KROQ Top 50 1989

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5SK6L00sLFiBOap5wAELlz?si=SlO4dHFMTVupNC4IrjeOvQ

I'm just remembering the The The song is featuring Sinead O'Connor with Johnny Marr on guitar.

You can really see the quality slide towards the end of the decade.

I voted for Cult of Personality.

Where's Animotion's "Room to Move"?

I dunno, there is definite uptick in quality from the 1988 selection.

also voted for cult of personality, great list tho

also voted for cult of personality

whoopz

I was at a loss with that 1988 list, but there are at least 15 worthy contenders on here

Yeah this is where my era really begins… jam after jam.

Great list, hell of a Top 10

Or ~25

U2’s cover of “Dancing Barefoot” is horrid. It sounds like a rough demo, too

Interesting how they were spinning The Ocean Blue but never really gave a damn about the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays

"No Myth," no question.

Mayor of Simpleton's bass line is still a thing of wonder. and it has maybe the most perfect bridge ever!

I first heard “Last Cigarette” mere weeks ago, on a retro video show… I previously only knew “Anything, Anything” by this quintessential KROQ band. They’re both really good songs!

In terms of shit i felt able to ok at the time it’s pixies or cvb, maaaybe xtc

U2’s cover of “Dancing Barefoot” is horrid. It sounds like a rough demo, too

― beamish13,

My intro, and one of the few times Bono submits to a song instead of yowling over it. Plus, he doesn't change the pronouns.

I recognize just about everything on this list, not true from last year's list.

I didn't remember Martin Gore had a solo career tho

I like these options a LOT more than 1988

voted "Love Shack", duh

The first Mary’s Danish album is a forgotten gem

Mary's Danish wanted to be signed to a major label SO BAD. They did and got totally screwed.

For me, a huge break between this one and the last one. The 1988 list feels like what I think of as "80s." This one doesn't, at all. But that might be because the 1988 list is songs I think of as "high school" and this is songs I think of as "college." But really, nobody would ever call the Pixies an 80s band even though they did, indeed, release a good proportion of their best music in the 1980s.

Anyway, sometimes I vote for the song I think is the very best piece of songwriting and performing, which I guess here, for me, would be "Here Comes Your Man,"; or the one that has stood the test of time the best, which is probably "Love Shack." Sometimes I vote for the one that people most severely underrate, which is "Stand." But this time I think I gotta vote for the one that I worry nobody else is gonna vote for because maybe they don't even know it exists, or once knew it existed but have long since forgotten, and that is the Hoodoo Gurus "Come Anytime," a nearly perfect song that could have come out any year from 1985 until now.

As a hyoooge fan who met and talked to gurus in a richmond club in 85 (rockitz) and then saw them again with bangles, i’m telling you that’s a bad vote

lol not rly, i just disagree. the band should NOT be forgot, but by then the brilliance and humor was gone. Lol imo.

I was born in 1986. I remember hearing a lot of these songs in 1993 or so and thinking "oh this is old music", even though I was actually alive and running around when they came out. Kinda blows my mind given my perception of time now.

Outside the top 50:

59. Kate Bush - "Love and Anger"
76. The Stone Roses - "I Wanna Be Adored"

In early 1989, there was a big billboard campaign for Pirate Radio 100.3FM everywhere in Los Angeles and for a few months pulled in a few more KROQ listeners and disaffected KLOS fans. Simultaneously, that station KMPC-FM that I've been yapping about for the last two years renamed and rebranded itself as KEDG "The Edge" a sort of proto-Adult Album Alternative format that was less free-wheeling and more square. I won tickets from them to see Bruce Cockburn at the Hollywood Palace that year ("If A Tree Falls" was in heavy rotation). Apparently I was the only one who called in. Two months later they were out of business. Owners Golden West Broadcasting fired everyone and switched the station to lite-rock. Game over. KROQ keeps on going with no real competitors, but somewhat smugly?

I first got a CD player in 1987 and I think 1989 is when I saw the first in-car player. I've already got a box of tapes in the car so admittedly this is when I start checking out radio.

Voted "No Myth" - easy one, no reconsiderations

A bunch I don't know but of those I do DM or Tears for Fears

I love your recaps Elvis Telecom, always been fascinated by this type of history.

I didn't even get past the first song. I remember "Love Song" getting up to number 2 on the Billboard Top 100. Does anyone remember know what song prevented that from the number 1 spot?

