Billboard's Number One Modern Rock Songs - 1992

i kinda love "someone to shove," still blast that one whenever it comes on the radio

could have easily gone for "digging in the dirt" too, though

I voted for The Cure's "HIgh," which sounds swirlier and gooier than ever. Otherwise this is a good list, more varied than the year before and what came afterwards.

I'd rank the rest:

Moz - Tomorrow
Peter Gabriel - Digging in the Dirt
U2 - One
Talking Heads - Sax and Violins
REM

there are some great songs here

ah, college

Charlatans UK - Weirdo

I used to own this album, but it's still a wtf moment to remember that this bit of post-Manchester charted so high.

Stone Roses reached #2 on the same chart in '94, go fig

i loved both those charlans and stone roses songs (talking about love spreads right?). lots of good songs on this list, really.

yeah meant "love spreads" -- i swear that's their biggest song in america, or at least the only one i still hear on the radio regularly here

"Drive" but "Weirdo" is great! It got lots of 120 Minutes plays at the time...or Alternative Nation or whatever it was called by then.

"Drive" deserves a vote even if this thread was started by you.

Two songs off of the Until the End of the World soundtrack? (That album also got me into Can, and briefly into Crime and the City Solution…)

This has also been the poll where I've gotten closest to knowing all the songs without looking any up—Charlatans is the only blank spot.

I voted for 10,000 Maniacs just to piss everyone else off. Although that album may be their best-produced one.

friday wins

I just want to call upon you all to go listen to "Blood Makes Noise" before you vote

^^ I think that's what I'd vote for, actually.

I only know seven of these by name?

"Blood Makes Noise" is very cool -- maybe the only time I've thought Mitchell Froom's clankety-clank Tom-Waits-at-the-K-Mart production ethos worked.

I thought this was kinda a low point for a lot of these bands/musicians listed ... actually the R.E.M. song, now that I think about it, was ok ...

Also: Peter Gabriel's two (!) number ones are, I think, the last time an old geezer topped the chart.

yeah, I don't think Bowie or Leonard Cohen got that far up.

More props for Blood Makes Noise & Weirdo, tho there are a wealth of great singles on this list. I'll have to think on this one.

"I'd be happy just to get your attention."

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

What a deflating video! I wanted to say something good about this song, and remembered there being a video so I looked it up, and.... It was pretty shocking at the time to see a guy from CVB on MTV, even if it was just 120 Minutes (I know "Eye of Fatima" had a video but this was in much heavier rotation). But now, head shop chic looks bizarre and gauche (check out the eye ring). Still, it's a good song, particularly when Lowery sings with a little slacker urgency in the last minute or so.

i voted REM but should have voted cracker

Voted Lou. I dunno, this was the year I was introduced to 120 minutes but these selections were the songs that I'd fast-forward through.

"What's Good" still gets pretty heavy rotation from me on a death-and-dying themed playlist) and I love "These Are the Days". I could still listen to "Drive", "Somebody to Shove", and "Blood Makes Noise", but am not actively going to seek them out.

Is there a name for the dance that the dancer from the "Weirdo" video is doing around 1:30? Reminds me of the Do the Right Thing title sequence.

Wanted to vote FNM but Drive is my favourite REM song. Only one shitty grunge-lite song in the year after Nevermind? I'm surprised.

whoa i had no idea suzanne scored a number 1

that whole album is amazing. 99.9

There WERE a few great songs there! I thought briefly about going for the Cracker song or "Digging in the Dirt"...I also really loved "Blood Makes Noise" at the time (though today it does seem more like a triumph of production than a triumph of songwriting). In the end though had to go with my heart and vote for "Friday" as well. Pure semtimentality, I know, but no apologies.

i remember '92 was the year i started watching 120 minutes and i remember when they'd run down the MR top 10 before the commercial break the first one i remember is either "digging in the dirt" or "blood makes noise."

I voted for 10,000 Maniacs just to piss everyone else off.

i like a bunch, but yeah i think only "blood makes noise" represents anything like a career peak. i really like her two froom albums, it was the best setting for her voice and i think she responded lyrically by becoming more allusive and less hamhanded.

the Maniacs song isn't bad at all! The only total dud on the list is the XTC song, but "Someone to Shove" and the Cracker thing are close.

