100. Soup Dragons - Can't Take No More (Raw TV)

Five weeks at number one from 27th June 1987

When I started writing this blog, I did idly wonder what the hundredth number one might be, and promised myself that I wouldn’t draft a full list in advance and project ahead. That would spoil the beezer surprise for me, after all – supposing it’s a really appropriate, “era defining” classic? Or, even better than that, something the indie-kids would get agitated about; an Erasure single, perhaps, or one of the many Rhythm King releases that dominated the late eighties? What would that co(s)mic event tell us?

In reality, and at the risk of sounding like Hannah Fry, sequential numbers don’t care much about your preferred narratives. Just as nothing exciting happened when your car’s mileometer hit 5,000, and you just passed a boarded up carpet store rather than the Angel of the North or the house of the first person you ever loved, centenaries occur just because eventually they have to. The law of sequences demands it, and whether they coincide with something memorable depends entirely on the way the coin lands that day (go and look up the 100th Official UK Number One and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve been told the answer to that one before, many times, but I still have to keep reminding myself).

Back in 1987 though, The Soup Dragons taking the crown at this point would have felt somewhat appropriate, even though I can’t remember anyone noting it. While the start of their career saw them regarded as another one of those cheap and cheeky C86 acts, all fizz and charm, and the tail end saw them cast as bandwagon-hopping chancers, there was a brief sunlit period where they were critically lauded as the next big cult thing. Front page magazine shoots were gained, a highly reputable manager swept in to guide them, and a serious buzz emerged.

“Can’t Take No More” landed at the apex of all the fuss, and became their first single to enter the national Top 75. At this point, the group were still playing true to their roots, and the promotion around it was misleadingly low-key – The Chart Show played the accompanying video a few times, making a big deal of the fact that it was shot by the group for £80, tactfully ignoring the backing they had at this point.

The song itself is actually the third slam-dunk in a row for the band, following both “Hang Ten” and “Head Gone Astray” into some kind of scratchy indie heaven. The three singles are markedly different from each other yet still, amazingly, identifiable as Soups product. “Hang Ten” stays true to their C86 roots and serves up two minutes of exhilarating rattle and roll, while “Head Gone Astray” is somehow punky yet beautiful jangle pop, and then “Can’t Take No More” is a stranger beast still – shouty, stammering, always evolving then collapsing again, and downright furious about the inconsistencies and wrongdoings of a significant other. “Your attitude always ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/ like the weather!” rants Sean Dickson angrily, while staccato drumbeats and distorted guitars follow him behind.

It could choose to all be over in two minutes like “Hang Ten”, but instead it twists and evolves, featuring shimmering guitar breakdowns and taunting, childlike “na na na” vocalisations, before finishing on an ear-splitting electric organ break. It’s almost as if the group had two possible objectives, either a track akin to The Who’s “I Can See For Miles”, or a Slade styled rave-up, and decided to go for both at once, but keep the production and the presentation raw and cheap.

It’s easy to attempt something like this and come back with something perfectly listenable but ultimately insubstantial – thousands of low-key indie bands have done just that – but they channel so much adrenalin and frustration into one three minute single they manage to make the listener feel both peppy and disorientated at the same time. Elements of this, particularly the sharper and more discordant aspects, sound as if they would have slotted very neatly alongside some of the groups emerging out of the USA in a year or two’s time; Black Francis, for one, seems as if he might have appreciated it. Far from staying true to this indie era’s dominant idea that singles should be cheap, raw and simple, the Soups bounce and ricochet off the walls in ways which aren’t immediately predictable (the disorientating psychedelic dizziness of the latter half of each verse is interesting and proof they were already operating in a different territory to either The Wedding Presents or Bodines of this world).

99. Pop Will Eat Itself - Covers (EP) (Chapter 22)

Two weeks at number one from 13th June 1987

Pop Will Eat Itself are one of the few groups I can vividly remember entering and exiting my life. The first memory involves me joyfully taking my meagre paper round money to HMV, rushing to the “P” section in the racks and finding a copy of their album “Box Frenzy”. “This is the stuff!” I thought while looking at the cheaply designed sleeve (complete with unflattering photos of the group swigging from tins of lager).

I took it to the till, watched it being rung up, and took the hour’s bus journey home from Southend precinct to listen to it. The number 1 route towards the smaller South East Essex towns was always an indirect, circling, dawdling trip which nonetheless built up anticipation – sleeve notes would be devoured, labels inspected, and sometimes abuse would be yelled by other kids from my school sitting behind me, asking why I hadn’t bought a Public Enemy record instead (fair comment in retrospect, and one PWEI would probably get on board with). When I got home and my Dad asked to see what I bought (“I hope you’re broadening your tastes a bit”) his face fell.

The second memory is me almost exactly ten years later, looking at a box of records in my parent’s spare room, trying to rationalise my collection and lighten my life load before moving into yet another short-lived and chaotic houseshare (things would get worse before they got better). My hand fell on “Box Frenzy” and placed it into the “discard” pile with barely a second’s thought. “I’ll never play that again,” I thought to myself, and sure enough, I don’t think I’ve even so much as streamed it online since.

So what was it about the group which elicited excitement in a fourteen year old paperboy’s heart but only prompted thoughtless dismissal in the head of a broke, chaotic, twenty-four year old almost-man? Those are two very different reactions, occurring at distinct periods, and it strikes me that it’s not just about the naïveté of my youth. We’re not quite hearing it on this EP, but Pop Will Eat Itself jumped on to hip-hop and sampling culture just at the right moment, signposting their allegiances and habits with upfront glee (they even supported Public Enemy live, though it should be noted that they were bottled off). The group described themselves as “Robin Hoods”, taking from other people’s work to enhance their own. They enjoyed comparing their pilfering to serious law-breaking on their records - “Crime circles, waves, and passes by/ Uh, sorry no speech, we really must fly!” they declare on the album’s not entirely serious ‘statement of purpose’ finale “Hit The Hi-Tech Groove”.

There was one other group in the indie charts doing precisely the same thing at this point, namely The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, soon to become the KLF. The difference in media technique here is startling, however. The Poppies swigged beer, belched and sang football songs as they marched through life, coming across like unruly schoolboys stealing Trebor sweets from the newsagents. Drummond and Cauty, on the other hand, were evasive and continually one step ahead of the journalists they spoke to. They never directly claimed to be sonic outlaws, jokingly or otherwise; they let the press draw that conclusion by themselves. Master criminals never openly brag about their daring heists – they let others report on them and speculate instead.

What’s interesting in retrospect is how underdeveloped the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu were at this point. Two tracks aside, “1987 What The Fuck Is Going On” is an unholy mess, reams of sticky-back plastic disintegrating against the weight of crudely edited samples which sound as if they’ve been cut with a dinner table knife. It’s like one of Chris Hill’s novelty cut-up records in places, failing to resist the temptation to floodlight how appropriately placed some of the copyright theft is, each sample lined up as a nudge-nudge wink-wink gag.

“Box Frenzy”, on the other hand, mixes genuinely quite witty couplets with piss-taking samples from recent hit singles (nothing too cool or knowing here) rapping that perhaps veers too close to shouting for comfort, and some porn film loops and casual misogyny (and even though most of that sexism stems from a cover version, nobody forced the group to record it at gunpoint). For all that chaos, however, there’s a strangely neat order to most of it, a sense of an album that was actually vaguely produced at FON, not just pulled together in a wild fury.

The central problem was that Pop Will Eat Itself had no mystery. They were loud. They were crude. They had creativity and wit, but it was unvarnished. The band journalists most frequently compared them to was the pre-Paul’s Boutique Beastie Boys. High praise in 1987, less so by the following year.

Prior to that album, the group released lo fidelity indie records with a trashy, punky vibe, getting on the C86 compilation almost by virtue of their DIY cheapness rather than anything else. At the point the “Covers EP” came out, PWEI were almost but not quite out of the chrysalis, moments away from the madness of “Box Frenzy” but still, to all intents and purposes, a guitar-based act with occasional raps on the side.

The first track on offer on this EP, a cover of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s recent hit “Love Missile F1-11”, is smart because it takes the digital twitter and stutter of the Moroder produced original and reminds us that basic, churning rock and roll was the blueprint beneath all that futurism after all. PWEI’s version is explosive and thrilling, turning the heat up on the best bits of an idea which was always trying too hard to second-guess where music was going next. “Who cares about your weird Clockwork Orange inspired pretensions, let’s rock” seems to be their thinking, and perhaps somebody could try that method with Campag Velocet next.

98. Gaye Bykers On Acid - Nosedive Karma EP (In Tape)

Three weeks at number one from 23rd May 1987

“If this was video, we could forward all the crap”.

When people talk about the indie charts in the eighties, they often think in terms of the press headlines, the dominant idea of alternative music; groups with guitars, to borrow a phrase from a long retired Decca A&R man.

