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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number one? Series on today's show. The last month's edition of Hit Parade took us back three decades to the fall of 1989. In this episode, we're going to stay at the exact same moment in pop chart history. You may recall in that early fall of 89, the song topping the Billboard Hot 100 was the first single from Janet Jackson's new album Rhythm Nation, called Ms. You Much. But in the middle of its four week run at number one, right behind Ms. Yous 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, danceable and romantic, the song in the runner up slot was moving, introverted, self deprecating, and in its own way, also very romantic. In fact, that number two hit was literally called Lovesong. The Cure, a band from the town of Crawley, England, had turned post punk and goth culture into stadium packing rock and even in this moment, chart conquering pop. But they were not alone. In 1989, 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 US Charts with a catchy, sexy, somewhat spooky, spooky goth pop song called so Alive. That same summer in US Dance clubs, a group of former punks turned goths turned synth rockers from Manchester called New Order were commanding the floor with pulsating music, aggressive bass lines and emo lyrics. And near the end of 1989, debuting on the Hot 100, was a new single from a band from Basildon, England. Like the Cure, Depeche Mode had turned do me angsty and dramatic new wave music into stadium packing rock. Just one year prior, in fact, they'd sold out the Rose bowl, and this new Depeche Mode hit had the provocatively sacrilegious title Personal Jesus. All of these hits were not only penetrating the pop charts, they were also commanding Billboard's newest chart, modern rock tracks, which chronicled the music that used to be the province of American college radio, but was rapidly moving from the left of the dial to the center. The Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order. These bands were modern Rock Kings in 1988 and 89. And so was another morose and rather arch young man, the former frontman of the Manchester band the Smiths, who went by a single Morrissey Every Day is like Sunday. The 1980s were already strong for British pop in the US the first half of the decade, led by pompadoured new romantic bands, had even been dubbed the second British Invasion. But there was a major difference between the more decadent New wave that stormed the charts in the first half of the 1980s and the darker rock toward the end of the decade. The music got heavier, the lyrics gloomier, and yet Even these gloomy late 80s British rock bands were at root producing irresistible pop music that was waiting to break. Whether played on jangly guitars. Or thundering guitars. Or icy synthesizers, These songs went from seemingly uncommercial to music for the masses, not only in England, but eventually in America. These were the moody rockers who helped turn new wave into alternative, before grunge, before industrial, before electronica. Today on Hit Parade, we chart the breakthrough of the subgenre that's been called everything from mope rock to goth rock to sad bastard music. The moment when this melodic melancholia began turning platinum in the United States. It has been said that the British are a more self deprecating people than we Americans are. But three decades ago on the Billboard charts, if I may paraphrase Morrissey, the so called Pope of mope, Heaven knows we were all miserable now. And that's where your hit parade marches today, the week ending October 21, 1980, when the Cure's Love Song reached an improbable number two on Billboard's Hot 100, marking a new pop peak for doomy dark and gothic British alternative rock on the American charts. Okay buddy, I was just trying to cheer us up. So go ahead, put on some old sad bastard music. See if I can. In the movie High fidelity, released in 2000, when Jack Black's record store clerk character Barry complains about sad bastard music, he's just been confronted by some sullen indie rock by a Scottish band, Bell and Sebastian. But when British author Nick Hornby first invoked the term in his book High Fidelity in 1995, he could just as easily have been talking about any number of bands from the United Kingdom. Over the prior two decades. This facetious term has been applied to several gloomy, wan and melodramatic UK rock bands of the late 20th century.
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Two lovers entwined, pass Me by and Heaven Knows I'm Miserable now.
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The fact is, there is no one term for the British alternative rock that crossed over in America in the 1980s and 1990s. Some call it goth rock, but not all of it is terribly gothic. Some use mope rock, which, besides being snarky, belies how bright and catchy much of this music actually is. These bands are not even unified by their primary instruments. Some of the leading lights of UK alternative rock in this period were fundamentally guitar rock bands, while others almost exclusively favored the synthesizer. Some egg even converted themselves from guitar combos into synth pop acts with a dark edge. Let's just say this and you'll have to trust me as a generation Xer of a certain age, if you went to high school and college when I did and you liked one of these bands, you probably liked them all. Maybe you were the class nerd or the one at school with black nail polish or eyeliner, no matter what your gender. Maybe you were a jock but also secretly emo, and this was the music you played in the sanctity of your bedroom or Walkman. Especially if you were an American teen in the 80s or early 90s and you loved these bands. Their relative lack of popularity at the time was the point. Call it what you will, these bands all fell under the rubric of what raw critics and the music industry called very broadly post punk. Because no matter what the prior emergence of punk, a much louder, angrier music made all of this dark rock possible. The Emergence of Punk in the movie the mid-1970s in both America and England was a seminal event, but it was particularly seismic across the United Kingdom. The emergence of the sex pistols in 1976 inspired numerous would be musicians, including in provincial areas outside of London, members of 22 of the groups we will discuss in this episode. New Order and the Smiths, were present at the Pistol's legendary June 1976 show at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall, a gig where fewer than 50 people were in the audience but seemingly half of them formed bands. But the bands who would eventually lead the post punk and goth rock movements were not only wedded to the sound of punk. Virtually all would owe a stylistic debt to such legendary classic rockers as the iconoclastic David Bowie. And the stylistically bold glam rock combo Roxy Music. Every song to tear it, the bands of post punk would combine punk's angularity and economy with the theatricality and moodiness of glam and art rock. To be sure, early on, the bands that formed in the Sex Pistol's wake sounded more like punk. Joy Division were a quartet of Manchester natives, Mancunians in British parlance. They formed after seeing that Sex pistols gig in 1976, Joy Division's subversive satirical band Name was taken from the Nazis name for their sexual slavery department at their formation in 1977. Joy Division's clipped punk energy made them sound at first like most British bands formed in the pistol's wake. But they were also paying attention to other contemporaries who were broadening the boundaries of punk, like Susie and the Banshees. The London group fronted by Susan Janet Ballian, AKA Siouxsie Sioux, had the energy of punk, but from the start layered in tribal drumming and sinister vocals that would anticipate the sound sound of gothic rock. Decades later, Pitchfork magazine would write, without Siouxsie sue, goth might never have taken root. Inspired in part by Susie, Joy Division's sound evolved, becoming more distinctive and spookier. Two performers were especially vital to the sound of Joy Division and would cast a long shadow. Bassist Peter Hook, who played his bass as if it were a lead guitar, and vocalist Ian Curtis, who began singing in a foreboding baritone. Both of these sounds, intensive bass and gloomy vocals, would become core elements of post punk and goth rock. And by 1978 and 79, these Gothic elements began cropping up on other British rock singles. Bauhaus, a quartet from Northampton named after the iconic early 20th century German art school, helped define goth rock in the popular imagination. Their single Bela Lugosi's Dead in the late summer of 1979 would serve as a skeletal blueprint for the entire goth subculture. Flashing ahead four years just before Bauhaus broke up, the group would perform an immortal version of their classic in the 1983 vampire movie the Hunger. Bauhaus would prove deeply influential despite lasting just a few years. But another proto goth band emerging in this period would have far greater longevity. Robert Smith, a young guitarist and songwriter from Crawley, had been playing in bands with schoolmates since the early 70s. By 1976, inspired by the emergence of of the Sex Pistols and by early post punks like Susie Sue Smith joined a group who called themselves Malice and eventually the Easy Cure. The self effacing but quietly assertive Smith never intended to sing, but he wound up with the task when a string of vocalists fell out of the group. He would later tell Musician Magazine, I hated my voice, but I didn't hate it more than I hated everyone else's voice. Smith shortened the band's name from Easy Cure to the Cure, and they began performing a tight brand of post punk that matched Joy Division in its minor key moodiness, particularly on Killing an Arab, a lyrical adaptation of the philosophical novel the Stranger by Albert Camus. This single, whose provocative title Robert Smith Would take pains to explain was a literary reference, not a racist. Manifesto nonetheless helped establish the Cure's propulsive, enigmatic sound. But like Joy Division, the Cure in this phase were punk as much as post punk. Even more than on Killing an Arab. On Boys Don't Cry, Robert Smith began to define the Cure's lyrical outlook. He conveyed passion by shrouding it in expressions of remorse, regret and self recrimination. Smith's voice in particular sounded morose, even when he was singing romantic, lovelorn lyrics. As catchy as Boys Don't Cry was dirge like post punk from the likes of the Cure, Joy Division and Bauhaus was not chart music at the end of the 70s, not even in their native England. It would take until the dawn of the 80s for one of these bands to score an actual UK top 40 hit. And by that time that band had reached a sad conclusion. Love Will Tear Us Apart would prove a blueprint for all of modern and alternative rock in the decade to come. The song reached number 13 on the UK charts in the summer of 