WELL DONE EVERYONE! We’ve made it through 1988. But the 80s still have more to throw at us. Let’s regroup and take stock of the year – use the poll to indicate which tracks YOU would have given 6 or more out of 10 to.
And use the comments to discuss the year in general – which, as has often been mentioned in the regular comments boxes, was actually pretty damn good.
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All, 1–25, 26–50, 51–99.Back up to post. More comments: All, 1–25, 26–50, 51–99.
All the UK number ones since 1952, reviewed in order and rated by whim. As featured on Radio 2, The Times, Metro, Paul Cornell's LiveJournal, etc etc.
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B-side of ‘We Are The Pigs’!
Post-Butler Suede still occasionally managed some fantastic B-sides; Europe is our Playground, Every Monday Morning Comes, Jumble Sale Mums – and, especially, Popstar, which I always think of as a drugged-up Brett having an out-of-body experience and watching himself.
Another overlooked song from 1988: the La’s There she goes. I didn’t hear it until 1990 IIRC. Did anyone here catch it on first release (it isn’t on any of the lists above)? And is this really a 1988 vid.? If it is, did anyone see it at the time?
#48-#51. Too bad Suede won’t be troubling Popular directly, eh?
#52: I suspect most people didn’t hear it till the album in ’90; it didn’t get anywhere above Number 80 until 1989 and it only reached the Top 40 (peaking at 13) in 1990 after the album.
Thankfully it’s on a couple of ‘best songs of 1988′ lists compiled in hindsight.
I bought ‘There She Goes’ in November 1988! Its got one very good doomy B-side called ‘Who Knows?’, that never seems to get included on super-deluxe reissues of the album. It hung around the lower reaches of the charts for months and months, and when it eventually became a hit two years later its reappearance was greeted with bemused surprise from those who remembered it from the first time around. I certainly don’t remember it having that video, though, more a blurry 16mm thing shot in Liverpool backstreets.
I also saw The La’s, third on the bill in an NME-sponsered CND benefit at the Town & Country Club in March 1989, the first ever concert that I paid to see. The Darling Buds headlined, and Sandie Shaw and Bradford also played.
I remember hearing There She Goes on a Radio One session (Janice Long?) in May ’88. Loved it then, but for me it’s one of those records that down the years has lost its lustre through overexposure..
Never liked the song or the group much. Sounded purposely retro at a time when we were trying to get on with the future. Does he really sing “Jason Donovan”?
A magnificent 2 out of 19. S-Express and Belinda Carlisle.
So, the House of Love. They saeem to be top of every magazine/inkie list for 1988. I don’t I’ve ever heard “Destroy the Heart”. I know very little about them.
were they any good?
do people, i.e. the popular comments crew, still listen to them?
Now you’re talking – I LOVED The House of Love when I was sixteen and seventeen. That first album is like a classic rock primer for a 1988 indie kid – This is what you can do as a four-piece guitar band. There has never been an album that I have more anticipated in my life than that one with the butterfly on the cover, my appetite especially whetted by the EP of I Don’t Know Why I Love You with its surprisingly direct B-Sides, Clothes and Secrets, brooding and remorseful.
I still listen to them with pleasure and excitement, but the weak link is much more apparent to me as a middle aged man than as a teenager. Guy Chadwick’s lyrics set himself up as some kind of prophet or seer, but generally lack any real depth or sense of personal engagement. Its a small lexicon of profound imagery – fire, heart, love, Jesus – shuffled around in every song. Combine that with Chadwick’s obvious discomfort at being a frontman (and advanced age) and you can see why they were superseded by the Roses and the Mondays before they ever really got going as a leading act.
I always remember an Adam Sweeting review of a HoL concert at the Albert Hall that I attended, describing Guy Chadwick as having the volcanic stage presence of “a mild-mannered matchstick”
Destroy The Heart also topped the NME Readers Poll for 1988, wheras MM readers voted for Tower of Strength by The Mission. I’ll look up the full results in my old copies when I’m next at my parents’ house.
Dear me but “Tower of Strength” is so U2 it hurts.
@58, amen. Their 2004 comeback album didn’t set me on fire, but Jesus, I sure did love the Fontana/butterfly album with all my heart. One of my early ’90s favourites, and it’s lasted well for me.
(All this talk of Suede and House of Love and shoegazing only reminds me how utterly my tastes diverge from the UK number ones from here until about 1995. Mustn’t say more, or the Jive Bunny will be angry.)
