#1 at KUKQ/Phoenix: “Love Is A Shield” by German synth-pop group Camouflage. Their follow-up single, “One Fine Day,” is at #40.
Big Audio Dynamite, Mick Jones’s post-Clash group, is at #2 with “Contact,” while fellow Clash man Joe Strummer is at #6 with “Shouting Street.”
At #3 is undoubtedly the most enduring of all the songs on this Newstuff Alternative Music Survey: “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode, which would end up as the #1 song of 1990 at KQ and still receives plenty of airplay today at rock radio stations.
Other notables:
- “Make Believe Mambo” (#7) by Talking Heads front man David Byrne.
- “245 Days” (#8) by Minnesota native and Bob Dylan son-in-law Peter Himmelman.
- “Love And Anger” (#11), the biggest U.S. alternative radio hit for eccentric British songstress Kate Bush; a version of her 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill” by Meg Myers, is #4 this week in 2019 on the Billboard alternative radio chart.
- “No Myth” (12), the brilliant debut hit by Michael Penn (“what if I was Romeo in black jeans . . .”). He’s actor Sean Penn’s older brother and the husband of acclaimed singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.
- “A Girl Like You” (14) by New Jersey’s rockin’ Smithereens.
- “Blues From A Gun” (#30) by Scotland’s Jesus And Mary Chain, the first of their four top 5 American alternative radio hits.
- “Lullaby” (#38) by the Cure (you know, that one about the spiderman), third hit from the classic Disintegration album.
- “Questions Without Answers” (#44), a solo hit by Marty Willson Piper of Australia’s the Church.
Finally, the Valley’s own Meat Puppets are listed at #21 with Monsters, their seventh album, which features “Light” and “Flight of the Weasel.”