1980, and it even made the lower rungs of the American dance charts. It was a down tempo dance track for depressives, a gloriously sad song. Saddest of all was that when it crested on the charts, its vocalist was gone. In the spring of 1980, singer Ian Curtis, just days before Joy Division was set to begin a tour of a music America that threatened to make the compelling but clinically depressed frontman a star, died by his own hand in his flat in cheshire. Curtis was 23 years of age. Love Will Tear Us Apart became an elegy for Joy Division itself. But remarkably, the remaining members chose to carry on. The band's guitarist, Bernard Sumner, would step forward as their vocalist, and by 1981, the former Joy Division became New Order. They would soon evolve away from the more punk derived sound of Joy Division and find greater commercial success. But their contemporaries in post punk were, if anything, getting darker. When the Cure finally broke into the UK top 40 in 1980, it was with the brooding, rumbling single A Forest. Robert Smith had determined that full on gothic rock was the core of the Cure's sound. But his pop instincts meant that even the Cure's darkest singles were swooning and majestic. Shut Up Sometime Charlotte Sometimes, a 1981 single that preceded the Cure's darkest album yet, Pornography was dreamlike and desperate, and it scraped the middle rungs of the British charts. By this time, the Cure joined a wave of bands fully embracing the goth Persona. Robert Smith changed his look to a mask of white makeup, dark lipstick and eyeliner and a shock of spiky spidery hair. He had befriended Susie sue of Susie and the Banshees, who also embraced the spiky haired goth look. And as for the Banshees recordings, even as the tempos were faster, they became ever more goth in their ghoulishness. Has Roam down the Stairs spellbound reached number 22 in the UK in 1981. Goth music was gradually becoming more commercial. Two straight Susy albums, Kaleidoscope and Juju went top 10 in the UK in 1980 and 81, and the Cure's unremittingly dark Pornography made the top 10 as well in 1982. That's when Robert Smith chose to make the first major stylistic turn of his career. It is hard to overstate what a sharp turn the song let's Go To Bed was for the Cure in 1982. The band's label, Fiction Records, warned Robert Smith that it might alienate his goth fans, but Smith himself felt he needed it for his own sanity after the gloom of albums like Pornography. What was remarkable wasn't just that it was a straight ahead three minute pop song. After all, Boys Don't Cry had already been a form of punk pop as far back as 1979. Let's go to Bed was also the most cheerful synth pop Robert Smith had ever produced. Well, almost. Smith maintained his droll, doomy Persona captured in lyrics like well, I don't care if you don't and I don't want it if you don't, all embedded in a cheeky dance song about sex. In the uk, let's Go to Bed was only a modest hit, reaching number 44 in late 1982. But in America it quietly began the Cure's breakthrough. Robert Smith had picked a promising moment to go pop. For the first time since the 1960s, British bands were doing unusually well on the US charts. But the bands of this second British invasion were far more accessible than Robert Smith, even at his catchiest, Thanks to the 1981 launch of MTV. By 1983 the US airwaves and the Billboard Hot 100 were awash in British synth pop. But the preferred stream was so called New Romantic music, exemplified by the glamorous and stylistically confident Duran Duran. Like goth, New Romantic music was also a descendant of both 70s punk and the glam rock of bands like Roxy Music. And like the Goths, these MTV friendly bands piled on the makeup and piled up their hair. But the New Romantic bands leaned on the glam side of the of the post punk equation, and they made their music more overtly danceable, such as Kajagugu's top five 1983 hit Too Shy. Some new romantic bands even openly emulated the sound of American pop and R and B, most especially the soulful Culture Club, fronted by the willfully androgynous Boy George. Compared with Duran Duran, Culture Club and Kajagugu, the Cure, even at their most pop, were still a bit dour for US top 40 airplay in 1983 and 84. But America boasted not only dozens of college radio stations which would play more adventurous music. Our coastal cities also hosted major market commercial New wave stations like KROC in Los Angeles, WL LIR in Long Island, New York and Boston's wfnx. On these stations, let's Go To Bed was a smash. While these stations did not report to Billboard's Hot 100 at the time, making songs like let's Go To Bed ineligible to chart, they made the Cure stars to a generation of urban and especially suburban middle class teenagers. Having shook off his early goth blahs, Robert Smith continued to produce pop songs that fused the Cure's dark, droll profile with more playful lyrics like 1983's the Love Cats. And more danceable beats like the Walk. In the uk, both of these were sizable hits. The walk reached the top 10, Love Cats, the top 15 in America. Both were among the most played songs on new wave radio stations in 1983. And the Cure were not the only post punk and act edging closer to dance music at this time. In 1983, the rechristened New Order issued their album Power, Corruption and Lies, a seminal blend of rock instruments and electronic rhythms. The album was anchored by the groundbreaking electro dance single Blue Monday, which would go on to sell 3 million copies as a 12 inch single and remains reportedly the biggest selling 12 inch of all time. New Order and the Cure were initially guitar based bands who evolved towards synthesizers and dance beats, but around this same time a different British group was evolving in the other direction. They would remain devoted to synths for their entire career, but unlike the goth bands, they started off much more sprightly before getting Darker. Named for a French magazine whose title roughly translates to fast fashion, Depeche Mode went through several incarnations in the late 70s in the wake of punk before discarding most of their traditional instruments in favor of synthesizers. Just can't get enough, enough. Their first UK top 10 hit was written by then band leader Vince Clark in a bouncy New Wave style, even as vocalist Dave Gahan sang in a Teutonic croon that would have worked just as well on a goth record. Just Can't Get Enough was a number eight UK hit in 1981, and in the US it even made number 26 on Billboard's Club Play chart. But it would be essentially the last single of its kind for Depeche Mode, not only their most cheerful poptimist hit ever, but the last single written by the restless Vince Clark. He would leave Depeche Mode after only one album, 1981's Speak and Spell, and he went on to form several synth pop acts over the next decade, including the assembly and Eras. His very first band after Depeche Mode, Yazoo, known as yazz in the US scored an immediate hit in the spring of 1982 with Only youy. This left Depeche Mode to forge ahead without Clarke, and they tapped keyboardist and guitarist Martin Gore to take over the songwriting. Gore proved a diverse, flexible songwriter with a much darker lyrical bent. Even on seemingly upbeat singles like the 1983 hit get the Balance Right, throbbing dance beats were paired with cynical lyrics. By the time of the 1984 album, Some Great Reward, Martin Gore had come into his own as Depeche Mode's leader, penning songs about everything from romantic betrayal to God's very existence to on the unnervingly catchy Master and Servant of consensual sadomasochism. By 1984, Depeche Mode had become college and new wave radio staples in America. That year alone, LA's KROQ listed four songs by the band among its top 100 for the year, sitting alongside Depeche Mode on KROQ's playlists that year. Also with multiple hits, was a newer band causing a sensation with alternative rock fans on both sides of the Atlantic. They would round out the sound of 80s UK rock not only by largely rejecting synthesizers you might call them the opposite of Depeche Mode, but also by taking lyrical melancholia to new heights of grandiosity. In every way, the Smiths were the ultimate band for young people bemoaning a cruel world, Led by one Stephen Patrick Morrissey, an impassioned Mancunian of Irish heritage who proclaimed himself both celibate and an ardent vegetarian. The Smiths were defined not only by Morrissey's verbose, knowingly pretentious lyrics, but by their ace. Guitarist. Johnny Marr was arguably the most influential British guitarist of his era. His distinctive style of chiming arpeggiated guitar was widely imitated at a time in the mid-1980s when American indie rock was led by R.E.M. a band we discussed in a prior Hit Parade episode of, who were defined by the jangly playing of guitarist Peter Buck, The Smith's Johnny Marr became in essence the British answer to R.E.M. with a jangle that fused 60s rock and 80s post punk and paired it with Morrissey's arch, witty and often self flagellating lyrics. In the UK, the Smiths were consistent hit makers, scoring 18 top 40 hits between 1983 and 1986, all on the British independent label Rough Trade. In America, the Smiths never scored a Hot 100 hit, but to listeners of college and alternative stations, the Smiths were acknowledged rock heroes. Within their first year, How Soon Is now paired a giant Johnny Marr tremoloed guitar riff topped by searing electric stabs with what might be Morrissey's most impassioned vocal. Originally issued as a B side in 1984, How Soon Is now quickly became the Smith's most played song on American alternative radio, ranking just outside the top 20 of K Roq's top songs of 1984, remarkable in the peak year for new romantic synth pop. What How Soon Is now lacked in electronics, it more than made up in atmosphere, and it would later be covered by more than a dozen artists. By 1985 all of the pieces were in place place for the black clad bands of UK goth, indie and post punk to break wider in America. But it would take a few catalysts to bring these groups up from the underground. The first arrived in the summer of 85, when one of these bands finally belatedly went top 40. People Are People was a single from Depeche Mode's 1984 album Some Great Reward. The song took more than a year to break in America, but when it did, it broke beyond college and alternative radio. Martin Gore's lament against racism and war crossed over to top 40 pop stations, peaking at number 13 on the Hot 100 in August of 1985. Casey Kasem counted it down top 40 once a week with at 40 and you know how your favorite songs are doing across the usa. Like the first American hit for the English band was a French name, Depeche Mode. They climbed four notches to 13 with People Are People, but DM's top 40 crossover proved a fluke. It would be their last American pop hit for nearly five years. Moreover, it seemed to have no coattails, despite the fact that other bands of Depeche Mode's generation were now producing some of their most accessible material to date. The Cure's 1985 album the Head on the Door split the difference between the band's pop melodies and Robert Smith's gloomiest lyrics. It dominated college radio and reached number 59 on the Billboard album chart, higher than any Cure studio album to date. Its lead single, In Between Days, a soaring love song about feeling too old to fall in love, topped alternative radio playlists, and it was quickly followed by the Cure's most infectious dance song to date, the percolating minimalist and moody Close To Me. Within a month of Close to Me's release, Robert Smith's friend Siouxsie sue produced what would be regarded as the Banshee's most irresistible single. Cities in Dust maintained Susie's edgy goth production Persona but packaged it in a skittering club beat. It not only scraped the top 20 in the UK but reached number 17 on the US Club Play Chart, Susie's biggest American dance single to date. By 1986, none of these British post punk bands had managed to score a gold album in America, let alone platinum, even though to the nation's black clad goth kids, Robert Smith and Siouxsie sue were already icons. What the scene needed was a bigger showbiz connection, perhaps a connection to a Hollywood movie and filmmaker John Hughes had just the thing. John Hughes was the poet laureate of 80s teen movies. In the mid-80s he directed or produced three consecutive films with his actress muse, Molly Ringwald, that defined high school for Generation X. All three were infused with music. 1984's Sixteen Candles featured new romantic songs by the likes of Spandau Ballet and Kajagugu, and 1985's the Breakfast Club had generated a number one hit, Simple Minds, don't yout Forget About Me for 1986's Pretty in Pink, named for this psychedelic furs song. Hughes went further, curating a soundtrack album that played like an alt rock mixtape. It would do for 80s post punk what the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had done for 70s disco. Fueled by its biggest single, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark's if youf Leave, a love song that has become a radio perennial, the Pretty in Pink soundtrack reached the top five on the Billboard album chart in the spring of 86. That made it not only the most successful soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, but the biggest American chart success most of the acts on the album would have. OMD's Lovelorn track, a number four hit in the spring of 86, was joined on the album by much edgier material from the likes of Echo and the Bunnyman, the Smiths and New Order. Shell Shock, New Order's latest hybrid of alt rock and club music, made its debut on Pretty in Pink and reached number 14 on Billboard's Club Chart, New Order's fourth straight top 20 US dance single after Blue Monday Confusion and the Perfect Kiss. Pretty in Pink was well timed for New Order as they were finally starting to break on the US Charts. Their Low Life album had cracked the Billboard album chart just a few months earlier, but the band that couldn't have timed Pretty in Pink any better was the Smiths. Like How Soon Is Now, Please, Please, Please Let Me get what I Want was originally a 1984 B side that took on a life of of its own. This gentle, drumless, yearning ballad with mandolin by Johnny Marr and a sighing vocal from Morrissey was a favorite of John Hughes. He even placed an instrumental version of the song in his other 1986 film, Ferris Bueller's Day off, appearing as the last track on Pretty in Pink. Please, Please, Please Let Me get what I Want was many Americans introduction to the Smiths, and the band was ready to capitalize on their higher profile with their most accomplished album. The Queen Is dead landed in June 1986, just weeks after the Pretty in Pink soundtrack peaked on the album chart. It would wind up the Smith's most acclaimed album and spent the rest of the year on the Billboard album chart. Though it generated no American top 40 hits, the Queen is Dead topped many 1986 critics polls and dominated college and alternative radio playlists with songs that would become alt rock standards like There Is a Light that Never Goes out, the Boy with the Thorn in His Side, and one of Morrissey's most self referential hits, Big Mouth Strikes Again. That big Big Mouth would get Morrissey into trouble more than once for the rest of his career, and it essentially led to his band not surviving the 1980s. At various times the willful frontman feuded with guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce, and tensions would eventually lead Maher to quit the band in 1980. The Queen is Dead would be the last studio album the Smiths would issue while still together. In their final year they would issue a few more classic singles, including Ask and Panic. And in 1987, before Maher quit, the Smiths recorded one final studio album, Strange Ways Here We Come, led off by the MTV favorite Girlfriend in a Coma. But by the time Strangeways arrived in the fall of 1987, the Smiths were no more, though they would end up with an impressive roster of UK history hits, the what if question that still Dogs the Smiths to this day is if they had remained intact just a bit longer, could they have become US superstars? They missed America's embrace of British post punk by only a year or two, So it fell to the the other bands of that generation to break America for UK mope rock in the final years of the 1980s, and there was plenty of gloom to go around. Remember, Depeche Mode had started off their career in the early 80s with bouncy synth pop, and even after their songs got lyrically edgier in the mid-80s under bandleader Martin Gore, they were still catchy enough to be the first band to score a US Top 40 hit. But starting in 1986, when DM titled their new album Black Celebration, gore provided singer Dave Gahan with lyrics that were both sensual and ominous, and the music had an industrial throng. By 1987, Depeche Mode had eliminated most traces of their earlier techno pop sound. Perversely, this made them bigger than ever, especially on Music for The Masses, their 87 albums, whose title was both accurate and ironic accurate because it became Depeche Mode's first US Top 40 album, peaking at number 35, and ironic because to them, Music for the Masses meant digital dirges with hooks. Tracks like Never Let Me Down Again sounded like high school anthem anthems for the end of days. New Order, too, were refining their sound. 1986's bizarre love triangle combined relentless dance beats and romantically confused, deceptively melancholy lyrics. It would become New Order's sleeper hit, a top five US club song in 1986, a highlight on their 1987 compilation Substance, and a late blooming pop radio staple years later. It would even scrape the Hot 100 in 1995, nearly a decade after it first came out. To this day, Bizarre Love triangle remains New Order's most played radio song, despite never reaching the top 40 in either the US or the UK Bizarre indeed. But it was a bonus track on the Substance collection that gave New Order its first ever American top 40 hit. And again, as with Depeche Mode, going darker worked for New Order. True Faith, a doomy dance anthem with allusions to drug addiction and a childhood I lost replaced by Fear, peaked at number 32 in December of 1987. Even the former members of Bauhaus were beginning to find favor on the US Airwaves. Love and Rockets, a trio that spun off from the goth band in 1985 after its breakup, produced a headier and punchier form of post punk in late 1987. Their anthemic fist Pumping no New Tale to Tell found favor on American rock stations. Alongside the likes of the Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith, the song peaked at a remarkable number 18 on Billboard's album rock chart. But no UK post punk alt rock band in the late 80s seemed to possess more promise or potential than the Cure. Even as band members cycled in and out of the lineup, including On Again, Off Again and On Again, bassist Simon Gallup and guitarist Porl later Pearl Thompson, Robert Smith remained the fixture, the leader and the guiding force, and his songs kept getting stronger. In early 1987, the Cure's first collection of singles, Standing on a Beach, quietly went gold in America nearly a year after its release, despite peaking on the Billboard