I would have remembered "last cigarette," which was ubiquitous, as being at least a year earlier. memories of so many of these songs are vivid, this really was peak drive-around-with-the-radio-on time for me -- every day I'd be in the car for at least an hour driving to work or school or wherever, and at some point during the year school started involving clinical rotation so it'd be drive to site - drive to lunch and back to site - drive to wherever until next class - drive to school - drive home or wherever was next. radio always on, I don't think I had a tape deck in my car until '90 or maybe toward the end of '89.

What's most conspicuously missing here is of course "Fight the Power," which KROQ wouldn't play because it was "not in their area of coverage" lol but anybody who gave a shit about music was rocking all summer long. That whole dynamic was really starting to stink for me at this point -- so "new wave"/"Rock of the 80s" or whatever has nothing to do with being on any vanguard, it's just a specific style or set of style cues? Cool whatever, future dinosaurs. Still a ton of good stuff as others have noted, and also "Edie (Ciao Baby)," a song so terrible its master recording should be buried beneath the Mariana Trench. My favorites at the time would have been Pop Song 89, Disappointed, Here Comes Your Man, and both B-52's songs, that album was such a glorious comeback that year, I bonded with a therapist who worked at the same treatment center I worked at about it & I may have failed to get her back the copy of it she loaned me. My bad. Favorite song now, for which I'll be the sole voter, is "Going Southbound," I will these days go on even longer than this post about how good I think prime Ridgeway is.

The last minute of "Disappointed" when Lydon rises to meet the challenge of the choir gives me chills.

“Don’t Crash The Car Tonight” is a good slept-on one, almost proto-Breeders.

I've karaoked "I Want That Man" a couple times in the last decade.

It's a tossup between XTC and BAD.

"checking out of radio" I meant to say at the end earlier.

I got curious about the actual numbers and looked it up: 1989 was KROQ's worst listenship year since 1984, dropping almost a full point in market share rating (PDF link). Other stations were losing listeners, even the two biggest stations in town: KIIS & KPWR who were always #1 and #2 or the other way around lost market share.

The new player was KKBT a.k.a. 92.3 The Beat a former moribund all-classical station that rebranded in 1989 - trying to find a space in between rock KLOS and the pop/dance stations but they quickly went all rap/hip-hop. One thing that sticks out, 1989 is the last year that any radio station in Los Angeles has a market share greater than 6.0.

I didn't even get past the first song. I remember "Love Song" getting up to number 2 on the Billboard Top 100. Does anyone remember know what song prevented that from the number 1 spot?

"Miss You Much" by Janet Jackson. Which also prevented "Sowing the Seeds of Love" from reaching number 1, the very next week.

"Stealing the Beatles' Stuff"

Ironically, Janet Jackson and The Cure both were introduced into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the same year. 2019.

Xpost

Didn't know about Tears for Fears and has to be their highest charting song in the US?

No, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout" were number ones

No Myth

I know Tears for Fears rocked my world in 1985 but I didn't know they were Top 100 big at that time. It felt like they were sort of underground and on MTV. Way off

"So Alive": clove cigs, black lipstick & aquanet.

I know all of these songs. I had a job delivering/repairing fax machines in an area roughly trangulated by Woodland Hills, Carlsbad, and San Bernardino and spent hours on the roads of Southern California knowing them. This gets into humblebragging, but that income paid for a lot of shows - Dramarama opening for The Smithereens probably being the most 1989 of them all.

FWIW, the best show I saw that year (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) came from an album (Tender Prey) I never heard once on the radio.

Wow, that’s a huge territory (and no humblebrag, IMO).

"So Alive": clove cigs, black lipstick & aquanet.

perhaps someone can help me out here, as a thirty-something that smokes a clove here and there, inevitably when I buy them or light one outside a bar it's a chorus of "oh wow I haven't smelled a clove since the 80s"

so what was the deal with goths from this time period and spicy tobacco

it was a thing for sure, idk how it started

I had a friend in college whose entire dorm door was covered in Djarum tins

will forever associate that smell with 1984-85 hardcore shows

Voted pixies. There’s several ok songs to me on the ballot, but that time musically to me was, like, after a hurricane. So many bands i dug just washed out and gone horrible. b52s rem hoodoo gurus tons of brit stuff all shitty (l&r were vvg tho).

i know now these were just feelins, and not so true, and generational, and personal, and not how i would like to think i’d reexamine stuff .

