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So many bands just missed: Black Flag, Butthole Surfers, Echo & The Bunnymen, Love & Rockets, Cocteau Twins, the Meatmen, Dinosaur Jr., the Pogues, Nick Cave, the Descendents, the Misfits,...
Mar 21, 2024 · This list contains the most popular alternative songs of the '80s, as voted on by rock music lovers from around the world. The beginning of the '80s saw the dominance of such acts as Duran Duran and Black Flag. Toward the tail end of the era, a new type of band began to emerge.
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- Pixies - Doolittle (4AD, 1989) These days Pixies are best known as the band that Nirvana stole the old quiet-quiet-LOUD! dynamic from, but the truth is that the band’s second album should’ve been bigger than Nevermind.
- Jane’s Addiction - Nothing’s Shocking (WEA, 1988) Quite possibly the ultimate alt-rock band, Jane’s married a love of Led Zeppelin’s raunch with a feel for the soundscapes and textures of bands like The Cure and Bauhaus.
- The Smiths - Hatful Of Hollow (Rough Trade, 1984) The Smiths’ best studio may be The Queen Is Dead, but this collection of singles and radio sessions is their most essential release.
- Stone Roses - Stone Roses (Silvertone, 1989) If at first Stone Roses didn’t seem too distinct in an age that saw a multitude of indie rockers obsessed with the nailing the perfect Byrdsian pop song, one listen to closing epic I Am The Resurrection made you release that the Roses were a cut above, while She Bangs The Drums and Waterfall were pop classics.
- Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes
- The Smiths -The Smiths
- Cocteau Twins – Treasure
- Hüsker Dü – New Day Rising
- The Cure – The Head on The Door
- The Replacements – Tim
- The Jesus and Mary Chain – Psychocandy
- Siouxsie and The Banshees – Tinderbox
- R.E.M. – Lifes Rich Pageant
- Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
Violent Femmes‘ debut was a wonderfully fresh oddity when it first came out. Too uptight and acoustic to be punk, too scruffy to be new wave, and too nervy and puerile to be plain old pop — its inability to fit in any of the period’s cleanly-marked musical categories was rendered irrelevant by its unabashed catchiness and its relatable adolescent a...
The emergence of the Smiths signaled the start of a new era in British music. Their callbacks to pre-psychedelic guitar pop and their disdain of synthesizers and modern studio trickery set them apart from the still-thriving post-punk movement, even as they swam in the same independent label waters. The group’s pronounced ordinariness, literate lyri...
Despite having already released two LPs and four EPs, it was when Scottish band Cocteau Twins released Treasurein 1984 that they hit their stride. Not only did they solidify their lineup, trading Will Heggie for Simon Raymonde on bass, but they also cemented their signature sound — a combination of Elizabeth Fraser’s ethereal vocals and Robin Guthr...
A band cruelly too ahead of its time to gain the notice it deserved back in the ’80s, this Twin Cities trio is superseded possibly only by R.E.M. and the Smiths when it comes to measuring the influence of alternative rock’s early pioneers. Unlike R.E.M. and the Smiths, who counted punk as a reference point but were not stylistically wedded to it, H...
In 1985, The Head on the Door was a turning point in the Cure’s by-then nine-year-old career. After recording one of its darkest albums, The Top, in 1984, the English band restructured its lineup to include new drummer Boris Williams, and reintroduced former band members Porl Thompson on guitar and Simon Gallup on bass. The album melded the group’s...
Timwas the Replacements’ final release before founder Bob Stinson left. It was also the record that saw the misfits from Minneapolis sign to their first major label, switching from Twin/Tone to Sire Records, and snagging Tommy Ramone as their producer. The album includes some buoyant, even upbeat, songs. “Can’t Hardly Wait”, “I’ll Buy”, and “Little...
It’s easy for Psychocandy‘s reputation to overshadow its merits. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s epochal first album is ground-zero for noise pop and shoegaze — entire swaths of alt-rock’s lineage would not exist without it. Yet brush past all the namechecks and the plaudits and what remains at the center of nearly three decades of hubbub is a record th...
Siouxsie and the Banshees’ seventh album Tinderboxis a reflection of its title. With John Carruthers’ pressing guitars, Budgie’s expert drumming, and Siouxsie Sioux’s unyielding vocals, the songs are capable of igniting the listener’s heart and ears. The concept of heat is a thread that runs throughout the album — from the image of Pompeii’s incine...
Why pick Lifes Rich Pageant? Why not the better-known Murmur or Document, or any other R.E.M. LP for this list? The reasons are simple: Lifes Rich Pageant is the best, most direct, and most accessible album the band put out during the entire 1980s. The Athens, Georgia quartet faced several creative and career crossroads when the time came to make i...
Sonic Youth was one of the coolest bands to emerge from New York City’s No Wave scene of the early 1980s, but although its fourth album Sister (1987) made significant progress fusing avant-garde noise rock with a much more accessible rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic, the band was still strictly an underground phenomenon. That all changed with Daydream Natio...
Apr 15, 2024 · The best alternative songs of the 1980s span punk, post-punk, new wave, college rock, underground, goth, new romantic, ska, power pop, hardcore, and indie rock.
Nov 30, 2023 · 100 Best Alternative Rock Bands. Ansel Pereira. Updated: Nov 30, 2023 10:06 AM EST. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth were leaders of alternative rock from the mid-'80s through their breakup in 2011, with albums like "Sister," "Daydream Nation," "Goo," and "Dirty" touchstones of the genre. Wikipedia Commons.
The 100 Greatest Alternative Singles of the '80s · Playlist · 97 songs · 1.1K likes.
