De La Soul – Haunted Jukebox

A crucial year, for it was when I began listening to American Top 40 on a weekly basis and looking for a posted copy of the Billboard Hot 100 whenever I visited Musicland or JR’s at Southridge mall—not coincidentally also where I bought my first post-“Weird Al” Yankovic albums (on cassette, naturally.) In 1989, I began thinking of pop music (and all its genre-specific iterations) as a cultural force, something to obsess over and actively engage with rather than relegate to background noise from the radio or MTV.

As with most of these mixes, I heard few of these songs in 1989 apart from the big fat hits (Madonna at her peak, Fine Young Cannibals at theirs, Donna Summer’s S/A/W-produced comeback, Elvis Costello’s fluke McCartney co-write crossover); perhaps the least likely smash of them all was Neneh Cherry’s homespun, hip-hop-adjacent “Buffalo Stance” which never fails to mentally transport me back to that summer. Other new sounds from Europe also infiltrated my consciousness: Soul II Soul’s uncommon elegance (and soon widely imitated shuffle beat), Black Box’s straight-up revivalist disco, even wacko-dance novelty “Bring Me Edelweiss”, which I became obsessed with after taping it off the radio (a wise move, since I believe I never heard it there ever again.)

Elsewhere, I’ve included obvious choices (Bob Mould going all jangle-pop, The Pixies going pop, period), a few obscure album tracks (“One Of The Millions”, possibly the best XTC song Colin Moulding ever wrote; the languorous, Sally Timms-fronted “Learning To Live On Your Own”) and a couple of mostly forgotten hits (I’d rather hear “Deadbeat Club” instead of “Love Shack” again, or listen to “Blue Spanish Sky” vs. another round of “Wicked Game”.)

As the decade drew to a close, a potential for something startlingly new was apparent, even if it ended up sounding forever of its time (Kon Kan’s cheeky Lynn Anderson extrapolation, Pet Shop Boys-produced Liza Minnelli (covering Sondheim!)) or drawing considerable influence from the past (Lisa Stansfield merging Philly Soul with Diva House, for instance.) Although “Daisy Age” rap would soon mostly give way to harder textures and crasser temperaments, De La Soul’s sole top 40 hit remains a wonder–ingenuously sampling the past until it becomes a tapestry not so much futuristic as it is timeless.

1989: We Do The Dive Every Time We Dance

The B-52’s, “Deadbeat Club”
Kate Bush, “The Sensual World”
Concrete Blonde, “Happy Birthday”
Soul II Soul, “Keep On Moving”
The Cure, “Pictures of You”
Hunters and Collectors, “When The River Runs Dry”
Indigo Girls, “Kid Fears”
Morrissey, “Interesting Drug”
Kirsty MacColl, “Innocence”
Chris Isaak, “Blue Spanish Sky”
The Blue Nile, “Headlights On the Parade”
XTC, “One of the Millions”
The Beautiful South, “You Keep It All In”
Madonna, “Like A Prayer”
Kon Kan, “I Beg Your Pardon”
Liza Minnelli, “Losing My Mind”
Mekons, “Learning To Live On Your Own”
Dramarama, “Last Cigarette”
Pixies, “Here Comes Your Man”
Bob Mould, “See A Little Light”
New Order, “Vanishing Point”
Fine Young Cannibals, “Don’t Look Back”
Elvis Costello, “Veronica”
Ramones, “Pet Sematary”
Neneh Cherry, “Buffalo Stance”
De La Soul, “Me, Myself and I”
10,000 Maniacs, “Trouble Me”
Edelweiss, “Bring Me Edelweiss”
Donna Summer, “This Time I Know It’s For Real”
Lisa Stansfield, “This Is The Right Time”
Black Box, “Ride On Time”
Erasure, “Blue Savannah”