172. The Police, “Message in a Bottle” By Sting’s reckoning, “Message in a Bottle” was a breakthrough for him as a songwriter. He estimated that he’d been noodling with the guitar riff, mentally and otherwise, for about a year before he started to pull it together with some stray ideas for lyrics. That approach of working on music and lyrics as entirely disconnected properties that eventually converged was very much his preferred process at the time. Placing words against the music began with the title. “Message in a Bottle” was written down in his notebook, causing Sting to free associate on the term, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 172 – 170

175. Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, “Elvis Is Everywhere” Neill Kirby McMillian, Jr. was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1957. Years later, he found his true self as Mojo Nixon. Though the exact moment of identity epiphany is elusive, it was undoubtedly somewhere around the point he teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Skid Roper (née Richard Banke). The two started playing gigs together in San Diego, California, in the early nineteen-eighties, in a place that undoubtedly felt a million miles away from their freewheeling, psychobilly musical sensibility. Though Nixon quickly became a cult hero, thanks to songs that indulged in a raucous, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 175 – 173

178. The Style Council, “My Ever Changing Moods” After serving as a central figure in the transformation of punk rock into new wave, thanks to his position as chief songwriter of the Jam, Paul Weller was looking for something a little different the early nineteen-eighties. Following the dissolution of the band that made him famous (at least in the U.K.), Weller joined with keyboardist Mick Talbot to form the Style Council. Weller took the name of the new group to heart, expounding on the richness of all aspects of European culture, saying of the erudite continent, “There’s some great things coming … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 178 – 176

181. The Smiths, “Girlfriend in a Coma” It is a splendidly fitting contradiction that the single widely credited as the one that precipitated the inevitable end of the Smiths also provides a convincing demonstration of the intense value to be found in the fierce collaboration between Steven Patrick Morrissey and Johnny Marr, shimmering pop proof that they would never transcend apart what they accomplished together. To be accurate and thorough, it wasn’t “Girlfriend in a Coma” itself that made Marr finally walk away from the band, but Morrissey’s insistence on releasing it as a single backed on the b-side by a … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 181 – 179