While they were often wrapped in a bright mesh of electric guitar based sounds, the listings also weren’t immune from the effects of ever-cheaper technology or club culture, and the period this single spends at number one is striking for a few reasons; firstly, it’s when the KLF first appear in their initial Justified Ancients of Mu Mu guise (more on them down below) and also when a relevant future number one

(Spoiler

Pop Will Eat Itself’s cover of “Love Missile F1-11”)

enters the top ten. And right on top for three straight weeks was this sprawling heap of digital barbed wire, discordant guitars and distorted samples. It felt as if something was happening. Something ugly, but something nonetheless.

The reasons sampling started to work its way into low-budget music had as much to do with affordability as fashion, and the effects of the lowest priced technology were smeared all over the crevices of the indie scene in 1987. The memory limits of most cheap samplers involved short stabs of speech or music, delivered in a highly distorted manner, rather than extended, luxurious loops. The bands that chose to play with these new toys therefore often became equally manic and unfocused, creating a frenetic racket rather than any kind of groove.

You can hear this throughout “Nosedive Karma”. The band take a garage guitar riff, trigger messy, fast samples from ancient Hollywood films, then throw in muddy solos and agitated rants about – well – you be the judge. “Avarice and greed/ Nostalgia through your veins/ It ain't crack that I need/ To make things feel the same!” rants Mary Byker, presumably railing against the black-and-white Levis world that permeated 1987 (The KLF would similarly sneer at this on the debut album “1987 What The Fuck Is Going On”). These lyrical ideas shift and frequently drift into nonsense, though, colliding with an old school chorus of “ba ba ba bas” and another onslaught of samples and noise.

What the track does is work with the glitchiness of the technology rather than against it, evolving gracelessly and throwing different riffs and ideas around as if they’re detritus. On “Nosedive Karma”, it somehow feels as if no riff, no solo, and no lyrical idea is any more important than whatever fleeting digital scrap decorates it; the band leap towards every distraction gleefully, piling everything on top of the mess. If it sounded like a bunch of herberts pissing about with tech back then, there’s something slightly relevant about it in 2026 too; it also feels like being sat indoors on a Spring Day with all the windows in the house closed, but every window on your laptop open and blaring. Maybe they were on to something.

Gaye Bykers on Acid were a strange group. While saddled with the Grebo tag and sharing it with groups such as Crazyhead and Pop Will Eat Itself, they lacked any straightforwardness at all, and (some would argue) seriousness. Occasionally supporting themselves at gigs under monikers such as Lesbian Dopeheads on Mopeds (dressed as women) and fake dissident East German thrash punk band Rektum, there was a whole fictional universe surrounding the group which probably only made complete sense once you were on the inside. They also didn’t lean on the bog-standard Velvet Underground and Byrds influences, instead having members who loved Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.

That love of the angular, satirical and experimental cuts through a lot of their work and attitude. They may have presented themselves as motorcycle boot wearing scruffs with fridges filled with lager, but the noise they created was sometimes challenging as well as thrilling. “Nosedive Karma” is, for me, their finest single; a down-in-one chug of every twitchy, agitated idea 1987 had to offer, with the unexpected sweetness of the sixties surf chorus in the middle.

Its success and their subsequent press made them seem attractive to Virgin Records, who gave them a surprisingly free reign for 1988’s “Drill Your Own Hole” album (initial copies of which came with the central hole covered over by an unperforated label). The group blew their promotional budget on a satirical sci-fi B-movie of the same name, which is available on YouTube and is actually better than you’d expect, like some kind of Max Headroom-ised take on Hard Day’s Night, piercing the cliches and habits of idle rock hacks, the music business, punters and even themselves. Throughout, they are warned that they are spoiling their own chances of success by “not taking things seriously”. Perhaps they effectively diagnosed their own problem.

97. The Smiths - Sheila Take A Bow (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from 25th April 1987

Prior to the release of “Sheila Take A Bow”, it might have felt as if The Smiths were treading the backwards path, understanding their initial appeal and returning to their original ideas. Craig Gannon was out of the group, and previous single “Shoplifters of the World Unite” was (instrumentally speaking) chock-full of Smiths tropes, all bowed together into a fresh new song. And for “Sheila”, Sandie Shaw was invited back into the studio to do vocals. So far, so very 1984 (in calendar terms rather than Orwellian terms, obviously).

However, everything seemed cursed from the off. At the aborted sessions for the single in December 1986, Morrissey declared himself ill and only Shaw turned up. She was dismissive of the song, calling it “horrid”, and was slightly reluctant to play second fiddle as a backing vocalist. She spoke to Morrissey on the phone and demanded that he sing down the telephone line what he wanted her to do, and he obliged, but the session was deemed unworkable and ultimately scrapped.

Stephen Street later picked up the pieces and produced the version which was released, which might be one of the oddest singles The Smiths put out. The tumbling, thumping intro with its honking brass, almost sounding like a factory klaxon, makes it seem as if we’re in for another “Panic”, only for it to suddenly and inexplicably start to do musical high kicks, like an aborted show-tune (it’s rather like Madonna’s “Hanky Panky” or Geri Halliwell’s “Look At Me” in that respect). Just when you think it might deviate from this path and explore different avenues, it sticks fairly rigidly to the concept and even leans into it towards the end – “You’re a girl and I’m a boy/ la la la la la la la la la!” sings Morrissey at the end, beaming towards the imaginary West End theatre audience before him (I suspect this bit might have been written with Shaw’s contributions in mind).

It wasn’t the first time The Smiths had created something which sounded as if it might work in a musical. “Ask” had its moments too, but it was never such a constant, unending feature of the track. Nor had Morrissey ever written lyrics which felt so much like a parody of a sixties Tin Pan Alley tune – with the exception of “boot the grime of this world in the crotch, dear”, the song is filled with fairly cliched imagery which feels almost tossed-off. The thunder and swing of the group’s backing helps it to achieve a small amount of heft, but there’s an incessant and deeply unSmithsian sugariness to the rest of the contents – an overwhelming taste of honey which gloops down your gullet and dominates your tastebuds in an unwelcome way for the rest of the afternoon.

Behind the scenes, the first obvious signs that all was not well in The Smiths were beginning to make themselves known to those outside their camp. Brixton Academy had been booked for the filming of a promotional video, but Morrissey refused to show up for the filming, resulting in a significant waste of money and a promo-free song. Given that he failed to turn up for the first recording session as well, a certain pattern was clearly establishing itself which continues to this day – Morrissey the diva hiding under the duvet whenever obligation knocks. Johnny Marr would not tolerate this for long.

You could also argue that “Sheila” stylistically fits in with his solo material better than The Smiths catalogue, given that its daffy, showy sensibilities feel akin to his moments of levity there – neither “You’re The One For Me, Fatty” or “Certain People I Know” fit neatly alongside “Everyday Is Like Sunday” or “November Spawned A Monster”, but they’re in his discography nonetheless, those attempts to impress the ghost of sixties pop impresario Larry Parnes with bits of easy-to-swallow rock and roll. “Sheila” has that same breezy flexibility and is as family friendly as a tub of Peak Freans biscuits, but something feels very wrong here; the song is catchy, jolly, and has a spirited glam charge, but the melody feels more like an adland jingle for a carpet warehouse than a proper pop song.

96. Wire - Ahead (Mute)

One week at number one on 18th April 1987

Where do I even begin with Wire? Getting the chance to write about one of my favourite bands is both a blessing and a curse; a blessing because I want less enlightened readers to understand just why they’re so special (of course). Also a curse because groups you have spent most of your lifetime admiring become strangely hard to pin down. You know you love them, but describing why feels like resting on a therapist’s couch and being asked to remember where those feelings began. You scribbled the details down in a notebook somewhere decades ago, but now it just feels like second nature. You want me to explain?

The feelings certainly didn’t begin in the logical place for me – the place most Wire fans entered. The first track I heard was the chiming, beautiful but oblique 1988 single “Kidney Bingos” on a compilation I owned, which remains one of my favourite Wire singles (and one I’m sure we’ll get to in due course). From there, I found a cheap second-hand copy of “Outdoor Miner” (minus its picture sleeve) in Gumby Records in Southend, and played it about forty times the night I bought it, utterly obsessively. It became my favourite single of all-time and remains such. You could ask me why, but if you did, I’d just get distracted and this entire entry would be about that record. 

You’re probably expecting me to say that I then tracked back to their first three albums, but I don’t recall seeing many of them on record store racks at that point. This may or may not be the reason I bought “The Ideal Copy” first, their fourth album, their first in eight years, and their debut for Mute Records.

This is another reason why having to write about this single is a curse. “The Ideal Copy” was strange enough and strong enough to hold my attention and establish me as a fan, but clearly imperfect and vaguely chilly. It has moments of bright, faintly broken pop (“Madman’s Honey”, “The Point Of Collapse”) and the usual shattered, jagged melodies which sound in danger of breaking down but always hold their steely nerve (“Ambitious”) and in that sense, offered us what Wire always did.