"blood makes noise" also has a very lol '92 video.

that's right i've seen that

(BTW when I say "triumph of production" I don't necessarily mean it as a bad thing - after all, MBV certainly was a triumph of production too. But with "Blood Makes Noise", I can't remember anything but the clanking riff and the words "blood makes noise". No other words, no other melody. So ultimately the majority of the song is forgettable to me, whereas I can remember almost everything about many of the other songs on the list, 17 years later. And I played the SHIT out of that Vega album.)

really? i can sing the whole thing, right now. it was like suzanne's little version of a rap

i mean, i liked the production great and all, but it's a good song too.

What about the damn bass hook? I can't remember another Vega song with one so strong.

FWIW I can remember a little bit more of the album's title track, and snippets of some of the other songs. I recall all of them fondly and would definitely listen to the album again.

xp Yeah, I can remember the bass hook (which I tie in with the clanking).

her voice was a perfect fit for the title track. also "in liverpool"

awww '92... first time I know every single song on one of these polls. As other people have said, thank you 120 minutes

I really liked the Sugarcubes one at the time but I should listen to it again.

Peter Pumpkinhead taught me that it was wrong to murder JFK, and sad:

"Oh my oh my oh! Don't it make you want to cry oh?"

Sort of amazed by how little I care for these songs, since 1992 is just post my peak college-listening years. Voted for "Mysterious Ways," the last interesting-sounding U2 single; I still respond well to the opening crunch of that song. Could have easily voted for "These are the days," but the fact that I can't actually remember anything but the chorus, just a vague sense of warmth, puts it behind U2. "Drive," is the first bad single REM ever released, dirgy and thin; and in general, lots of songs on this list by people who I generally like and who released much better songs than the ones represented here.

true to some extent but a lot of these songs are also the last ok/good singles put out by these bands

"Good Stuff" is a mad underrated single, and one of their slinkiest.

hate that song so much, but at least it isn't "Tell It Like It T-I-S"

not a big fan of the original version of Good Stuff but the remix included on that recent Rhino B52s comp is pretty killer

I'm not much of a fan of "Good Stuff" either but I bet you'd all love the operatic version of it that I sing around the house; hounds begin to howl.

how i ranked them a couple years ago:

high
one
peter pumpkinhead
teen angst
somebody to shove
midlife crisis
friday i'm in love
what's good
tomorrow
sax and violins
good stuff
mysterious ways
hit
these are days
drive
steam
blood makes noise
digging in the dirt
weirdo

some awesome, awesome shit here and "weirdo"'s the only one i'd give less than 7 or 6 to

said at the time that "high" was my favorite modern rock #1 ever and that's probably still the case

"Peter Pumpkinhead" ranked third?! Wow.

I don't understand why so many people are rating that XTC at all. But then, I might just go for the FNM vote, so we might be different demographics.

Hooray!

I was kind of amazed that most of these songs charted higher than hits by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, RHCP, and Metallica. But it does seem that their hits were either released in 1991, released later than this, or just didn't place as high as "Weirdo" by Charlatans UK.

Voting FNM, really like "Digging In the Dirt", "Tomorrow", and "Peter Pumpkinhead", and don't know what anyone sees in the Cracker or Lou Reed.

Nirvana got to #3 ("Come As You Are") and #25 ("Lithium"), and Pearl Jam got to #21 ("Evenflow") and #5 ("Jeremy"), and RHCP got to #6 ("Under The Bridge"), #15 ("Suck My Kiss"), #19 ("Breaking The Girl"), and #7 ("Behind The Sun")

Metallica didn't chart on Modern Rock until 1996, Soundgarden didn't make any U.S. singles charts until 1994.

FNM pretty far ahead of everything else

It surprises me that "Jeremy" and "Under the Bridge" could have charted lower than those Charlatans UK, Sugarcubes, Suzanne Vega, or 10 000 Maniacs songs, none of which I can recall ever hearing. I'm still mystified by what these charts were based on. A handful of commercial alternative stations in California and the NE Coast??