House of Love? Terrible band – sub-U2 nonsense. Saw them supporting the Primitives at the Marquee in ’86 and decided I wanted them to do well because I’d ‘discovered’ them. Quite liked the original version of Shine On. Liked every subsequent single much, much less, until I spent several weeks puzzling over the first album before I realised the reason I was struggling with it was that it was no cop at all: stiff, pompous, fun-free.
Chadwick is a godawful singer and – as already noted – an absolutely shocking lyricist. Great comedy character, though – his embrace of E-culture is the high point of any account of Creation records.
I loved the first album, wasn’t really keen on anything post-Terry Bickers. They seemed a very ordinary band after he left.
Semi-funny note about Suede’s boffo first single: I misheard The Drowners chorus’s ‘taking me over’ as ‘taking the anchor’. It made sense… drowning, boats, anchors, but it also supported smutty hypotheses about what sex act might be being alluded to. I was quite disappointed when I learned the real lyric just a few years ago.
@BillySmart, 54. Well done on your early La’s-spotting.
@45, @46, @47
re: Rock and Roll Friend. My memory is that this was just a matter of timing – the song was written after the album had been recorded, so was only available as a B-side. But I remember the sleeve notes for the beggars banquet best-of making a bit of a thing about how many great songs they’d ‘thrown away’ (perhaps we could say given away?) as B-sides so they may have been happy to build the legend up.
@57 re: The House of Love. I still listen to them, albeit partly for the memories, as I must know every note of the first album, and lots of the rest. I remember being very disappointed by the butterfly album / Fontana – on the grounds that I’d heard much of it before (peel sessions, blind from the cassette version of the first album) and that even I could see that the Beatles and the Stones was total drivel. The album Babe Rainbow a late high point, IMHO.
Two amusing Stuart Maconie observations about ‘The Beatles & The Stones’;
‘”The Beatles and The Stones/ sucked the marrow out of bones” – Sadly no photographic evidence has yet been found to support this assertion.’
‘”The Beatles and The Stones/ Put the V in Vietnam” – So what was it called before 1962? Ietnam?’
Re 64: God, I was disappointed when I read the lyric sheet for the first Suede album and discovered that the chorus of Metal Mickey was “She sells heart! She sells meat!”. My own version “She’s so hard! She’s so fleet!” fitted Suede’s perceived hallmark ambiguous romanticism much better.
I think HoL’s glorious moment in the sun was more to do with Alan McGee and his hyperbole rather than any lasting talent. Although “Destroy The Heart” does have a soupcon of jangly charm.
The thing about ‘Destroy The Heart’ at the time though, was that it sounded Sturm und Drang dynamic, rather than Soup Dragons weedy-jangly. It was often played along with ‘You Made Me Realise’ and ‘Gigantic’ on the 1988 Billy turntable and didn’t sound out of place next to those singles.
@62, fair enough that you don’t like HoL, I know many don’t, but in what way are they “sub-U2″? They sound nothing like U2 to me: Chadwick was nothing like Bono as a singer, they never aspired to stadium-filling rock, they didn’t do sub-ambient, roots rock or pomo reinvention… apart from both being guitar rock of some kind, I can’t see it.
I have a bunch of early HoL stuff on vinyl, sent to me for free and unrequested, so assiduous was Mr McGhee about getting easily swayed critics onside. I don’t think I played any of them more than a couple of times ; maybe I should sell them and make lots* of unearned money.
*Yes I know.
HoL – absolutely tremendous live*, always rather disappointing on record, due I think to undernourished production.
*I once went to see them do three London gigs in one night – 1990 or possibly 1991 – at UCL, the Town & Country Club (I think; it could have been the Camden Underworld) and finally the Dome in Tufnell Park. Entirely different set lists for each gig and they were splendid.
The HoL Peel session with ‘Love in a Car’ soundtracked my A-level revision so their corny majesty will always have a place in my heart. Saw their reunion gig a couple of years ago and Mad Terry B was still great. Funny how everyone expected them to be huge around the end of 88, they appeared on the end of year South Bank Show special and I remember Bill Drummond writing an article in Blitz magazine saying they would be the next Pink Floyd or something. Also predicting that a shapeshifting S-Express would set the agenda for the next 5 years of UK pop.