Where the output differed was the precision of the approach. The group emerged having embraced electronics and feeling determined that they needed to undertake the work with a “modern” mindset. Out went Robert Gotobed’s live percussion, which was replaced by painstakingly created loops and programmed rhythm tracks, with anything that approximated cymbals or hi-hats also thrown by the wayside. Eccentric, rubbery, rapidfire yet “non-funky” (their words) basslines were laid on top, a unique approach the group referred to as “dugga”.

Gotobed has gone on record as being unimpressed by this, stating in Paul Lester’s book “Lowdown” that he felt sidelined and unable to offer much towards the creative process. While the group beavered away in Hansa studios in Berlin, he instead whiled his time going for walks around the city, occasionally popping back to grapple reluctantly with the technology. Other members were also going through challenging changes in their personal lives, ego battles commenced in the studio, and singer Colin Newman briefly walked away from it all; he was only coaxed back when he realised that it wasn’t a major label’s money he would be draining by quitting, but that of Mute boss Daniel Miller – a friend with limited resources. By moving to an independent label, Wire’s future was possibly saved.

“Ahead” was the only single taken from the album and unveils itself confidently – those slow, loud bass notes at the start act as a fanfare, and almost immediately afterwards the group jitter and judder into view, oblique as ever. “Lips growing for service/ Eyes steady for peeling” Newman begins, before enthusiastically declaring, like a market stall holder, “Bring on the special guest!/ A monkey caught stealing” (which remains one of my favourite Wire lyrics for its pure absurdity and the joyful acidity of Newman’s delivery). I’ve never fully understood what Wire were on about with this one, and you can find a variety of fans online who are absolutely, unshakeably certain what it means, but all give different accounts – so it’s either definitely about oral sex, or animal vivisection, or corruption, or being used in a relationship. In common with many Wire records, establishing the facts is almost futile, and you’re instead swept along by the melody and the intention, which in this case is urgent and irritated, yet somehow sunlit too. Blue Monday-esque monk chants drone in the background while bright synths beam dramatic hooks and Newman gibbers discontentedly “I remember/ I remember/ making the body search”.

This doesn’t make “Ahead” sound like anything close to pop music, but miraculously, it’s closer than most of the contents of the indie charts in this particular week. The group display their usual knack for taking mis-shapen lumps of ideas and convincingly presenting them as shining jewels – the urgency becomes compelling, the sentiments somehow jolly, and the synths heavenly. I don’t agree with fans who hold it up as one of their finest singles – they’ve released better work in the last fifteen years alone – but its shine and gleam definitely have a captivating effect. Only a strange, stuffy rigidity and a determination not to edge one micro-second away from the click-track prevents it from truly realising its potential.

95. Rose of Avalanche - Always There (Fire)

One week at number one on 11th April 1987

By the late eighties, the goth movement – if it could sensibly be called a "movement" – had become one of the most unbudging aspects of alternative music. I’ve now spent over two years writing this blog, covering six years worth of music; goth was there from the off with Bauhaus and The Birthday Party, and their surviving (metaphorical) kin and offspring only seemed to get stronger and reach ever-larger audiences following their demise. Goth didn’t fade from view like anarcho-punk or the quirkier jolts of New Wave, it sat enigmatically in the corner of the nightclub recruiting more and more people to its cause.

As the decade progressed, a pattern emerged which is typical of most sub-genres and movements; there were groups deemed goth royalty whom nobody was allowed to blaspheme against, whose inevitable second-week chart peak appearances on Top of the Pops were deemed victories for the sect. Beneath those honoured few, however, lay scores of bands who might, if they were lucky and a fair wind was behind them on a Spring afternoon, score a high placing indie chart entry. Despite this, they would never be radio playlisted or let close to any television programme which wasn’t The Tube or the Oxford Roadshow, and as such would remain fringe concerns. Your Dad might have sung along to The Cure’s “The Lovecats” when it came on the radio, but he wasn’t getting anywhere near Red Lorry Yellow Lorry’s “Open Up” (though nor would you have wanted him to - I mean, imagine that).

Sometimes, if the indie charts were soft and not much else was happening, they might even score a number one. We saw this with the March Violets in the typically sleepy August of 1984, and Rose of Avalanche repeat the trick again close to the Easter period of 1987. They were always one of the more straightforward goth bands; loyal to their leaden, reverb-heavy and spartan drumbeats, sombre melodies and slowly scaling ideas which sometimes stretched beyond the five minute mark (their single prior to this one, “Velveteen”, was an epic tribute to Nico which is probably their most enduring song in both length and subsequent reputation).

In common with many goth bands, they disputed ever being part of the movement, and in this case I’ll sympathise. They often seemed like university students who had tried too hard to impress the kids who dressed like Velvet Underground members in their first year, and found themselves shunned and dealing with their next closest compatriots instead. Never quite hip enough, always wondering what might have happened if they’d just played it a bit cooler during Fresher’s Week.

They were, to all intents and purposes, a band who could just as easily have been on Creation and hanging out with Pete Astor and Bobby Gillespie. They loved psychedelic rock and The Doors, they wore leather jackets and sunglasses at night, and they weren’t against wearing paisley clothing. As you’d therefore expect, their music occasionally lifted its head out of the mourning bow to shuffle, boogie and stride; they were never averse to a simple garage rock chorus or an airy, stoned rock-out.

Which is essentially where we come in with “Always There”, which sadly isn't a cover of Marti Webb's version of the "Howard's Way" theme, but a pretty jangle and stride through verses and choruses you wouldn’t be surprised to find on a sixties obscurities compilation. If the chorus of “I know death won’t find us” is very goth indeed, its surrounding melodies, harmonies and production would have been equally at home on a House Of Love single. Their only drawback is their straightforwardness – where Terry Bickers would have found space to scrape and wail around unpredictably, The Rose of Avalanche are steadfastly loyal to the central rhythm and riff, seeming afraid to wander too far off the track in case they lose grip of the plot.

In that sense, then, they were very goth; the band themselves acknowledged this paradox, calling themselves “too rock for goths, too goth for rockers”. Many of the minor goth acts clutched on to their basic ideas and drum machine patterns tightly, offering a shady safeness from guitar hero licks or skittering dancefloor rhythms; there’s a reason that many goths held Joy Division close to their bosoms but could be faintly sniffy about New Order, and it had everything to do with the way the latter used their drum machine to lift feet off the floor rather than keep them anchored with a dead weight.

94. The Primitives - Stop Killing Me (Lazy)

Three weeks at number one from 21st March 1987

BAMALAMALAMALAMA…. Rarely do singles begin with such an abrasive attack of guitars, right from the very first second, before putting their bristles down again. Most groups, even alternative ones, are aware of the need to consider the delicate sensibilities of radio listeners and save their noisiest moments for later on in the single. Coventry’s The Primitives couldn’t have given a damn in this instance, though, putting their loudest attack right at the start of the single, then never quite hitting that peak again.

That said, The Primitives were an odd bunch to start with, creating slightly misshapen alternative pop whose influences were obvious (and tantalisingly fashionable) but were stretched into an unforced coolness of their own. Early songs liberally utilised the feedback screeching beloved of the Jesus & Mary Chain, the simple pop attack of The Ramones, Motown choruses, and the scratchiness of the Shop Assistants and The Flatmates, topped off with their own unique weapon in lead singer Tracey Tracey. While other female vocalists in the indie chart communicated with anger, conviction, sweetness or heartbreak, sometimes all in the same song, Tracey usually rolled her eyes with impatience. You can hear the disdain in almost every Primitives song at this point (bar “Thru The Flowers”) – perfectly enunciated, softly sung. Previous single “Really Stupid” is a prime example, taking its very title from the tired, understated insult that peppers the song.

It’s close to punk rock, but punks tended to sneer forcefully rather than seem utterly, offhandedly above whoever they were addressing. Tracey’s vocal style is actually quite chilling as a result; she feels like every woman who wearily sighed at your weak jokes, or gave you steely glances across a club dancefloor to pre-warn you that your chances with her were nil. Whether her style has the same effect on women (making them feel as if she is unapproachable and cooler-than-thou) is something I’ve never asked, but from a male perspective there’s something inherently but relatably threatening about it. She gave the impression of being somebody who Took No Shit without needing to heavily articulate the fact.

“Stop Killing Me” combines her vocals with guitars which skid off in various directions at different moments, beginning with that immediate machine gun fire, then settling on a distorted Ramones riff, then chiming beautifully in the chorus, then get steadily more gnarly until feedback starts to bleed around the edges. It is a very sharp, short and simple pop song at heart – Tracey even “ba ba ba bas” in the chorus, like a back-up singer with a soda pop in one hand – but what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in its many flavours of menace. Insouciance and noise meet melody and friction, and it manages in two minutes what some singles fail to achieve in five; something that’s thrilling and hooky but also a little bit alienating and challenging at the same time. “Just keep away from me/ ‘cos you’re killing me” sings Tracey, and you believe that not only might she mean it, but she may be directing it at you.

By this point, the music press were beginning to get seriously excited by the group, which seemed to represent everything about British alternative rock they loved rolled together into one package. Tracey’s charisma and the rest of the band’s obvious love of pop hooks made them seem like one of the few groups in the late eighties indie charts who stood a strong chance in the outside world, and the media cuttings piled up quickly.

In time, they would be referred to as being part of the “Blonde” movement, a particularly unimaginative and press contrived scene which rather reductively grouped vaguely alt-leaning bands together who had blonde female singers. As a result, The Primitives found themselves lumped in with Transvision Vamp, The Darling Buds and The Parachute Men, despite only really having anything in common with one of those acts.

Such idleness and borderline misogyny from the music press was fleeting and quickly forgotten, and the group ended up floating far above it when they finally signed to RCA and managed a major Top Five hit with “Crash”. Its parent album “Lovely” sits in my record collection, and sands down the rougher edges of their sound slightly, but places the abrasion alongside flowery pop-psych, bright sunshine melodies and occasional bursts of almost Cocteaus-styled haziness (“Ocean Blue” feels almost as if its pushing at the shoegaze door three years too early). A cynic might argue that the group were having their cake and eating it – trying to be all things to all the different kinds of inky music press reading people – but they never quite lose their sense of self throughout, and the final results make for a surprisingly even listen. Even “Stop Killing Me” finds a natural home right next to the tranquil buoyancy of “Out Of Reach”.

The album only just failed to follow “Crash” into the national top five, but sold incredibly well for an alternative record, bagging the group a gold disc and a lot of music press and major label goodwill. By the following year, though, their follow-up album “Pure” only just managed a place inside the Top 40, and a crisis meeting was allegedly held at RCA asking if Tracey’s new deep red hair colour was to blame. Seldom in rock history has hair been regarded as such a central factor in a group’s successes and failings.

93. The Wedding Present - My Favourite Dress (Reception)

One week at number one on 14th March 1987

“My favourite song has to be My Favourite Dress. David has managed to perfectly distil the tortuous agonising feelings of jealousy into three minutes of angst. The guitar hook is pretty great too.” – Sir Keir Starmer.

Well, there you go; not my words, but the words of the Prime Minister (presumably still the case, by the time this goes live). If you ever wondered what it might be like to live in a country governed by an indie nerd, rest assured you are already living that dream, although he isn't the only Labour Party "name" who is interested in The Wedding Present – years ago, the one-time Labour deputy leader hopeful Stella Creasy tweeted me about the band, and we’re not even members of the same party. There’s dedication to Gedge beyond the call of duty.

An oblivious person reading this in another country might assume that this means the group were massive, but that would be a mistake; while the music press briefly touted them as the next Smiths, the peak of the band’s achievements occurred in 1992 when they managed to crash the national charts with twelve different limited edition singles released throughout the year. All went Top 40 and one even managed to nose its way into the top ten, but prior and subsequent chart performances indicated that this was purely due to the rabidity of their fanbase – the Starmers and Creaseys of this world taking a break from their local Labour Party meeting to rush out and buy them on the Monday of release, scared of missing their ship.

For a few years, The Wedding Present felt like the biggest cult band in Britain, mightier even than The Fall, but relatively unheard outside their fanbase. When they appeared on Top of the Pops, which happened frequently, people would write letters of complaint to the mainstream pop press about the din. No new fans were gained; the existing fans simply hardened their lines of defence about the group’s earthy but unique sound.

In 1985 and 1986, however, they were still releasing records on their own label and merely attracting evening radio airplay, thousands of miles from the bright television studio lights. Their performance in the indie chart tells its own story of a group slowly building up steam, from the tentative number 17 shot of “Go Out And Get ‘Em Boy” to the confident number 3 peak of “You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends”. Each release seemed to sweep them closer towards a breakthrough moment, and “My Favourite Dress” is the one that delivered not just a number one in the indie charts, but a refreshed perception of what the group were capable of. By the time the year was up, they would have five entries in John Peel’s Festive Fifty, four of those in the top ten – votes being split in ways Starmer would doubtless cringe at.

For something that’s still lauded as being their finest moment, “My Favourite Dress” is an oddly understated sulk initially. The two chords it opens with are left to clang by themselves for the introduction before the group reluctantly grumble in behind, and Gedge joins to sing in a part angry, part tearful manner about a romantic betrayal. Despite his reputation as an earthy, jocular Leeds everyman, the lyrics are actually pearls, borderline Smokey Robinson in their attempts at understanding: “Sometimes these words just don't have to be said/ I know how you both feel/ The heart can rule the head/ Jealousy is an essential part of love/ The hurting here below/ And the emptiness above”. There’s something almost Northern Soul about those opening lines, were it not for the very C86 scraping and thudding beneath – the wheels of this song belong to a tram, not an aeroplane; it’s sticking to its own simple, dependable rhythm, not soaring off anywhere soon.

We finally move on from the two chord holding pattern when the chorus arrives, which begins to add choppiness and spikiness to the mix, but is still surprisingly slight, and over in an instant with Gedge sighing “never mind”. Then his reasonableness declines and his grievances become more pronounced in the second verse, during which it sounds as if he’s almost choking when singing about his ex-lover’s new sleeping arrangements. Following a second round of the chorus, things really start to go into overdrive and the ranting begins, and this is what makes “My Favourite Dress” several leagues above the average indiepop ditty about romantic disappointment – it starts off controlled and sane, and slowly peels away its rationality, the fury of betrayal taking an increasingly heavy role.

The final verse isn’t so much a lyric as Gedge delivering a shopping list of disappointments to his ex, bullet pointing the key occurrences in one of the worst days of his life so far – “a long walk home”, “the pouring rain”, “uneaten meals”, then, explosively, “a stranger’s hand on my favourite dress”. The key problem, the painful image. The moment the song finds both its title and its purpose. If you’re not listening closely, it almost sounds absurd.

Relationships are often portrayed in songs and films in a very simplistic way, the memories people cling on to frequently being trite in their obviousness. “I liked the way he held me when we danced”. “I adored the way she kissed”. The reality for me (and seemingly Gedge, and Keir Starmer, and probably you too) is that you don’t actually know what memory you’ll hang on to until they’re over. It might be guessed at, but it’s frequently unknowable. It could be that moment you greeted them home at the arrivals section of an airport and realised you truly loved them, the song they loved that you always hated, or something even more inconsequential than that – a haircut, sunkissed skin from a recent holiday, a perfume smell or an item of clothing. I’ve had my day ruined by women with the same hairstyle as an ex of mine, so I know only too well that seemingly trivial visual prompts have a peculiar and extremely potent magical power.

92. The Smiths - Shoplifters Of The World Unite (Rough Trade)

Four weeks at number one from 14th February 1987

Oh, how we laughed when the assistant in our branch of Woolworths played this song on a busy Saturday afternoon. He was proudly ensconced behind the display copies of the Pepsi & Shirlie singles, spinning this record loudly enough that you could hear it as far back as the garden hose display. I’m sure his supervisor gave him a thorough ticking off, but if Morrissey had ever found out, he probably would have sent him a bouquet.

A man in his mid-twenties walked past me holding hands with his girlfriend tittering loudly for everyone’s benefit, “They might have thought harder before putting this one on!” The rest of the shopping trip was mundane, so it was a relief to be provided with some kind of anecdote to tell others about later – a sense that a hit single’s subversion had been appropriated in the correct way.

I didn’t expect our Saturday mission to buy lightbulbs and birdseed to be spent listening to what was the first new indie number one of 1987, and in all probability the first indie record of the year Woolworths would have stocked. Age of Chance’s dominance of the top slot for ten straight weeks seemed to have as much to do with the lack of action going on elsewhere as its cult popularity.

“Shoplifters Of The World Unite” was “one of those singles” from the off – the “Sorted For Es and Whizz” of its era, a single which was quietly looking for trouble while disguising its ambitions behind a passive-aggressive arrangement. Morrissey ducked the issue in the press a few times, perhaps wary of a radio ban, pointing out that the idea of “shoplifting” could be about creative theft as well as actual pilfering of goods. The song doesn’t make that clear anywhere, though. Instead, it talks about the protagonist's inevitable arrest (“A heartless hand on my shoulder/ A push and it's over/ Alabaster crashes down/ Six months is a long time”) and contains two lines I loved as a teenager, which are almost Martin Gore-ish in their simplicity: “But last night the plans for a future war/ Was all I saw on Channel Four” – though these days I tend to blanche a bit at the clumsiness and oddness of that quick triple rhyming scheme.

The title of the song makes it seem as if it could be another blundering, loud hippopotamus of a single akin to “Panic”, but while The Smiths have a more forceful sound here if compared to their earliest works, in reality it seems to encapsulate the sum total of the ideas in their career so far. Listen closely and you can hear the swampy rumble of “How Soon Is Now?” coming through Marr’s guitar in the verses, the glam descends of “Panic”, and the gentle melodic strum of “What Difference Does It Make”.