Was Metallica considered modern rock in 1996 but not in 1991/92? (I'm guessing the answer is "yes".)

During the first several years of Modern Rock Tracks, the chart featured music that did not receive commercial radio airplay anywhere but on Modern Rock radio stations, of which there were few.

So yeah, then?

Voted Soul Asylum, but the Lou Reed is great too.

I'm not a big XTC fan despite my post-punk adorations but I love me some "peter pumpkinhead"

Pumpkin pie is tastier.

don't forget MTV, Sundar, which at that point probably had way more power than rock radio in terms of breaking rock bands or forming the public impression about who was a big deal

Every song on this list (except FNM, oddly, and Lou Reed) got massive airplay on my college radio station.

It's possible I didn't hate the Cracker or REM and Soul Asylum songs at the time, but more possible I didn't hate the Vega one. I'm voting for her.

American college radio stations are/were really like this? (Wikipedia does seem to suggest this.) These are the schedules for the Carleton and Ottawa stations. I couldn't really say that anything gets massive airplay on them. The stations around Detroit and Windsor do seem a bit more indie rock-ish though. (The Buffalo station plays NPR and jazz.)

Ha, OK, I just remembered being hit by a wave of alt/indie rock on the radio when my drive through upstate NY took me through the Finger Lakes region.

Well, modern/alternative rock was a much smaller and less homogenous format than it became in the years that followed, I imagine there was a lot more variation from station to station before the big Nirvana-led consensus congealed.

this is ilx, the cure will lol WALK this poll

that song wasn't very good ...

"Peter Pumpkinhead" ranked third?! Wow.

i can see why someone wouldn't like how it takes all our messianic martyr stories and blurs them together into a jingle, but the effect can give me chills by the end.

American college radio stations are/were really like this?

It's not so much college stations as commercial modern-rock stations. (Which ballooned in number over '92-'93.)

i can see why someone wouldn't like how it takes all our messianic martyr stories and blurs them together into a jingle,

i can see why someone wouldn't like it because it's kinda bland and forgettable.

Miccio's describing a Pet Shop Boys song that Andy Partridge never wrote.

FNM without hesitation

midlife crisis, no question

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Things I like: Both U2's, Soul Asylum, 10,000 Maniacs, Morrissey, the Cure's "Friday" and REM.

things i like: Both U2's, Soul Asylum, the Cure's "
High", 10,000 Maniacs, Morrissey, the Cure's "Friday" and REM (might like the soul asylum song, just don't know if i've heard it)

"weirdo" is the only thing here that i distinctly do not like, but i will usually rep for charlatans in general (or at least 2 or 3 of their albums)

voted for "drive"

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

Every song got a vote!

Alternative Nation lives!

I know we're about to wrap these countdowns up, but just wanted to say how glad I am that "Midlife Crisis" won this poll. Listened to it five minutes ago and it still rocks 20 years later.

can I add: the top ten finalists are the most consistently varied and excellent of the decade? I look at the list and go, wow.

Yeah... The Charlatans song is pretty badass too. And that's my favorite Maniacs song.

Man, as much as I loved Drive and Somebody to Shove, I totally wouldve had to vote for "Good Stuff"--I wonder if Spotify has that album

yeah, but title track and "Revolution Earth" are not available :(

good stuff is weirdly one of the very few b52's album they have. even better though they do not have the actual track 'good stuff'.

every time you speak
a pearl falls in my cup
i turn away, the pearl melts
before I drink it up

oh yeah

Good Stuff was one of the first dozen or so CDs i ever bought. i didn't even own another B-52s album for years and years afterwards.

Good Stuff was for years easily found in used cd shops.

but i bought it new!

wish they'd pursued this direction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DaGzeOim5Q

I constantly played Cosmic Thing, Good Stuff, and Bouncing off the Satellites p much on constant rotation throughout my junior high years; Bouncing less, because the tape I had of it had weirdly horrific sound quality that made everything sound wobbly

"Ain't It A Shame" is sooo good.

so is "Dreamland"; good call, Alfred!

Rocklobster!

posted solely because I love this pic. Seriously entertaining the idea of signing up to do a B-52's ballot poll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Xc4MXjYvc

get a LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE