There's a pattern to 1987's indie chart I've appreciated experiencing slowly, and in depth, as I've written this blog. It starts with business as usual and lots of abrasive indie guitar bands topping the listings, then slowly morphs as sample culture and hip-hop and House music take hold - firstly in subtle ways, such as through the various Grebo crossover artists, then eventually with "Pump Up The Volume" acting as the final bucketload of water which broke the dam. The list of new number ones below doesn't quite give you a full impression of that, but the lower half of the indie chart really saw club sounds slowly beginning to ferment.
From here on, nothing would be the same again. This is something which may sit uneasily with a lot of our more conservative readers. I'm also painfully aware that fans of some of the artists who jumped on board the groovy train remain bitter (We can all see the snarky comments under their YouTube videos mentioning "stupid dance music for sheep" and "selling out" - I you're all a wow at parties).
As I'm fond of repeating ad nauseam, though, the UK indie chart wasn't just there for the lo-fi guitar-based things in life. While Morrissey may have fought tooth and nail to suggest it was an enclave for misunderstood lonely white boys, this was (like so many of his views) always patent nonsense. Anyone releasing a single through an independent distributor could sneak in, and anomalies have already made themselves known - reggae singles, funk records, psychedelic reissues, and then (at the more commercial end of the spectrum) the novelty discs de jour and unexpected commercial victories of the disco and holiday camp kind. Black Lace have entered more than once, Renee and Renato managed to top the national chart while simultaneously sitting in the indie listings.
1987 also saw several House or House adjacent records enter, some by unlikely friends such as old school goths Danse Society. This should give you an idea of how much House and Acid House culture were beginning to slip into the creative processes of even the most unexpected songwriters and musicians; if even goths (never the biggest 24 hour party people) were starting to wave their arms around to the sound of a Roland TB-303, frankly all bets were off. Something huge was bound to happen in 1988.
Except House music was far from just being it. As Pye's messy replacement PRT slowly expired with serious cashflow issues and smaller labels saw Pinnacle as a safer, more credible option for distributing records, anything and everything started to qualify for entry to the indie charts. Australian soap stars, Radio DJs doing rekerds for charidee and club DJs aiming for exposure beyond Mixmag - all these suddenly got in the listings, and some ended up being the biggest mainstream victors of the year. In 1988, our work will meet with the National Charts surprisingly often and to a degree we've never seen before, to the point where we'll be occasionally crossing paths with Tom Ewing's "Popular" project. The NME Indie Charts tended to give these people less of an easy ride to the top than other rival listings, but it couldn't entirely prevent the inevitable.
That's not all there will be to it, obviously. The old guard will continue to hold their own, with "indie" as a genre rather than a distribution choice remaining largely dominant - but for once, the charts start to become a very broad buffet, a celebration of entrepreneurial spirit and club culture as well as the noise of disaffected kids with guitars.
The new 1988 playlist of chart entries is opposite and, if you click on the link through to Spotify, runs to over 200 available tracks. Listen to it on shuffle and try not to gag on the taste of iced doughnuts next to sauerkraut, potatoes and pineapple. With a big rustling bag of acid drops for dessert, obviously.
The 1987 playlist appears on site for the last time below. Use this as an opportunity to kiss goodbye to everything you know, and get used to the idea. I can't rewrite history for you.
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