If I’ve made it sound like a cut-and-shut hack job by saying that, that’s not my intention – what it seems to be instead is a group realising the scope of their identity and playing all the cards to their advantage. If “Panic” and “Ask” sounded like slight departures from the usual route map, “Shoplifters” feels like a rounded and careful reiteration of the group’s strengths by comparison; one for the proud fans as well as the Woolworths shoppers, a hooky, contentious yet surprisingly delicate 45 which stood out both melodically and lyrically.

There were those, of course, who didn’t care for it, and in typical fashion fed the Morrissey shaped troll rather than rolling their eyes and walking on. Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens was incensed, referring to the track as an open ode to thievery, while Tesco threatened to sue Smash Hits for printing the song’s lyrics over the top of an image of one of their carrier bags. It’s difficult to understand what either party expected to achieve – I doubt the single inspired many people who weren’t already shoplifting to go out and give it a try, and the central message seemed to be about the hypocrisy of the fact that while bored people with light fingers serve prison time, those who engage with state sanctioned murder are lauded.

Farewell 1986

If the years 1981-85 have been comparatively predictable affairs, where familiar Indie royalty regularly bagged the number one spot with occasionally mediocre singles, 1986 was when the snowshaker really flurried. Groups on tiny new labels making scratchy sounding singles could, by a combination of press recommendation, fanzine raves and word of mouth, climb to the top with enthusiasm; the underground was beginning to poke its claws into the rubber membrane of pop again. 

The list of nineteen new number ones below tells a headline story not just of C86 or indiepop suddenly finding its way to the forefront, but also The Smiths continued dominance and goth's continuing allure.

1. w/e 15th February 1986 (1 week) - Easterhouse - Whistling In The Dark (Rough Trade)

2. w/e 22nd February 1986 (1 week) - The Sisterhood - Giving Ground (Merciful Release) 

3. w/e 1st March 1986 (3 weeks) - Shop Assistants - Safety Net (53rd & 3rd)

4. w/e 22nd March 1986 (2 weeks) - Half Man Half Biscuit - The Trumpton Riots (Probe Plus)

5. w/e 5th April 1986 (4 weeks) - New Order - Shellshock (Factory)

6. w/e 3rd May 1986 (5 weeks) - We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It - Rules and Regulations EP (Vindaloo)

7. w/e 7th June 1986 (1 week) - The Smiths - Bigmouth Strikes Again (Rough Trade)

8. w/e 14th June 1986 (3 weeks) - The Mission - Serpent's Kiss (Chapter 22)

9. w/e 5th July 1986 (1 week) - Weather Prophets - Almost Prayed (Creation)

10. w/e 26th July 1986 (1 week) - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Singer (Mute)

11. w/e 2nd August 1986 (1 week) - The Mission - Garden of Delight/ Like a Hurricane (Chapter 22)

12. w/e 9th August 1986 (1 week) - The Smiths - Panic (Rough Trade)

13. w/e 20th September 1986 (1 week) - Depeche Mode - A Question Of Time (Mute)

14. w/e 27th September 1986 (4 weeks) - New Order - State Of The Nation (Factory)

15. w/e 26th October 1986 (1 week) - Half Man Half Biscuit - Dickie Davies Eyes (Probe Plus)

16. w/e 1st November 1986 (1 week) - Soup Dragons - Hang Ten! (Raw TV)

17. w/e 8th November 1986 (3 weeks) - The Smiths - Ask (Rough Trade) 

18. w/e 29th November 1986 (1 week) - New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (Factory)

19. w/e 6th December 1986 (10 weeks) - Age of Chance - Kiss (FON)

1987 is where things start to get confusing and certainties begin to crumble, and the only solid scaffolding you can reliably cling on to is the continued and dogged presence of the goth scene. The best and most robust of the indiepop acts continue to make their presence felt, but the more delicate and less organised ones either inadvisably sign to major labels, or fall away. If 1986 was a free for all, 1987 is the year where any acts with slightly scrappy or flaky ideas start to become dismissed by both the music press and the public (while maintaining their core cult audiences). 

Sample culture begins to make itself felt not just through the grebo bands, who have had a fine line in 3 second distorted vocal interjections so far, but through club culture as expected. The KLF emerge in their first guise to create huge music press headlines but comparatively few sales, and a smattering of club classics begin to nudge around the fringes of the chart, with the exception of one from some surprisingly old and familiar hands which goes stratospheric (and has the video to match its interstellar ambitions). Let's not spoil the surprise for anyone under the age of 45 who may be reading.

A complete playlist of all 1986's chart entries - or at least all that were available on Spotify - can be found below, with 1987's menu on the right hand side of this page. 

91. Age Of Chance - Kiss (FON)

Ten weeks at number one from 6th December 1986

“1) Be L-Louder, 2) Be more beautiful, 3) Be unreasonable.” - Age of Chance, January 1986.

A few weeks back, Zooey Deschanel posted an Instagram photo of herself, face thick with heavy but sophisticated make-up, wearing chic but casual clothes, thoughtfully cradling a copy of the NME C86 compilation in her hands. It was such a weird mismatch of style and media content that it almost felt like an in-joke, or a trolling attempt, or a plug for this blog (it wasn’t, sorry) – a sleek Vogue cover colliding with a spotty eighties teenage underworld. I freely admit I wanted a print of it for my wall.

It led to all kinds of speculation online about what the hell she knew about C86, but she should be given some credit here. She’s a huge fan of Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura, is utterly no stranger to indiepop herself – a few of the She and Him tracks unquestionably drink from that stream, even if they don’t quite get their hair wet – and if she hasn’t encountered Stump and A Witness before now, I’d say that’s more surprising than not. She beat a lot of Nuggets and Rubble heads to the sixties baroque pop group Forever Amber, after all.

It reopened the question of what C86 really was about (if anything) though. Indiepop, as we would now call it, was only one aspect of the compilation. The opening twelve minutes or so lull you into a false sense of security, making you think the whole cassette is going to be filled with naive, untutored British kids searching for sharp melodies. Then, once that’s done, Stump lurch into view with “Buffalo”, then A Witness with “Sharpened Sticks”, and what we’re confronted with is anyone’s guess. It was a compilation which was (and is) perfectly possible to own and only love in part. Some people were broad minded enough to accept the more angular aspects, but a lot weren’t.

There’s a tendency to assume that the harsher edges of C86 were fringe contributions from groups who sold few records, but that would also be a mistake. Stump shifted around 60,000 copies of their debut album, and that year, Leeds band Age of Chance – whose track “From Now On, This Will Be Your God” isn’t exactly the most challenging track, but is also far from the most commercial – briefly became cultishly huge. Unlike a lot of their compilation mates who would blush and apologise about anything that smacked of marketing, the group had a firm and keen style and graphic image; garish, bright and loud, which perfectly matched the metallic flashes of noise in their songs. This made them an editor’s dream, assuring them coverage in magazines most bands of their ilk would never have gained – pages were devoted to their beliefs, their manifestos, and their backgrounds (“We're confronting the area that we live in. The unease, unrest, dissatisfaction, things like that. The element of where we come from is prevalent in our music.”)

Their earliest singles were perhaps a touch too abrasive and combative to find broader public appeal, but their decision to cover Prince’s “Kiss” almost pushed them overground. Taking their cues from their dancefloor memories of the record, rather than actually buying a copy of it and carefully studying its arrangements, they cut, thrash and grind to the song’s hip-hop inspired beats, giving it a strangely accessible ugliness. If Prince’s original version is lipstick and cocktails with just a peppery hint of urbanity, Age of Chance take that urbanity and make it the sole feature – a pair of heavily made up lips graffitied on to a rain-stained concrete wall, or a drunken dancefloor smooch becoming an accidental headbutt.

Guitars grind monotonously, the vocals chant in protest, the song demands rather than seduces. It’s another example of a cover version which is an inversion of the original track, like staring at the negatives of a glamorous night out and trying to make sense of bright hair and white lips.

It’s hard to say how calculated it was. Age of Chance were an incredibly knowing band, also covering the disco classic “Disco Inferno” but bringing its reference to riots to the forefront, and it may just have been that they also heard an aggression in Prince’s work which hadn’t fully expressed itself. Whether accidental or otherwise, though, it was a canny move. Prince was the mainstream artist all groups and performers, whatever their background, could admire without risk. He was as admired in the pages of the tabloids as he was the broadsheets, fawned over in the IPC weeklies as well as Smash Hits and Making Music. A virtuoso musician with perplexing artistic messages and undeniable songwriting talent, he was the complicated pop star it was OK to like in the mid-eighties (a strangely divisive and hostile time).

