34. Sinéad O’Connor, “Mandinka” It didn’t start with a picture of the Pope on live television. Sinéad O’Connor was at war from the beginning. “I had no illusions that there were such things as record deals — I just happened to be lucky enough to get one,” O’Connor noted shortly after the release of her 1987 debut album, The Lion and the Cobra. “I didn’t realize there were such bastards in this business.” Her famously shaved head — a look especially out of step with late-eighties fashion trends — was O’Connor’s rebuttal to label attempts to impose a more MTV-friendly style … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 34 – 32

37. U2, “I Will Follow” Iris Hewson died in 1974, when her son Paul was fourteen years old. Understandably, the pain and loss stuck with him for years. But what better tribute could a boy provide than to make a song about his mother — indeed, a song written from the perspective of his mother — the first track on the first album from his rock ‘n’ roll band, especially if that group in question goes on to become one of the biggest acts in the world? Leading off the 1980 album Boy, the first from U2, “I Will Follow” is about … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 37 – 35

40. The English Beat, “Save It for Later” Since this is a chart for U.S. college radio that we’re tracking through, we are obligated to refer to the band featuring both Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger among the ranks by the vulgar and pedantic moniker the English Beat. In their native U.K., there was no need for the geographic qualifier, of course. The original name for the group preserved truth in advertising since the ska-singed beat delivered didn’t necessarily call to mind the British Isles. The Beat were already a force on the U.K. charts by the time they released their third … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 40 – 38

43. R.E.M., “Fall on Me” Sometimes when focusing on singles released in the nineteen-eighties, it is illuminating to look at their music videos. By the time R.E.M. released their fourth album, Lifes Rich Pageant, in 1986, MTV was approaching the peak of its powers as the tastemaker for U.S. music charts. Although R.E.M. had a somewhat strained relationship with the promotional art of music videos, lead singer Michael Stipe took the lead on creating a clip for the album’s lead single, “Fall on Me.” Its cryptic imagery was in line with the band’s image as inscrutable icons of college rock, but … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 43 – 41