But, so yeah, pixies at the time felt perfect and hopeful maybe.

xpost had no idea djarums used to come in a classy tin but that sounds awesome and must have had something to do with it, I would like to buy fancy spiced cigarettes in a tin

oingo boingo's "flesh and blood" is probably the highlight of the ghostbusters 2 soundtrack but "No Myth" is so good, on regular rotation when I was running a convenience store and always elevated the mood

i remember strollin by paris on the platte in 91 as a recently new denverite and smelling cloves, and then just thinkin “ha even here, but behind the times— cowtown style.” denver then, lol. more likely, me then, lol.

i think that’s the last time i’ve smelled them, which also may say more about me but… ok.

wow every single GIS result for "Djarum tin" is a paywalled/unlinked image

This list is mostly not my thing after loving KROQ on the mid-80s (was not listening to much radio by that point), but the full ‘89 106.7 list has some great tracks.

Does this thread require the presence of James Redd or should I just send my Chatbot avatar?

1 The Cure - Love Song
2 The B-52's - Love Shack
4 Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus
5 Tears for Fears - Sowing the Seeds of Love
7 Love and Rockets - So Alive
10 The Pixies - Here Comes Your Man
13 New Order - Round and Round
14 XTC - Mayor of Simpleton
17 Elvis Costello - Veronica
19 The Cure - Fascination Street
24 The B-52's - Channel Z
25 The The - Kingdom of Rain
28 Michael Penn - No Myth
31 Fine Young Cannibals - She Drives Me Crazy
37 Camper Van Beethoven - Pictures of Matchstick Men
43 Living Colour - Cult of Personality
49 The Cure - Lullaby

I simply can’t hear the song that “Love Shack” originally was anymore, I just hear karaoke and wedding parties

I have to admit it's worn out its welcome for me as well :/

"Channel Z" HOWEVER

Side note: i recently saw Fred Schneider introducing a film in Manhattan - The Loved One (1965) - and he apologized to the audience for “Love Shack.” It was then I suddenly understood why the B-52’s had to retire. Would you want to perform “Love Shack” every single day of your professional life?

Lots of bands I love in this poll but much of it isn't their best work. I mean, that Replacements album only just got a release last year with a far, far superior mix.

Stan Ridgway will get no votes but I adore the 1989 album "Mosquitos".

I remember #50 “Oh Daddy” by Adrian Belew very well for its video featuring his own daughter which I think might not pass muster today. Mark Mothersbaugh did a similar thing a few years later with his song “Trilobites,” which I think was actually inspired by his daughter being interested in trilobites.

Everything post whammy was just me going “why cant u be sorta weird, obtuse, wildly danceable, actually funny, and cool/interesting”?

Since i think most criticisms are secret projections, i will continue to reconsider, but yeah, fuck love shack.

😥

From a link that Elvis Telecom posted up thread:

Before punk rock, there was indeed a significant underground music scene. Alternative in the seventies was called Progressive. Groups with names like Atomic Rooster; String Driven Thing; Curved Air; Paris; Strawbs; Van Der Graaf Generator; Triumvirat; Barclay James Harvest and many others had a cult following -- and even a home on L.A. radio in the 1970s. That home was on AM 1500 -- KROQ, a station with quite an eventful history.

Atomic Rooster
String Driven Thing
Curved Air
Paris
Strawbs
Van Der Graaf Generator
Triumvirat
Barclay James Harvest

I haven't heard one of these bands

KROQ in 1972

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b5/5f/15/b55f15b9dc97c60898604786af7e0526.jpg

(initially read that as Merry Clayton & Crazy Horse and then thought about time machines)

xp the first Weenie Roast

Everything post whammy was just me going “why cant u be sorta weird, obtuse, wildly danceable, actually funny, and cool/interesting”?

Since i think most criticisms are secret projections, i will continue to reconsider, but yeah, fuck love shack.

― toenail fungus (Hunt3r),

I can't listen to "Love Shack," but "Channel Z," "Roam, "Deadbeat Club," "Topaz," etc. are bangers.

i sorta liked the soariness of roam i guess. huh i don't remember topaz brb
"blue dolphins are singing,""starfishes are spinning," "skyscrapers are winking," "our hearts are travelling faster." in the 80s i'da said "that's really cheezy," and therefore i may blame 80's me for any wrong opinions.
xp stewart copeland was in a late runout versh of curved air. that's the only thing of that roq prog list that i can think of. and i don't know why i know that.
also that 72 festival holy shit. also also ticketron existed in 1972?!