In that sense, you could cover “Kiss” and only risk the wrath of a few of the man’s most eager fans. Music journalists would applaud your impeccable taste, major labels would note your pop ambitions, and you had nothing to lose. And Age of Chance certainly didn’t lose, at least not in the short-term. Partly bolstered by the slow movement of the indie charts around December and January, but mostly enabled by constant waves of impressive sales, “Kiss” managed a chart-topping run only rivalled by the likes of “Blue Monday”. John Peel listeners also showed their appreciation by voting it number two in the man’s Festive Fifty; an impressive result for a song released late in 1986, which started to gain traction after the ballots opened.

90. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (Factory)

One week at number one - 29th November 1986

“Bizarre Love Triangle” is an unusual phrase for New Order to use. In the eighties in particular, the tabloid press used it quite freely, being obsessed with the idea of “love rats” in their “secret love nests” who were having adulterous affairs with a priest/ biscuit factory magnate/ headmaster. Hopefully also, these affairs would involve a significant age gap and/or some form of sexual deviancy.

A big reason these stories are so enduring is partly judgement – people seem to love being shown the failings of their fellow humans so they can feel better about themselves. Another, I think, is that extra-marital affairs, and especially “bizarre” ones, are not something we encounter as often as the tabloid press lead us to believe; in my own social circle, I can only think of a couple of examples over the last few decades. Even if their marriages are failing, people tend to not want the added stress and burden of the double-bluffing, fake diary appointments and secrecy affairs seem to involve. They’re usually too busy dealing with their kids and demanding spouse, and scrolling through their phone contacts wondering whether they should start speaking to a solicitor now or give marriage counselling yet another crack. I’ve encountered more frail marriages where a spouse has been wrongfully suspected of having an affair than those where one has actually been taking place.

This is true for those of us who have average jobs and ordinary lives. For successful musicians or actors, however, temptation is a constant risk. If you’re continually away from home, living in a bubble and constantly being flattered in an over-familiar way by people who not only find you attractive but have idealised notions about you – that’s a problem. Bernard Sumner probably knew that. Ian Curtis definitely did, as is well documented. And while most of us will never be idolised in that strange way, there’s still a chance that at some point in our lives, we might briefly be thrown into dangerously prolonged proximity to someone who finds us as alluring as we find them.

“Bizarre Love Triangle” is lyrically slight, but seems to exist in that dim reverie, that fluttering queasiness which comes from a magnetic pull that is never allowed to resolve itself. You can hear it in the arrangement, which is excited and buoyant but never quite lets go, the unreleased tension of the idea of adultery never letting it rip out of its shell. The chorus is elated, but it doesn’t feel like proper joy – those twinkling keyboards and soaring strings are pure fantasy, total idealism. In a proper love song, such effects would seem tacky, almost Disneyesque in their overreach, but because Sumner is singing about a possible affair, we accept the fairy lights and the pink backdrop. It’s a dreamworld. “I’m waiting for the final moment/ you say the words that I can’t say” he sings, but you get the impression that what he wants is never going to happen. Stasis is going to be the only result.

Elsewhere in the song he circles round the idea, gibbers a bit about the elation (“I feel fine, I feel good/ I feel like I never should”) then about the regret (“Why can’t we be ourselves/ like we were yesterday?”). He also has a moment of rare, direct honesty and borderline profundity when he sings “I do admit to myself/ that if I hurt someone else/ then I’ll never see/ just what we’re meant to be”. There’s the rub. Love triangles rarely result in anything positive. They’re bound up in chaos, guilt, and at least one person (and very often two) feeling betrayed and cheated. They’re not a great springboard for a successful new relationship – they involve messiness and an external judgement few would willingly entertain.

Nonetheless, New Order create a cocktail of confusion, guilt and airy fantasy which is intoxicating to the listener – just like the tabloid press stories, these experiences are always more enticing when they’re being communicated to us, one step removed. The strings hold a continual tension, the rhythms propel, seemingly egging Sumner on, the synth hits bark out their warnings, and it sounds like a massive hit single. The group were always prone to ruining their chances with over-long tracks, flat vocals or coldness in the past, but everything holds in place so well on this that you would clearly have it pegged as a serious commercial contender.

89. The Smiths - Ask (Rough Trade)

Three weeks at number one from 8th November 1986

(Note – this blog entry contains some personal information from my past. If anyone feels tempted to send virtual hearts and flowers, or worry about my state of mind, please don’t. I was a kid. It all happened another lifetime ago. It weren’t for this record’s release coinciding with an unfortunate life choice, I’d probably never have felt compelled to write about any of it).

Ask, they always said. Ask. What have you got to lose? If nothing else, it will allow you to put everything behind you. Once you know for sure, you can either claim the victory or just move on. Better than stewing and giving yourself a nervous breakdown, like Frank down the road.

“Shyness is nice,” also sang Morrissey, “but shyness can stop you/ from doing all the things you’d like to”. And make no mistake, I was a shy thirteen year old when this was released. I was spotty, had thick, unruly hair, wasn’t remotely tough, wore glasses, and had a certain undisciplined intelligence but felt bored and unsatisfied at school and struggled to focus. My (bad) school reports were overly personal in their tone, and could be summarised quite neatly as “struggles with other people, struggles with his work, we don’t know what to do with him. Even open ridicule doesn’t seem to be having any positive effect”.

Amidst all this mess, most of which was just me struggling with a bleak home-life (my parents marriage was stable, but we had two very ill grandparents living with us and a heavy air of stress and hopelessness lingered) and surging hormones, there was one bright spot. I’d been friends with a girl we’ll call C since the last year of junior school, who due to weird boundary rules had been one of the handful to follow me to secondary school. Even in the last year of juniors, she was cooler than most of the children, with a blue leather jacket and a fringe she dyed like Marmalade Atkins. She was also quite pampered, openly talking about the clothes budget her parents gave her (“Don’t you have one, Dave? You should talk to your parents about that, it’s not on”) and her trips to the USA where her Dad had familial connections.

So of course, in secondary school I developed a raging crush on her and asked her out. What an idiot. If this were a work of fiction, there’s two distinct routes the above plan could take – the fairytale one, where we forged an unlikely formative alliance and amazingly ended up becoming the weird boy and girl who necked and mated for an entire year, or the one where I got rejected and ultimately mocked by the school. There’s no other possible outcome. We were friends. Friends already know they get along; you don’t need a couple of dates at the local Wimpy to work that one out. Talk to your High Street bookmaker about the odds now (“No teenage love affair, friendship shattered”: 1/4).

The fact that The Smiths “Ask” landed at this particular point in my life felt taunting, even though I now understand that while the song is lyrically simplistic, it’s also open to wider interpretations. “If there’s something you’d like to try,” sings Morrissey, which seems to be almost suggestive (how strange for him) and could even be hinting at homosexuality. “Nature is a language/ can’t you read?” he also protests, like Dudley Moore desperately hinting to an oblivious Eleanor Bron in “Bedazzled”.

Behind all this is a surprisingly unSmithsian jaunty major-chord single; a wiggling, skipping, hats-off-to-the-passing-policeman ditty which almost winks at the listener as it passes. The wheezing, chuffing harmonica beneath the melody makes the whole thing sounds like an exile from one of the last mid-sixties films made by a popular British beat combo – the central number where everyone leaps out into the street dancing. Derek Jarman directed the music video and seemed to hear that himself, creating a scratchier and more modern take, but falling back on the spinning umbrellas standby at a key moment anyway. 

The rest of the arrangement gets ambitious, the group seemingly realising that if this isn’t going to be a mere Mighty Mighty styled throwaway, they’re going to have to pile one idea on top of the other like a musical jenga tower to give it tension. Marr’s guitar explores a multitude of elaborate jangles and the rhythms almost clatter in the chorus (there’s just a micro-dose of Depeche Mode industrialism in the mix here, enough to pass unnoticed). The instrumental break, such as it is, is a slow ambient intake of deep breaths, two chords struck slowly, before the whole jig starts up again.

Similarly to “Panic”, though, it feels lyrically like a series of catchphrases in search of a T-shirt or bedroom poster to be printed on. “If it’s not love then it’s the bomb that will bring us together” feels like another mid-eighties Paul Morleyism, and only “Spending warm summer days indoors/ Writing frightening verse/ To a buck-tooth girl in Luxembourg” captures the old Morrissey richness of both witty and wordy – rather than solely dynamic - wordplay. One of the big, noticeable changes in the group’s style from 1986 onwards isn’t just the fact that their sound gets tougher and more brittle (largely thanks to Gannon) but how Morrissey’s lyrics, in turn, forsake beguiling imagery for immediacy.

88. Soup Dragons - Hang Ten! (Raw TV)

One week at number one on 1st November 1986

The Soup Dragons were one of those peculiar groups who seemed to go through several distinct phases in their career, to the point of feeling like multiple different acts. The period most people reading this will remember is their early nineties indie-dance/baggy phase, which saw them getting a top five national chart hit in the UK with a swaggering cover of the threadbare Rolling Stones B-side “I’m Free”.