album chart at number 48. In short, even without a top 40 hit, the Cure's Secret army of US Fans was growing. Three months after Standing on a Beach went gold, the band issued its most ambitious album to date, the double LP Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, 18 new songs, all penned by Robert Smith, who apparently had not lost his playful sense of humor. To this point. Point the Cure had scored virtually no Hot 100 hits. Two prior singles had bubbled under the chart, and 1985's In Between Days had spent a solitary week at number 99. But with why Can't I Be you? The Log Jam began to break the horn inflected R and B flavored and slightly lewd single broke into the middle of the Hot 100, peaking at number 54 in the summer of 87. That set up the Cure for At last, their top 40 breakthrough. Just Like Heaven remains Robert Smith's most acclaimed composition, hailed by both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork magazines as one of the greatest songs of the 1980s, a track that builds one instrument at a time, has no lyrics for nearly a minute, and deploys its title only once at the very end. This is the Cure's archetypal pop song, romantic but mournful, giddy and lovelorn on the Hot 100, Just Like Heaven reached number 40, making it just barely the Cure's first American top 40 hit, reaching its peak the first week of January 1988. By 1988 it was obvious alternative rock was serious business in the United States. Magazines like cmj, Trouser Press and the Gavin Report had been tracking US College hits for most of the last Decade, and on MTV, shows like the Cutting Edge and 120 Minutes had been showcasing indie leaning videos for several years. Beneath the glossy surface of the puff machine lies the underground underground. Come Explore it in 120 minutes two hours into the future of new music every Sunday night at midnight Eastern, nine Pacific here on mtv. While alternative rock was still no threat to the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, it could no longer be regarded as merely a poor relation to mainstream pop music. If major rock acts like Springsteen could have their own album rock chart and dance acts like Madonna had a club play chart, bands like the Cure, Depeche Mode and New Order deserved a better yardstick of their growing cultural influence. Later that year, Billboard finally obliged. The Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Launched in September 1988. Its very first week, the number one song was by a post punk and goth rock veteran, Susie and the Banshees. Their hit Peekaboo topped a chart that featured an eclectic variety of college radio favorites and alt rock radio demigods, from Big Audio Dynamite to 10,000 Maniacs, Information Society to the Sugar Cubes, Patti Smith to the Psychedelic Furs. With this chart launch, Billboard announced that mass market alternative culture was open, open for business. In essence, as I often say, music charts are feedback loops. They reflect popularity not only in the music business, but back to the music business, which then makes that music more popular. From the day it launched, the Modern Rock Tracks chart affirmed not only that alternative rock was bigger than ever, but but that a lot of it came with a British accent. This Brit rock hegemony would come to a head in 1989. One by one, each of the godfathers of UK Post Punk would score bigger hits than they had ever seen in America before. New Order got the ball rolling. In 1988, New Order spent several months on the island of Ibiza, soaking up the burgeoning acid house and techno scenes and recording what became their most experimental club oriented album. They called it Technique. The first single, Fine Time, debuted on the Modern rock chart in January 1989 and flew into the top three. Remarkable for such a cutting edge track. Far from the rudiments of rock at U.S. dance clubs, Find Time rose to no. 2, becoming New Order's biggest U.S. hit to date. A few months later, the follow up single Round and Round did even better, rising to number one on the club play chart and number six at Modern Rock. At a time when New Order's hometown of Manchester was emerging as the center of rave culture and transforming into Mad Chester, the album was transmitting a simulacrum of that scene to a suburban American audience. New Order's fellow Mancunians, the Smiths, were already broken up by 1989, but their former lead singer had launched a solo career just in time to exploit The US Modern Rock Boom. Morrissey's first couple of solo singles, issued in 1988, missed the launch of the modern rock chart by mere months. But when last of the famous international Playboys arrived in early 89, Maz was welcomed onto the chart like a king. Playboys peaked at number three in the spring of 89, and he scored two more hits that year alone. In fact, no song chart would ever welcome Morrissey as warmly as the US Modern Rock chart. From 1989 to 1992, he racked up eight top ten hits in a three year period. Again, had the Smiths lasted past 1987, based on this evidence, they would likely have achieved chart conquering status in America. Meanwhile, also in the spring of 1989, Depeche Mode were about to issue a live album. Some critics at the time poked fun at the band's live performances based on a faulty perception that DMs music relies on on pre programmed synthesizers. But no one was laughing at the sounds of roaring crowds on Depeche Mode 101. That's because those crowds were filling a stadium. In 1988, Depeche Mode signed on to be the subject of a film by legendary documentarian D.A. pennebaker, who a generation earlier had pioneered the music documentary with Bob Dylan's Don't Look Back, Monterey Pop and David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. For 1:01, Pennebaker shot the finale of Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses tour, whose 101st show took place at the Rose bowl in Pasadena, California. The film captured the extreme devotion of fans traveling cross country to see the show, as well as the frenzy at the concert itself. Both the 101 film and its soundtrack were were issued in the spring of 1989. The 101 album peaked just outside the top 40 in April. And then in May of 89, just as the Depeche Mode live album and single were peaking, came the album that would dominate the year in modern rock and define alternative rock for a generation. And it came from the Cure. Seven years earlier with frothy pop singles