124. Siouxsie and the Banshees, “Cities in Dust” One of the indicators that the nineteen-eighties was a time of very different expectations around bands’ productivity, there was some anxiety around how long it had been since new Siouxsie and the Banshees music had hit record store shelves when “Cities in Dust” was issued as a single, in August of 1985. This was despite the fact that had put out a full-length album and an EP the prior year. A trio of singles had been drawn from those two releases, each of which performed with the usual level of respectability on … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 124 – 122

127. Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy” There’s probably no way to overstate the importance and the power a song like “Smalltown Boy” carried in 1984. The first single from the London synthpop band Bronski Beat addresses the difficulty of growing up a gay young man in the era, empowered enough to fully understand his own identity, but also cruelly judged and shunned by those around him, their own levels of enlightenment not up to the decidedly simply task of acceptance. “As hard as they would try/ They’d hurt to make you cry/ But you never cried to them/ Just to your … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 127 – 125

130. Cocteau Twins, “Carolyn’s Fingers” The Cocteau Twins sound was well-established by the time they recorded their 1988 album, Blue Bell Knoll, stirring the ethereally gloomy hearts of a sizable enough fan base in the U.S. to trigger genially perplexed stories on local television news. They could have easily locked in and kept on with the flow — that’s what the dreamy music sounds like it’s suited for, after all — but they wanted to take greater control of what they created. The band’s fifth album was the first on which they took charge completely. “I just realized I needed … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 130 – 128

133. They Might Be Giants, “Ana Ng” According to John Linnell, “Ana Ng” has its foundation in his childhood memories. “There’s a cartoon I read as a kid in which a character shoots a gun through a globe to find out where the other side of the world is. So that was sort of the beginning,” he told MTV at the time. The comic in question was an installment of Walt Kelly’s great Pogo, and Churchy LaFemme was the pistol-wielding geographer. Further inspiration came from Linnell letting his fingers do the walking through a New York City phone book, noting there … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 133 – 131

139. Genesis, “Abacab” “It was just time to be a bit braver,” Mike Rutherford explained about the creative process that eventually resulted in Abacab, the eleventh studio about from Genesis, released in 1981. Driven largely by the deliberately overblown theatricality favored by Peter Gabriel, the band’s founding lead singer, Genesis were prog rock cult heroes in the nineteen-seventies. As the band pared down through the years, eventually settling on bassist/guitarist Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks, and singer/drummer Phil Collins. Established as that trio, the group started finding a way to pare down their sound with the hope for more radio-friendly singles as … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 139 – 137

142. Bangles, “Walk Like an Egyptian” “Walk Like an Egyptian” was written by Liam Sternberg after he saw people awkwardly trying to keep their balance as they crossed the deck of a fairy, putting him in mind of the stiff figures in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Sternberg shopped a demo featuring Marti Jones on lead vocals. Toni Basil turned the song down, and Lene Lovich recorded it, though her version never saw release because she decided to take a sabbatical from the music business for most of the nineteen-eighties. So the demo track kept kicking around, eventually landing on cassette sent to producer David Kahne … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 142 – 140

145. Dire Straits, “Money for Nothing” Dire Straits’ biggest hit came about because Mark Knopfler eavesdropped in a New York City appliance store. According to the singer, guitarist, and chief songwriter for the band, he was browsing toward the back of the building, where an imposing row of televisions were all set to MTV, back when the cable network was still a sensation and took seriously the programming focus implied by the first letter of its name. An employee of the shop watched whatever music video was playing and offered a real-time, highly derogatory, and fairly offensive editorial reply. Knopfler reported grabbing a pen … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 145 – 143

151. The Dead Milkmen, “Instant Club Hit (You’ll Dance to Anything)” The adamant disdain suggested by the parenthetical annexation to the Dead Milkmen single “Instant Club Hit” wasn’t a mistake. It was a clear expression of lead vocalist Rodney Anonymous’s intent in writing the song. “For a couple months, I hung out at this club in Philly,” Anonymous reported. “I have, like, no sense of rhythm, so I can’t dance. So I wouldn’t dance at this club. I’d just sit there at the bar and drink and growl, basically. To people like me who aren’t hair farmers, it’s just a horrible … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 151 – 149