By 88 I had finally kicked the NME habit and taken up full time with MM – not because I liked the Young Gods or whatever, but just because Reynolds, Stubbs, Wilde, Roberts etc were so clearly leagues better writers, whatever they were getting worked up about, than Maconie etc. The terrible fall off in the second half of the year must have contributed to me finally packing in my Smash Hits subscription in favour of the Face/Blitz/i-D etc.
…whereas what happened was that a shapeshifting Bill Drummond would set the agenda for the next 5 years of UK pop! Respect to Mark Moore though; he was in on the ground floor with the vogueing thing (see McLaren’s remarkably underrated Waltz Darling album) and one of his S’Express colleagues makes a return to Popular at the turn of the millennium.
We recently found a used copy of the second S’Express album, Intercourse (which I don’t recall ever seeing new in the shops at the time – was it even reviewed anywhere?) with “Mantra For A State Of Mind,” “Nothing To Lose,” etc. Fine stuff.
re 69 “she sells meat” is a tremendous line, i’ve always thought – one of suede’s very best stabs at the unspecifiably dirty.
on the disappointing butterfly album, i seem to remember that when ‘never’ first came out it was scorned by fans as an act of terrible betrayal, like it was ‘self portrait’ or something (or at least ‘ouija board, ouija board’). HOL were indeed great live though – their show at the hummingbird in birmingham (supported by some have fins, aficionados will note) was the third proper gig i ever went to i think and made a big impression.
i get the feeling from this thread (and my general sense of the majority demographics here) that i’m not the only one for whom the next few years saw the charts as an interesting sideshow to cud b-sides that were at the centre of the pop universe. it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the comments threads.
‘Never’ was like a dress rehearsal for the great Stone Roses ‘One Love’ letdown of 1990… And both of those singles have got fantastic B-sides (‘Soft as Fire/ Safe’ and ‘Something’s Burning’) that outshine their slapdash public faces.
I ticked 7, 2 or 3 of them very marginal. I was listening to indie, hip hop and house back then, and I probably saw a few of the bands in some of those lists – Wedding Present probably, maybe the Fall, almost certainly the Flatmates, who I knew very slightly.
Re 72: chiming guitars (as opposed to the fuzzy or jangly option taken by their Creation contemporaries) and stentorian vocals plus grandiose yearning equalled U2 to me. And I think Chadwick aspired very much to stadium filling…
What I think I mean is if you stand them next to the actual U2, they don’t sound that epic. If you place them alongside early Primal Scream or Slaughter Joe, they do…
Interesting to see the stark difference between the disco fodder at the top and the big blustery ballads at the bottom here.
So what WERE or are people’s favourite ballads of 1988?
Was Maconie writing much for NME in 88? I know he’d arrived because I remember him — very amiable fellow — but I don’t recall that he was setting its tone and agenda yet. Though it’s really strange how distorted your idea is of how a magazine comes across to readers, when you’re actually on the inside.
I made pretty much exactly the same switch as Stevie at almost the same age – gave up on NME, then when I got back into the music press it was Melody Maker circa early 92: I decided I preferred style over content (where content = the specific bands covered, not the ideas about those bands) and MM had all the style.
Maconie did set a lot of the tone on the NME in 89 – he, Andrew Collins and Swells were the joke-tellers. Back then I liked his comedy pieces a lot.
This Maconie review is of indirect nostalgic relevance http://home2.btconnect.com/iconic-trash/trigger-happy.html though I wouldn’t rep for the writing on it.
Surely everyone’s favourite ballad of 1988 is the one I should be writing about right now instead of thinking about the House of Love ;)
NME was very much in transition in 1988: there’d been a very significant management purge of the editorial team in 1987, and the new editor was putting together a new team and establishing a new direction which very likely didn’t gel until 1989. I actually applied for the job that James Brown got — assistant editor — but I didn’t get it: possibly because I was interviewed IN THE PUB which totally threw me (I doubt I was seriously in the running: as I recall part of my pitch was “raise the quality of writing”, which wouldn’t actually have excluded “funny”). A whole bunch of contributors quietly left at this point; I was able to fashion a noisy exit because I am a massive drama queen.
fave ballad of 88
From the archives: these were my favourite singles of 1988:
1. left to my own devices – pet shop boys
2. right back to you – ten city
3. alphabet street – prince
4. buffalo stance – neneh cherry
5. can you party – royal house
6. fast car – tracy chapman
7. teardrops – womack & womack
8. reachin’ – phase II
9. fairplay – soul II soul
10. ye ke ye ke – mory kante (original/afro-acid remix)
11. it takes two – rob base & dj e-z rock
12. first we take manhattan – leonard cohen
13. it’s alright – sterling void
14. the only way is up – yazz & the plastic population
15. theme from s-express – s-express
16. follow the leader – eric b & rakim
17. jenifa (taught me) – de la soul
18. know how – young mc
19. cars and girls – prefab sprout
20. every day is like sunday – morrissey
And DJ Punctum’s token classic ’88 single waiting to be rediscovered: “Don’t Scandalize Mine” by Sugar Bear.
