And now…on with the countdown…

30. Enya, “Caribbean Blue”
How odd to think that the doyenne of lush, languid music seemingly best used to slow a racing pulse in an dentist’s chair had a place on college radio playlists. A segue from “Territorial Pissings” to this would be jarring enough to make listeners burst into thunderstruck tears. It’s not like Enya was some neglected artist who needed support at this point. Her previous release, 1988’s Watermark went quadruple platinum, and the album containing this song, Sheperd Moon, would sell over five million copies in the U.S. alone before it was done. We weren’t especially daring at 90FM, and I’m not even sure we were playing this.

This song was making its debut on the chart.

29. Teenage Fanclub, “The Concept”
Bandwagonesque was officially the third album by the Scottish band, but it was treated like a sensational debut by college radio, maybe in part because it was the first album released after the band was signed by Geffen. Some claim that their second album, released just months earlier, was just a tossed off mess intended to fulfill a previous contractual obligation so they could start hauling in those major label dollars. Speaking of dollars…the album cover is a bag with a dollar symbol on it, which reportedly led the band afoul of Gene Simmons of KISS who owns the trademark on that particular image. Geffen Records apparently had to send Simmons a check, money he perhaps used to eventually launch a terrible clothing line.

This song was a reentry on the chart.

28. Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Suck My Kiss”
This song was off of Blood Sugar Sex Magic, the fifth studio album by Red Hot Chili Peppers and the one that brought them enormous fame. That wasn’t the case yet at this point. It wasn’t until the second single, “Under the Bridge,” was released in the spring of 1992 that the album took off. “Suck My Kiss” was actually the third single to be released off of the album, but in its chart appearance here it was just a deep cut that college stations were playing to provide a little variety instead of inundating listeners with nothing but the first single, which is well up the chart.

This song was a debut on the chart, the second-highest debut of the week.

27. Soundgarden, “Jesus Christ Pose”
This was the first official single released off of Soundgarden’s third album, Badmotorfinger. I’m not sure how the previous albums, both well-reviewed, did on the college charts, but my recollection was that they didn’t get much attention at our station until this release. I know the previous album was in the station rotation, but it seemed like it only got played by the host of Metal Thunder when he took the occasional general programming shift. (90FM allowed a lot of leeway for the DJs in general programming shifts, but they still had to follow a clock which directed them when during the hour to play a song from different sections of the station library. Our intrepid Metal Thunder jock had an uncanny ability to follow the clock perfectly and still make the shift sound like an extension of his show.) This was one of two Soungarden songs on the chart this week.

This song was slipping just a bit, down from 24 the previous week.

26. Billy Bragg, “You Woke Up My Neighborhood”
I have incredibly strong associations between my time at 90FM and “The Bard of Barking.” His magnificent fourth album, Workers Playtime, was in rotation when I arrived there in the fall of 1988, and this follow-up (with the EP The Internationale in between) was well-loved and played accordingly by the DJs at the station. Bragg is one of a five or six artists that practically define my years at the radio station. After this it was five years before Bragg released another album. By then, his lefty troubadour stylings were completely blocked out by the post-grunge sturm and drang.

This song was a reentry on the chart, the second highest reentry of the week.

Previously…

Numbers 40-36
35-31