I had forgotten how special this song is, it's a Sinead O'Connor song as she takes it over, do wonder why she is not in the video? RIP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIklk1gHbuQ

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

love shack is fine but so much of cosmic thing is & was a sweet miracle

like "deadbeat club" is not just nostalgia, it's the memory of hanging out in a safe place with friends who are dead now, specifically Ricky Wilson, who had kept his HIV status secret from the other members of the band because he didn't want to be a bother. Cosmic Thing must be understood in the context of this band of friends, queer and straight and neither-nor but allied in love and music and otherness, a beacon to weird kids in far-flung spots around the globe, in tiny towns yearning to be themselves.

that's what deadbeat club is about.

100%, team Deadbeat forever

I had the fucking cassingle, yo

Cosmic Thing is the best album about being in your thirties, looking back at the friends you lost and the ones you kept, and still having a party with your memories and, if you're lucky, with your live friends.

Despite perhaps not being the best song on this list, Round and Round the most 1989est song for me so that is my vote.

Another notable absence for me is The Blue Nile but I don’t know the station so perhaps not their bag?

My first gig was Public Image in 1989 and it was a good one. I have an enduring fondness for their post-credibility output.

Lots of OK songs here, none I'm feeling highly enthusiastic about. Most OK is "Veronica".

There are better deep tracks on at least 10 of the albums sampled here.

As a hyoooge fan who met and talked to gurus in a richmond club in 85 (rockitz) and then saw them again with bangles, i’m telling you that’s a bad vote

― toenail fungus (Hunt3r), Thursday, August 10, 2023 9:26 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol not rly, i just disagree. the band should NOT be forgot, but by then the brilliance and humor was gone. Lol imo.

― toenail fungus (Hunt3r), Thursday, August 10, 2023 9:28 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait so when in your view was the brilliant era? To be honest, what I know of the Hoodoo Gurus (What's My Scene, Like Wow Wipeout, Come Anytime, etc.) sounds very much of a piece to me -- are you talking about the records from the early 80s, which I've never heard?

They took out all the garage and pit in tryhard pop and welp. So yeah pre album singles leilani etc, then stoneage romeos and most of mng. then they were just meh another modern rock band imo.

At one point pre internet i had a like 7x 7” collection of all the early singles but i lost it it in the flood. the flood of early adultness.

There are better deep tracks on at least 10 of the albums sampled here.

― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, August 13, 2023 10:11 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, why "Here Comes Your Man" but no "Monkey Gone to Heaven"?

No "Fool's Gold" or "Anna Ng" or "Head On" or "Pet Semetary"

Interesting how they were spinning The Ocean Blue but never really gave a damn about the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays

I remember them playing "Kinky Afro" a lot, but that would've been fall '90 or '91.

The Ocean Blue were never great, though I bought the first two albums at the time. I'll take'em over the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays.

Yeah, Hoodoo Gurus one of those bands for me always on a downhill curve. Stoneage Romeos is excellent, Mars has a few great tracks, Blow Your Cool was a big disappointment, and then I think I tried Magnum Cum Louder and then stopped listening. xp

I may revisit a few of those today.

I've been getting into "Seeds of Love" (the album) recently, and even though "Seeds of Love" (the single) was perhaps a slight step down from previous Tears for Fears singles, that album is absolutely solid, and the song itself is a great Beatles pastiche and production masterpiece. But my vote would probably be for one of the "Disintegration" singles.

I spent a lot of time on the Seeds of Love reissue in 2020. It works except for "Badman's Song" and "Year of the Knife."

Hmm, for me those are both highlights.

The album caught them at tension between their softer and arena rock sides, and for me it's the prettier TFF that won this time imo

Much better list than the 88 one.

I remember when "Fascination Street" came out I was so excited (that baseline!), I thought all of Disintegration was going to sound like that. Like the dark aggressive side of Kiss Me 3 (The Kiss, Torture, All I Want, Shiver and Shake, Fight).

Turns out it didn't, but the album was of course brilliant.

That tension between soft and loud is key to the album for me. You need to have the two poles. No song stays in one place for long. Every pretty song has a heavy section, and every up-tempo song has a reflective section. Its not an album that's easy to digest in small pieces. But this is not really the thread to discuss this probably.

xp

Here is my story: The Cure were to play Dodger Stadium with the Pixies, Love and Rockets with Shelleyan Orphan. Tickets were to go on sale Sunday morning. I started camping out in front of the store Friday night. Then on Sunday they said they were trying something new and were to give out wrist bands. I was devastated as I, along with some friends, gave up time to stay in line. Well I happened to convince the people who got first in line to buy my tickets. I got third row seats at Dodger Stadium.

I drove and had about 15 people in my van when it broke down on the way to the concert. It was at the Citadel, which at that time was an abandoned tire factory. We all ended up hitchhiking off the 5 freeway to Dodger Stadium. We were late and missed all the opening bands. Anyways was a very stressful time but when they opened with Plainsong and my third row seats turned into being against the stage, well everything was ok.