like let's Go to Bed and the Love Cats. The Cure's Robert Smith had turned away from the heaviest, darkest goth rock for the sake of the Cure's career and his own mental health. But with the album Disintegration, the Pendulum swallow Back. Robert Smith wrote his darkest set of songs since 1982's Pornography. And yet the songs sounded massive, majestic, stadium size. This time the pop world was ready. Disintegration would become the Cure's biggest selling and most acclaimed studio album, eventually shifting more than 3 million copies worldwide. The LP release was led off by Fascination Street, a muscular goth rock anthem that spent seven weeks atop the modern rock chart. Fascination street would wind up the second biggest modern rock hit of 1989. The only song bigger was the hit that ushered it out of the number one spot. And ironically it was those Bauhaus alumni Love and Rockets replacing the Cure, one set of goth veterans ejecting another. So Alive was the lead single From Love and Rocket's self titled fourth album, a slinky homage to the sound of 70s glam rockers T. Rex. So Alive topped the modern rock chart in June, stayed there for more than a month, and then improbably crossed over to the pop charts. By August 89, so Alive peaked on the Hot 100 at number three, better by far than any band of love and Rockets generation had done on the US Pop charts to date. Higher than Depeche Mode or Susie or New Order or the Cure, this was the last mile. Love and Rockets had cracked open top playlists to UK post punk. That summer the Cure and Love and Rockets would tour together, even playing New Jersey's Giants Stadium, essentially matching Depeche Mode's Rose bowl feat. Ahem. A certain gangly, awkward chart following Future podcast host himself just out of high school, caught the giant stadium show. Pixies were also on the bill. It was awesome at this, the Cure's moment of bigness. They came back with their biggest single from Disintegration, their bid for pop immortality. Love Love Song was perhaps Robert Smith's most vulnerable composition. He called it an open show of emotion. It was direct and it turned out, musically irresistible. Lovesong was the Hot 100's highest new entry the week of August 12, 1989. Debuting at number 58. Two weeks later, it hurtled into the top 40. A month later it was in the top 20, then the top 10 the week after that. Finally, three weeks later, LoveSong peaked at number two behind only Janet Jackson's Miss yous Much a pity, perhaps, that it didn't hit the top spot, but one suspects a number one pop hit might just have been a little too much for Robert Smith. The same week Love Song peaked on the Hot 100, disintegration was certified platinum in America. The album had spent six solid months on the Billboard album chart's top 30, longer than current LPs by superstars like Prince and the Rolling Stones. And while Love Song was by far the Cure's biggest pop hit on the modern rock chart. Disintegration kept racking up hits well into 1990, including the dreamlike Creepy Spider Fantasia Lullaby. And the slow burning sleeper hit Pictures of you. As the 80s drew to a close, Americans had fallen finally, to varying degrees, made hitmakers out of the Cure, New Order, Susie and the Banshees, Morrissey and Love and Rockets, and they'd turned Depeche Mode into stadium fillers. But DM hadn't actually scored a US pop hit in over five years. So in the final weeks of 89, Martin Gore deployed a new Depeche Mode single with a very American sound. It was the twang of the Old west, crossed with just a touch of.
- [69:32]
B
Blasphemy, Reach Out, Touch, Faith.
- [69:38]
A
Personal Jesus was not the first song Martin Gore had written on a guitar, but it was the first Depeche Mode single with the guitar as its primary instrument. Instrument. Sonically, the song was a total departure from any prior Depeche Mode single. Producer Mark Ellis, AKA Flood, fresh off producing Nine Inch Nails seminal debut album Pretty Hate Machine, helped turn Personal Jesus into a kind of industrial roots music. It was organic and synthetic, rustic, quirky, even a little intimate, but you could dance to it. Personal Jesus changed the public's perception of Depeche Mode, broadening their appeal and establishing them for the last remaining rockists who disdained synthesizers as fundamentally a rock band, which, of course, they had been all along. The song peaked at number three on the Modern Rock chart in October of 1989. Almost half a year later, Personal Jesus also crossed over to the Hot 100, cracking the top 40 and peaking at number 28 in March of 1990. The song's broad popularity built huge, huge anticipation for Depeche Mode's next lp, Violator, which would wind up the biggest selling, most hit generating and most widely acclaimed Depeche Mode album ever. Violator opened higher on the Billboard album chart than any prior DM album had peaked, save for 1987's Music for the Masses. And then it eclipsed them all, rising into the top 10 higher even than the cure's disintegration had gone the year before. Enjoy the Silence, the album's latest single, became Depeche Mode's first modern rock chart topper, hitting number one in April 1990 and their only pop top ten hit peaking at number eight. Depeche Mode were finally American radio deities. The album's third single, Policy of Truth, essentially an alt rock version of RB's I Heard it through the Grapevine as Reimagined by Martin Gore was another smash number one at Modern Rock and number 15 on the Hot 100. UK Post punk would never be as popular as it was at the turn of the 1990s, especially at alternative rock radio stations. From 19 from 1989 through 1991, UK acts commanded Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart more than 60% of the time. To a generation of American kids, alternative music was British music. Of course. By late 1991, the Alt Rock pendulum began shifting back across the Atlantic as Nirvana exploded and a generation of Pacific Northwest grunge bands broke on the charts. But even after the grunge explosion, UK Post punk never fully went away. Over the next two decades, the Cure would release another half dozen albums that would break into the Billboard top four, though Disintegration remains their top seller, the band's 1992 album Wish actually charted higher, thanks in part to more accurate SoundScan chart technology. In the 1990s, Wish peaked at number two and generated the deathless top 20 pop hit Friday, I'm In Love, Tuesday.