I miss Champion Records; the label was always a guarantee of quality, like ECM.
#89 I’m sure it gets rediscovered every 10 years or so and never takes, which is a shame – I first heard it in the mid-90s thanks to some “how on earth were these not smashes” feature or other.
Little admin note: I’ve finally tracked down and zapped the bug that was resetting vote counts very high in older polls with multiple answers like this. (This was making all the old polls appear with tiny bars, all in proportion, but scaled down so that the top result looked like it had something small like only 20% of the vote, etc)
Re: HoL and Suede. Didn’t both have the marrow sucked out of their bones when their rather talented guitarists left after an album and a half (ish)? Always thought they were very similar in many respects, Guy C and Brett A running their bands like military leaders (Chadders had an army upbringing, after all) and using the same key words in most of their songs (jesus/plastic/fire vs trash/wild/council flat). Both fond of singing “so young”, which neither were (ouch).
Metal Mickey lyric – snap, except I thought it was “she’s so hard, she’s so clean”, which is not really the kind of girl Mr Anderson was describing. Also thought So Young’s chorus was “let’s kiss the coppers” and The Wild Ones were “running with the tarts tonight”. His diction was rather limp.
@92 Sacrilege! I loved Dog Man Star and feared the worst when Butler left, but was absolutely obsessed with Coming Up, my favourite Suede album bar none. Listened to it non-stop on my walkman for months, backed on C90 with Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers.
Butler’s solo efforts, on the other hand…
W&W’s Teardrops was no.1 in Holland for SIX WEEKS. Shame on the UK. Is there a Dutch Popular out there somewhere?
Re 93: I was a little harsh on ‘The Boy Oakes’-era Suede (but only a little). Yes, Bickers and Butler both suffered from Marr syndrome (again that’s a LITTLE harsh on Butler, but basically true).
@94 No argument from me on the albums after Coming Up, but Oakes was the last one to blame.
Those Norwegian number ones in full:
Belinda Carlisle – Heaven Is…
Billy Ocean – Get Outta My Dreams
A Ha – Stay On These Roads
Prince – Alphabet Street
Ofra Haza – Im Nin Alu
Tindrum – Drums Of War
Viggo Sandvik – Fisking I Valdres
Europe – Superstitious
Transvision Vamp – I Want Your Love
Vidar Theisen & the Retrievers – Heavy Metal
Koreana – Hand In Hand
One 2 Many – Downtown
Sam Brown – Stop
Favourite ballads of 1988:
Perhaps “Love Is Contagious” by Tajeh Sevelle,
Perhaps “Come Into My Life” by Joyce Sims.
(I suppose if the original release of “Stop” by Sam Brown counts here, that too)
Very much less sappy than the high-charting ones… My, didn’t the quality of number ones drop off as the year went on though, after such a vaguely promising spring and winter.
Worst top 40 single of the year? “Soldier of Love” by Donny Osmond, perhaps?
And “Destroy The Heart” – a fantastic explosion. Best number 76 hit ever. Was quite fond of some of the HoL’s later stuff, too.
NME Readers Poll – Best Single of 1988
1. Destroy The Heart – The House of Love
2. Sidewalking – The Jesus & Mary Chain
3. Everyday Is Like Sunday – Morrissey
4. Suedehead – Morrissey
5. Crash – The Primitives
6. The Mercy Seat – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
7. Desire – U2
8. Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? – The Wedding Present
9. Christine – The House of Love
10. Fine Time – New Order
Melody Maker Readers Poll – Best Single of 1988
1. Tower of Strength – The Mission
2. Desire – U2
3. Martha’s Harbour – All About Eve
4. Christine – The House of Love
5. Everyday Is Like Sunday – Morrissey
6. Moonchild – Fields of the Nephilim
7. The Mercy Seat – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
8. Crash – The Primitives
9. A Wish Away – The Wonderstuff
10. You Made Me Realise – My Bloody Valentine
=. Cathouse – Danielle Dax