If we’re not vaporised in some kind of nuclear war or I don’t get sick of writing this blog in the meantime – two big ifs – I’m sure we’ll get to that single in a few years time, but suffice to say it was written off by many journalists as a cynical attempt to score a hit. It also feels as if it’s disappeared from view in the years since; it dragged 1990’s kids on to the dancefloor, but didn’t necessarily convince the children of the future. Something about that Happy Mondays-aping lurch and groove just hasn’t proved durable.

Following that success, the group managed a minor scuff with the American mainstream with “Divine Thing”, which actually resulted in a number 35 Billboard hit, after which the line-up collapsed and interest was lost both at home and Stateside. Their final album “Hydrophonic”, issued in 1994, was one I had entirely forgotten existed until doing research for this blog entry.

Phase one of their career, though, is the one we’re dealing with here, and the period that gets me most excited. It begins with a broke group from Bellshill, Scotland (home of the hits) hanging around their local scene and pressing demo tapes into the hands of likely compatriots. One such early supporter was Bobby Gillespie, who offered them a gig supporting Primal Scream. Following this, the NME picked up on an early flexidisc the group pulled together, then John Peel threw his hat into the ring and offered them a session, though the band had to borrow £150 from him to make it down to London to record it. All extremely thrifty and earthy beginnings.

If the latter-day Dragons were louche with lots of slow, lazy movement around their hips, the band that emerged in the mid-eighties were taut, spring-wound and hyper, spitting out their pop songs so fast that they were usually all over just after the two minute mark. The Soup Dragons I knew and loved didn’t pout or dreamily sing “yeeeeah” liberally throughout their singles; they gnashed, crashed and raced towards their conclusion, not in a chaotic, ramshackle C86 fashion, but with a tight, orderly and tense drive. The closest point of comparison in 1986 would probably be The Wedding Present, but while Gedge’s group moped and stretched their ideas, The Soup Dragons had a quick, explosive fizz. As a result, they began to command numerous music magazine front covers, seeming young, spotty, naive and a bit ungainly in all of them, but with delicious grins pinned to their faces.

“Hang Ten!” is one of their finest singles, immediately thudding into life with irresistible hooky vocal harmonies, before filling every second of the two minutes on offer with blissful melodies married to a thrashed guitar scramble. The lyrics seem to be about a relationship falling victim to the other party discovering Christianity – “I don’t care whose up there” sneers Sean Dickson – but are far too flippant and clumsy to be deemed a serious protest. What the song appears to be most in love with isn’t any kind of moral or political point, but what it can achieve in its short life; the stomping chant of the chorus, the dorky retro vocal harmonies, the simple but instantly memorable guitar riffs and the ascending climax. All of it remains superb.

87. Half Man Half Biscuit - Dickie Davies Eyes (Probe Plus)

One week at number one on 26th October 1986

“Mention The Lord Of The Rings just once more/ and I’ll more than likely kill you” - there aren’t many better opening lines to songs than that. Even Neil Tennant had to highlight just how well Nigel Blackwell had nailed a common frustration with eighties life; the Tolkien obsession overhanging from the seventies into the squat and bedsit walls of the eighties student and doley generation.

This single once came up for discussion when I was in the pub with friends, and we all realised that when we first heard the song, each of us related the opening line to somebody we knew (although admittedly three of us were all thinking of the same individual). Every damn one of us knew someone who, however unrelated the conversation, would find some unlikely way of relating the situation back to Tolkien’s works. These days the opening line would probably have to be about Terry Pratchett or Doctor Who, but in the eighties and the early part of the following decade, Middle Earth still held a surprisingly firm grip.

Perhaps partly for those reasons, “Dickie Davies Eyes” is Half Man Half Biscuit’s strangest and bleakest early work; whereas their other material prior to this point had been a knowing, jokey three chord thrash through daytime television and the suburban shopping parade, DDE begins with opening instrumental lines that can’t decide if the song wants to be maudlin or jaunty. That marching drum beat seems to be designed to push bottoms off sofas towards a waltz with a partner, but the organ seems to be playing an anonymous fugue for somebody’s funeral. It doesn’t feel like much of a joke, and it continues in the same vein despite Nigel Blackwell’s lyrical interventions.

Besides Tolkien, it references football commentator Brian Moore, whose “head looks uncannily like London Planitarium” – a line which would eventually become the title of a football fanzine – the erotic Cadbury’s Flake adverts doing the rounds on television, and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock. Unlike their other tracks, it feels unfixed, drifting, the sharp observational eye replaced by an indecisive pre-REM sleep brain, picking up the frustrated or underwhelming memories of the day. Blackwell sings not with a rant or a cry, but a mumble, to himself rather than anyone else.

For a long time, I regarded this as one of the least satisfactory HMHB songs as a result. Blackwell’s lyrics are usually razor sharp – as a lyricist, his output is usually far funnier than most comedy poets, whose wit is often blunted by an apologetic tweeness and bounciness (performance poets are often slightly embarrassed about their craft and are desperate to try and make friends with the audience as quickly as possible). “Dickie Davies Eyes” is, by comparison, adrift on a coffee table raft in the middle of what passes for a frustrating friend’s living room, desperately grabbing at the detritus in the hope that something might provide a helpful anchor.

At some point in the last ten years, though, I’ve decided I actually like that. For one thing, the instrumentation on this is interesting and sometimes gets stuck in my head by itself – a queasy folky jaunt which sounds as if it might ordinarily be accompanying a tale of the sole survivor of an ancient shipwreck. Half Man Half Biscuit have been compared to folk music a few times in more recent decades, and you can hear the beginnings of that on this single. Punk rock it isn’t, except for the aspects which despair of hippy culture.

The promotional video also feels as if it ties in neatly with the surrounding C86 movement (whether that was Blackwell’s intention or not). The poet, musician and artist Edward Barton once said that the streets of the eighties seemed to be filled with discarded children’s toys from Boomer children who had grown up, their infant years left abandoned at the kerbside. Barton saw poetry and meaning in this and collected and appropriated them in various ways, as did less obviously “artistic” people like Stephen Pastel who could be found playing with battered Action Man toys at people’s parties. The video features endless examples of such childish behaviour, presented blankly and almost through a fog of boredom. If The Pastels seemed thrilled to be back out in the back garden playing with Stretch Armstrong again, Blackwell and his cohorts seemed to be pointing towards this discarded kinder-trash as the only thing that was freely available to him on a bored Tuesday (though the ride in the mechanised child’s toy in the shopping centre must have cost at least ten pence).

86. New Order - State Of The Nation (Factory)

Number one for four weeks from 27th September 1986

I don’t often delve into other people’s blogs or forum posts while researching for this site, purely because I don’t want to be unduly influenced by other people’s takes on these records. For “State Of The Nation”, though, I found myself sufficiently perplexed to want to scout around. It sometimes feels as if it’s the serviceable New Order single nobody has a strong opinion on one way or the other, their equivalent of “Lady Madonna” or “Heart” (cue the inevitable complaints from Beatles or Pet Shop Boys fans).

I uncovered nothing much at all during my scouting mission, apart from a few forum posts asking “Why does everybody hate ‘State of the Nation’?” during which nobody replied with anything negative at all, only expressing the view that they quite liked it. No-one seemed particularly compelled to jump in and scream that it was a blight on New Order’s catalogue, which made sense to me (I wasn’t previously aware that it was supposed to be).

Then I went over to my Last.fm profile to see how often I’d played it, and was a little bit surprised to see that it was my tenth most listened to New Order track – amazing since I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d bothered (if anyone cares, it’s marginally ahead of “True Faith”, “Perfect Kiss” and “Regret”, all singles I could have sworn I’ve spent more time with). Obviously the views of a few Internet randoms and my own listening habits are not a precise scientific study, but it does feel as if “State” – New Order’s seventh indie number one – has been strangely neglected, rarely (if ever) played by the group live since its year of release and allowed to drift into the background.

This is peculiar. Musically speaking, “State Of The Nation” is an enticing, though admittedly never quite exciting, mix of sweet and sour. The keyboard lines are filled with exotic pan flute noises while the guitars are distorted and scraping, sounding like a hailstorm falling on abandoned sheet metal. Rhythms twitch beneath all this, jitterbugging almost threateningly, and throughout the full six-and-a-half minutes on the twelve inch, they manage to stretch what seem like quite limited ideas out into interesting new shapes and destinations; say what you want about New Order but they were unbelievably bloody good at writing epic pop songs. Whereas most groups start to dawdle and repeat themselves after the third minute, they’re still bursting with fresh ideas in double that time.

The single seems to pick up the most criticism for its lyrics, and deservedly so. Sumner here feels as if he's delivering guide vocals camouflaged as social commentary; a dirty trick to play on the neurotic mid-eighties public. “My brother said that he was dead/ I saw his face and shook my head” he sings, almost disappointed rather than upset by the fact that his sibling was either literally or metaphorically deceased. “The state of the nation/ that’s holding our salvation” he informs us, before telling us it’s also “causing deprivation” (I always swear he sneaks “death inflation” in there somewhere as well, but that’s possibly just a long-standing misheard lyric of mine).

