154. Stray Cats, “Rock This Town” To get noticed, and appreciated, for their quintessentially American sound, Stray Cats needed to got to the U.K. Lead singer and guitarist Brian Setzer explained that the journey across the Atlantic was spurred specifically by a lack of stateside interest in their rockabilly sound. “We were getting fed up because the record companies didn’t want to know about it,” Setzer said. “We had heard that in places like France and England rock and roll never died. We just decided to go over there for the hell of it. We sold everything we owned. Jim … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, #154 – #152

157. XTC, “Earn Enough for Us” Andy Partridge and his cohorts within XTC weren’t exactly renowned for being accommodating with the producers foisted upon them by their label (not were they especially accommodating with their label either), but their combativeness with Todd Rundgren during the recording of the 1986 album Skylarking was especially notorious. They’d chosen Rundgren from a list of names given to them by Virgin Records, delivered with the warning that the band needed to start selling records in the United States. According to all involved, Partridge and Rundgren were viciously at one another from the jump, with the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 157 – 155

160. Patti Smith, “People Have the Power” When “People Have the Power” arrived, nearly a decade had passed without any new music from Patti Smith. She’d been effectively living in semi-retirement while starting a family with the man she married in 1980, Fred “Sonic” Smith, a punk icon in his own right thanks to his tenure in the foundational band the MC5. According to Patti, it was Fred who started her on the road to the song when he marched into the kitchen and said, “People have the power. Write it.” Armed with only that title, Patti embarked on a … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 160 – 158

163. The House of Love, “Christine” Released in 1988, “Christine” was the third single by the London-based band the House of Love, but it was the one that made all the difference. Their first two releases, “Shine On” and “Real Animal,” sold softly, and there was a clear sense that their label, Creation Records, was close to slotting them in the interesting failure category. The label was reportedly weighing whether or not to fund a third single when the band delivered an attention-getting live performance at London’s the Town & Country Club. Wanting to capitalize on that buzz, Creation sent the House of … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 163 – 161

166. The Nails, “Things You Left Behind” As any rock band must, the Nails talked about the artistic growth they were going through when they released their second full-length album, Dangerous Dreams, in 1986. They’d had a mini-sensation two years earlier, with the single “88 Lines About 44 Women,” but the very nature of the track stirred a mist of novelty up around the group’s music. While hanging tight to the gentle beat poetry vibe that made their name (lead singer and chief songwriter Marc Campbell was quick to namecheck the likes of Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman when asked … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 166 – 164

169. M+M, “Black Stations/White Stations” By 1984, Martha and the Muffins were a very different band than the one that had a international hit single five years earlier, with “Echo Beach.” The lack of similar chart success with subsequent releases caused the group to get dropped by Virgin Records, and they’d shed several band members over the years, including saxophonist Tony Haas, who chose to conduct his exit interview through a series of missives printed in the letters column of Now, the Toronto alternative weekly newspaper. The tumult was so thorough that remaining members Mark Gane and Martha Johnson took the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 169 – 167

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