- [74:08]
B
Is Gray and Wednesday too.
- [74:11]
A
Depeche Mode 2 not only continued to do well on the US charts, they evolved with the times. In 1993, Depeche Mode followed up the best selling Violator with the chart topping Songs of Faith and Devotion, and their sound, spurred on by leather clad lead singer Dave Gahan, went even deeper into guitar rock territory, as exemplified by the modern rock number one hit I Feel youl. Morrissey continued as a staple of alt rock playlists deep into the 90s as well, and he too turned up the guitars. His 1992 modern rock number one Tomorrow was produced by glam rock veteran Mick Ronson, formerly of David Bowie's band Tomorrow.
- [75:14]
B
Will it really Come? And if it does come, Will I Still Be human?
- [75:24]
A
And in 1994, Maz topped the modern rock chart again with a song that crossed his indie pop with grungy guitars and a very Morrissey lyric, the more you ignore me, the closer I get. Finally, the fractious New Order, whose members often debated how deeply to veer from rock to dance music, managed just one more album in the 1990s. However, when the Eurodance Friendly Republic arrived in 1993, at a time when grunge had fully taken hold on the American charts, it nonetheless both charted higher than any previous New Order album and generated their biggest US hit hit Regret, a number one modern rock and number 28 pop hit. And by the way, this 90s post mortem doesn't even include Susie and the Banshees who scored their biggest hit in America in 1991, Or the New Order side project Electronic, which paired Smith's guitar God Johnny Marr with New Order frontman Bernard Sumner. All of these acts topped the modern rock chart in the early 90s before the UK post punk watershed petered out. Even as these bands began to recede on the charts in the late 90s and into the 21st century, they continued to cast a long shadow in America. Countless bands adopted UK post punk and goth rock attributes. Their melancholic outlook was echoed by Nine Inch Nails. Their baroque alt pop arrangements were emulated on punk band Blink 182's anomalous hit I Miss you. And of course, their spooky fashion sense. One could argue that the Cure, Siouxie sue and Bauhaus all but invented the look of your local mall's Hot Topic store. More important, a generation of mid aughts emo bands like New Jersey's My Chemical Romance took both visual and sonic inspiration from the Cure. It took well into the 2010s for these bands to be accorded the industry stature they deserved. To date, only three of them have been nominated for the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. The Cure, Depeche Mode and the Smiths. The bands I often affectionately refer to as the holy trinity of British mope rock. The Smiths have yet to be inducted, and possibly never will. The former bandmates have been publicly feuding for for years and loudly refuse to play together again. The big mouthed Morrissey, still able to alienate even his own fans, continues to tour and confound audiences worldwide. Depeche Mode have made the Rock hall ballot multiple times and as I speak, they are nominated again in 2019. Some observers say 2020 may be their year. One hopes that Joy Division and New Order may someday join them on the Rock hall ballot. And the Cure? Just this year, after multiple nominations, Robert Smith and his bandmates were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. By the way, in the same year as Janet Jackson, the artist who 30 years ago this month sat next to them on the Hot 100. Self proclaimed Cure acolyte Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails did the honors, inducting the band Million Records and have been an essential touchstone in the genres of post punk, New wave, goth, alternative, shoegaze and post rock. You can hear their clear influence on countless bands today, including my own. For his part, Robert Smith looked both proud and sheepish standing on stage, his hair piled toward the ceiling, his face dabbed with makeup, standing in front of nothing. Nine current and former members of his more than 40 year old band it is not very goth to exalt in a moment like this, but Robert Smith warmly thanked the army of Cure fans.
- [80:53]
B
I'd like to thank everyone that voted for us. It's a very nice surprise to be inducted into the Rock crew. Everyone that's bought the record or listened to the music, been to a show, just enjoyed what we do. It's been a fantastic thing. It really is. Thanks. We love you too.
- [81:10]
A
And then Smith and his bandmates, still touring regularly to this day, picked up their instruments for a five song set filled with both obscurities and the hits that made the Cure an improbable multi platinum band in the late 1980s. Teens of my generation called the Cure the Alternative. In retrospect, maybe they we were just the new normal. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit For a. My producer is Justin D. Wright and we also had help with this episode from Rosemary Bellson and John Molly. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas, and Gabriel Roth is the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribed subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Malone. Again.
- [82:50]
B
Ever far away I will always love you Whatever words I say I will always love you Whatever games I play.