Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Lost and Lonely Edition

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History,

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2019

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you were an angsty American teenager in the 1980s—whether in real life, or in a John Hughes movie—the rock you loved probably came from the United Kingdom, complete with droning vocals, brooding lyrics, goth hair, and black nail polish. The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division/New Order, the Smiths: All these U.K. postpunk acts were hard-pressed to score American hits in the first half of the ’80s—the era of fun-loving New Romantic bands like Duran Duran. But to Gen X teens, Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, and Morrissey were icons.

By the end of the decade, however, these bands became American hitmakers, especially after Billboard launched the music bible’s first alternative rock chart. Depeche Mode sold out a California stadium. New Order dominated dancefloors. The Smiths’ Johnny Marr became a guitar god, Morrissey an MTV crush object. And finally, in 1989, the Cure—dark, doomy, and moody as ever—were challenging Janet Jackson for the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Just in time for Halloween, Hit Parade tells the story of how spooky, spidery, U.K. mope-rock became chart-conquering pop.

Podcast production by Justin D. Wright.

Hosted by Chris Molanphy

Follow @cmolanphy on Twitter / https://www.twitter.com/cmolanphy

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:09.0	Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from
0:15.6	coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series?
0:23.8	On today's show, last month's edition of Hit Parade took us back three decades to the fall of 1989.
0:33.3	In this episode, we're going to stay at the exact same moment in pop chart history.
0:39.4	You may recall, in that early fall of 89, the song topping the Billboard Hot 100
0:45.8	was the first single from Janet Jackson's new album, Rhythm Nation, called Miss You Much.
0:55.6	But in the middle of its four-week run at number one, right behind Miss You Much was a rather unlikely number two smash by a band that could not have sounded much different from Janet Jackson. Where Miss You Much was exuberant,
1:14.3	danceable, and romantic, the song in the runner-up slot was moody, introverted, self-deprecating,
1:21.9	and, in its own way, also very romantic. In fact, that number two hit was literally called Lovesome.
1:35.0	The Cure, a band from the town of Crawley, England,
1:40.4	had turned post-punk and goth culture into stadium-packing rock,
1:45.9	and even in this moment, chart-conquering pop.
1:53.4	But they were not alone in 1989.
1:57.6	Just weeks earlier, in the dog days of summer, a trio from Northampton, England, called Love and Rockets, had reached the top three on the U.S. charts with a catchy, sexy, somewhat spooky goth-pop song called So Alive.
2:25.5	That same summer, in U.S. dance clubs, a group of former punks turned goths turned synth rockers from Manchester called New Order, were commanding
2:32.6	the floor with pulsating music, aggressive bass lines,
2:36.8	and emo lyrics.
2:47.0	And near the end of 1989, debuting on the Hot 100 was a new single from a band from Basilden,
2:55.4	England. Like The Cure, Depeche Mode had turned doomy, angsty, and dramatic new wave music
3:03.5	into stadium-packing rock. Just one year prior, in fact, they'd sold out the Rose Bowl.
3:11.3	And this new Depeche Mode hit had the provocatively sacrilegious title, Personal Jesus.
	...

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