Voted Fascination Street

I voted for "Mayor of Simpleton."

this is No Myth or Compulsion for me, not to slight the dozen songs on this list that I absolutely love by the Cure, PIL and Depeche Mode.

I feel not much about most of these songs. Either “personal jesus” or “channel z”, I guess

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

"No Myth" is so goddamn white, but the drum machine, acoustic guitar, and absurd lyrics merge so well -- and Michael Penn was hot then.

It was at the Citadel, which at that time was an abandoned tire factory.

For me, it's always been the home of Yoyodyne Propulsion Labs - "where the future begins tomorrow!" The year after that Cure show at Dodger Stadium (I think all of Los Angeles was there), I had a four-week freelance gig running network cabling all over that place and out at the Citadel construction management offices in the City of Commerce.

Living Colour shoulda walked this.

I would’ve been really, really pissed to have not been able to see Shellyan Orphan live. I’ve bought all of their albums on vinyl through Discogs over the past year, and they’re unbelievable. Like Miranda Sex Garden and Bel Canto, I just can’t believe that more people aren’t rediscovering them

I've just read that Wendy and Lisa are credited on the Michael Penn record, and I don't know if they appear on No Myth specifically but I can hear it, and am choosing to believe this is the secret sauce

The real secret sauce to Michael Penn's March is that even though Tony Berg is credited as producer, Susan Rogers was the engineer and mixer. She had just finished a run of making some of the greatest records ever made, especially ones that mixed up guitars and drum machines. She was working on Wendy And Lisa's album at the same time as Penn's album.

March was the first album on CD I bought. I still have affection for its uneven songwriting ("No Myth" is unimpeachable).

but yeah, fuck love shack.

I spent so long crafting and not posting my rebuttal to this that I forgot to vote for it. Sure it's played out like "Mustang Sally" now, but what a triumphant return at the time.

huh, i am still really missing it. i must accept defeat i guess. to me it felt grooveless, and pandering, but sincerely pandering (not b52s-like imo), and not slyly or archly pandering . i don't wanna relisten to the whole thing now, but i should.

and i'd argue love shack is bad not because it's overplayed, but because it never was there, it's like a lame schtick of themselves. i guess this shoulda gone to controversial music opinions thread.

have you listened to Cosmic Thing?

I don't love the chorus, but every line in the verses of Love Shack is classic.

i am going on a longer bike ride now and i will listen to _cosmic thing_ the whole time as my re-education camp, alfred-- i already listened to _topaz_ 4 times yestiday tho. i think this is in my head, and damn the b-52s earned and deserve this!

lol

impossible for me to hate Love Shack, another song that I hear in my head on a daily basis

Wow, XTC did better than I thought they would.

And yeah, I adore "Love Shack," although "Roam" is far better.

21 Mary's Danish - Don't Crash the Car Tonight 2

Glad someone else voted for it! Other candidate was "Interesting Drug"...

"Love Shack" is great but can buy it being overexposed.

A lot of tracks mentioned in this thread actually do shows up next year. "Roam", "Fool's Gold" "Head On" ect. I was thinking about doing the 90s, peaking at the list, it does seem to have enough there but it really could be any Alternative Rock radio station in the 90s. If I do it it will be next summer.

Ok i listened three times in full, and with excerpts of more. Overall better than I remember. Maybe I have a “totality of the circumstances” kind of problem with the album. Missing pieces, or poor development on songs that aren’t so bad.

The mixes are so all up on top (maybe it’s my soundsystem which was not great) i feel like i’m inside the hi hat and a supertight snare. And so much of the vox are spread up on top of that.

I tend not to enjoy deadbeat and topaz, whatever their sentimental merits are. Synth-washy and just sorta weak— to me.

Best song on the album? Love Shack, of course, just as i said upthread, right? Ha. It’s now my favorite. It’s maybe closest to b52s i like style-wise—the guitar is a little more riffy, the keys a little more vampy, the beats avoiding the straight stiffness around this some of this album. I will now dance and shout with enthusiasm during exposure. Second best song? Junebug, esp the raveup feels that roll around 3:40 onward.

Overall, there is a lot of chimey strummy rhythm guitar going on. Some songs could use any read lead at all. I sorta like roam, and cosmic thing, and channel z, i guess.

My non-muso non-critic ignant ted talk is done, hit the bar, get soto a negroni i’ll venmo that i’ve seen some light

huzzah!