85. Depeche Mode - A Question Of Time (Mute)

One week at number one on 20th September 1986

By the time this reached the pinnacle of the indie charts, it had been over nine months since Depeche Mode had last been there. Their singles had once been considered shoe-ins for the top spot, their position a coronation rather than a competition, but things had changed since 1985 – the independent charts were now bustling with new life (no pun intended) from increasingly challenging forces.

Great news for lovers of music in 1986, who were feasting on all manner of new and exciting talent. Bad news for Depeche Mode fans, including me – I would have loved more of a chance to talk about “Black Celebration” on here, one of my favourite albums of all-time. While it's often been described as a left-hand turn following “It’s Called A Heart”, in reality there were hints all along. Depeche didn’t suddenly overhaul their sound so much as gradually grow out of their origins.

Despite this, “Black Celebration” can be heard as everything finally falling into place beautifully; it's filled with accomplished and stirring symphonic pop, delicate baroque synth lullabies and thundering disgust at modern life. Stuffed with obvious singles, however, it wasn’t. “Stripped” depended upon its expansive, gradually swelling arrangements rather than obvious golden hooks, and the closest thing to a traditional single, “A Question Of Lust”, was essentially mid-sixties Walker Brothers balladry with synthetic knobs on – a strange retro futuristic step which seemed to ultimately tickle neither the public nor their fans.

“A Question Of Time” was the last throw of the dice, and was also atypical of most Depeche Mode singles prior to this point. The central hook is a sampled guitar line (or at least, a guitar sound sampled and replayed through a synthesiser) which is almost rockist in its aspirations – a lick to punch your fist in the air to. The rhythm beneath it too is an ugly, churning sound, like an overloaded truck rattling along a dirt track. It’s not necessarily a novel step. It is, however, unexpected for this band, who usually preferred to pulse rather than grind.

Over the top of this, Gahan delivers Gore’s uncharacteristically rambling lyrics, which feel like an unvarnished rant about the sexual manipulation of young women. “I’ve got to get to you first” he declares, which sounds ominous (what for? He can’t lock her away, but any other potential readings of this lyric are unflattering to say the least) before clarifying later on “You’re only fifteen/ and you look good/ I’ll take you under my wing/ somebody should/ they’ve persuasive ways/ and you’ll believe what they say”. The song builds up to the pinnacle of its angst with the staccato delivery of the lines “It won’t be long until you do/ exactly what they want you to”, after which it gives up, feeling as if it can stretch itself no further, lets a snare beat introduce a second of silence, before starting all over again.

In my mind’s eye, Martin Gore is frothing mad and circling his study while writing these lyrics. They have moments of furious focus, but then also points where he circles around his own ideas frustratedly. “Sometimes I don’t blame them”, he shrugs at one point, then concludes “I know my kind/ what goes on in our minds”, which asks any male listener to assume that Gore thinks his mind (because it definitely is men being addressed here) works the same way as theirs – a common assumption among kinky men with bags of testosterone to spare. Guilt and shame drip off this record.

There are a number of interpretations you can put upon the lyrics here, and Gore has never been easily drawn on what inspired them. It feels plainly obvious that the drive behind their concern is the sexual manipulation of pretty teenage girls, though. There are whole chunks of the lyrics which sound paternal, with Gore acting as the doting, concerned father who knows his daughter’s period of innocence is likely drawing to a close. There are also possibly accidental parallels with tabloid imagery (The Sun ran a celebratory countdown to Emma Watson’s sixteenth birthday, a perverse idea which always reminded me of this song – a clock counting down before tabloid journalists decided they could afford to treat a young actress in a more titillating way). Of course, we also can’t ignore the possibility that Gore was writing about a young Depeche Mode fan he found attractive but knew he shouldn’t, and that she is the catalyst for the song’s concern. It would explain a lot, but if that’s the case, he’s perhaps wisely never said so.

The imagery of the fifteen year old’s childhood being destroyed by adult desires was revisited again on their next album “Music For The Masses”, with “Little 15” flipping the gender roles so instead of a girl, it’s a teenage boy being ushered around and used as a plaything by a woman. “Such a thing would never happen!” I hear you cry. Oh yes it bloody did, and presumably still does. Two bored housewives both embarked on liaisons with fifteen year old schoolboys on the very suburban cul-de-sac I grew up on, for the very reasons largely outlined in the song (“You help her forget the world outside”). The matter was largely hushed up but the community gossip did what it always does, and it was naturally the talk of the neighbours for many years after. Either Gore heard about this matter, which I deeply doubt, or it’s more common than we suppose (to note - I don't have all the details about these liaisons, so I've no idea if they truly crossed the line into abuse, but something strange was clearly afoot). 

83b The Mission - Garden Of Delight/ 84b The Smiths - Panic

Garden of Delight returns to number one for one week on 16th August 1986

Panic returns to number one for two weeks on 23rd August 1986

Garden of Delight rebounds to number one again for one week on 6th September 1986

Panic returns again for a further week on 13th September 1986

Have you absorbed all those chart facts above? Good. Rebound number ones were never unusual in the NME Indie Chart, but the dogfight between Morrissey and Hussey (speaking in sales terms, rather than literally) which occurred throughout the dying summer months of 1986 led to a confusing ping-ponging at the top rather than letting in any fresh blood.

It’s probably not worth saying much more about this beyond the fact that it might seem surprising that at this point, The Mission were such a big deal that they could compete easily with one of The Smiths biggest and most well known singles. They were managing to capture the imagination of a broader cross-section of the public than Hussey’s old band The Sisters of Mercy, and certainly other long-standing goth acts besides. 

Other than gesturing towards that fact, let’s take a peek lower down the charts.


Week One


21. Mighty Mighty - Is There Anyone Out There (Girlie)

Peak position: 11

“The summer brings out the best in girls and the worst in me” hollers singer Hugh McGuinness early on in this 45, before singing about suntanned legs being among his favourite things. The song is essentially a twee ditty about the typical loneliness of your average anorak wearing dork in 1986 rather than a perv-out, and its trilling, twanging melodies underline the innocence of the whole thing. Honest.

22. The Toy Dolls - Geordie's Gone To Jail (Volume)

Peak position: 15

This is an unexpected about-turn. The Toy Dolls' vocalist Olga generally bubbled and squeaked his way through their songs, but on this single the whole group let rip not only with something approaching a snarl from Olga, but also a roaring anthemic second wave punk chorus. 

It’s not clear who the Geordie is the group are referring to, except that he's going to jail even though he didn’t kill anyone – he’s also never taken any drugs “only penicilin when he’s got a headache”. The old novelty lightness of touch remains throughout this single, but I did find myself filling up with doubt and started hunting around to find out if there was actually a serious back-story here; it’s about as sincere sounding as The Toy Dolls get, even if that sincerity is only just on the right side of Tenpole Tudor. 

24. Poly Styrene - Gods & Goddesses EP (Awesome)

Peak position: 24

Poly Styrene of X Ray Spex emerging on the Awesome label (which was largely reserved for Danielle Dax products) might seem surprising but the whole thing not only does sound a bit like Dax, but also gels with Poly’s style unbelievably well. Lead track “Trick Of The Witch” is a giddy brew of heavy rock riffs, psychedelia, bubbling electronic pulses and Poly’s wide-eyed vocals. While her post X Ray Spex records are undeniably patchy, it’s hard not to have admiration for her ability to move forwards away from the constraints of punk rock; while some of the people from that scene continued to thrash away in 1986, Styrene dared to push forwards.

27. Demented Are Go - Holy Hack Jack (ID)


Peak position: 23


Week Two


17. Pop Will Eat Itself - The Poppies Say GRRrrr! (Desperate)

Peak position: 14

The Poppies second release is an oddly subdued recording, with lots of sweet, spritely melodies and only slightly distorted guitars in the mix. At this point, they were clearly trying to stay close to the C86 pack and hadn’t forged a clear identity of their own, and to that end it’s not a particularly impressive listen, whizzing unmemorably through your stereo speakers like the last demo your work colleague’s little teenage brother sent you. You can only nod encouragingly at the progress – they did become a much more brittle and modern group in very short order.

21. Yeah Jazz - This Is Not Love (Upright)

Peak position: 20

Kitchen sink indie drama from this market town (Uttoxeter) mob from Staffordshire, singing of unwanted teenage pregnancies and forced relationships in a manner which could have been either cloying or overly heavy-handed, but manages to strike the balance beautifully. Yeah Jazz use diverse instrumentation to colour the drama and tumultuous emotions in the lyrics, sounding impressively like early precursors to Belle and Sebastian in the process. The first genuinely surprising track I’ve heard for an age while researching this blog.