible job in that respect, but I try.

Steven Hyden said in the final chapter of TWILIGHT OF THE GODS that Radiohead and the National aren't rock bands in the "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" way we used to expect. They keep their personal lives to themselves and don't try to be rebellious in an overt way. They don't seem to be into sexual or chemical excess. I'm guessing the same thing is true of Arcade Fire, although after their second album I'm much less interested in their music than that of Radiohead and the National. But maybe there's something to be said for music that expresses what it feels like to be like a middle-aged, middle-class guy right now, rather than pretending you can play "Get Off My Cloud," "Won't Get Fooled Again" or "Anarchy in the UK" into your 60s and 70s and still feel it. Perhaps it's encouraging that hardcore still exists and is producing interesting new bands like Jesus Piece and Vein?

Trying to remember how many songs got played by Live 105 (our local "modern rock" station, before it went "alternative" post-Nirvana with disheartening results) and I'd have to say maybe about a third. Granted it was the better third (Primitives, House of Love, Siouxsie, etc.). I understand what Steevee is saying, but in a way it was kinda sad when "modern rock" turned into "alternative", with a wave of mediocrity was thus unleashed upon the land, or at least on the radio and 120 Minutes. (Maybe "alternative" changed the "mainstream" but the opposite then happened as well). At least there was still college radio, where you could still find folks like Bikini Kill, Beat Happening, and other bands that still Could Be Your LIfe....

Come back Steve Masters, all is forgiven!

(Sidenote: for better or for worse Live 105 was also one of the first stations to play house music, albeit late at night. Which Is how I discovered that said music is among the worst things to listen to while driving back from a show).

Might as well continue to give shout outs to "vintage" (pre-Alternative) Live 105. Wasn't that big on their "modern mixes", but there probably weren't too many other stations ("modern rock" or (especially) otherwise) back then outside of Collegeland where you could hear New Order or the Smiths, most less Chris & Cosey's "October Love Song", Bollock Brothers' "Harley David Son of a Bitch", or even Negativland's "U2".