Artist - Album - Release Date
U2 - The Joshua Tree - 9-Mar-87
The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs - 30-Mar-87
Front 242 - Official Version - 30-Mar-87
Erasure - The Circus - 30-Mar-87
The Cult - Electric - 6-Apr-87
Nitzer Ebb - That Total Age - 11-May-87
The Cure - Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me - 25-May-87
The Dead Milkmen - Bucky Fellini - 1-Jul-87
Echo & The Bunnymen - Echo & The Bunnymen - 6-Jul-87
10,000 Maniacs - In My Tribe - 27-Jul-87
New Order - Substance - 17-Aug-87
Midnight Oil - Diesel and Dust - 21-Aug-87
R.E.M. - Document - 1-Sep-87
Love and Rockets - Earth, Sun, Moon - 9-Sep-87
Pixies - Come On Pilgrim - 28-Sep-87
Depeche Mode - Music for the Masses - 28-Sep-87
The Smiths - Strangeways, Here We Come - 28-Sep-87
INXS - Kick - 12-Oct-87
Sinead O’Connor - The Lion and the Cobra - 4-Nov-87
The Sisters of Mercy - Floodland - 13-Nov-87
The Mission - Children - 1-Feb-88
The Church - Starfish - 16-Feb-88
Peter Murphy - Love Hysteria - 1-Mar-88
Morrissey - Viva Hate - 14-Mar-88
Pixies - Surfer Rosa - 21-Mar-88
The Sugarcubes - Life's Too Good - 1-Apr-88
Erasure - The Innocents - 18-Apr-88
The Dead Milkmen - Beelzebubba - 1-May-88
Book of Love - Lullaby - 21-Jun-88
Information Society - Information Society - 21-Jun-88
Joy Division - Substance - 1-Jul-88
Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking - 23-Aug-88
Siouxsie & The Banshees - Peepshow - 5-Sep-88
Skinny Puppy - VIVIsectVI - 12-Sep-88
Cocteau Twins - Blue Bell Knoll - 19-Sep-88
They Might Be Giants - Lincoln - 25-Sep-88
Ministry - The Land of Rape and Honey - 11-Oct-88
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation - 18-Oct-88
Front 242 - Front by Front - 1-Nov-88
R.E.M. - Green - 7-Nov-88
Nitzer Ebb - Belief - 9-Jan-89
New Order - Technique - 30-Jan-89
Fine Young Cannibals - The Raw and the Cooked - 20-Feb-89
XTC - Oranges & Lemons - 27-Feb-89
The Cult - Sonic Temple - 10-Apr-89
Pixies - Doolittle - 18-Apr-89
Love and Rockets - Love and Rockets - 1-May-89
The Cure - Disintegration - 2-May-89
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses - 2-May-89
10,000 Maniacs - Blind Man's Zoo - 16-May-89
Faith No More - The Real Thing - 20-Jun-89
The B-52's - Cosmic Thing - 27-Jun-89
Red Flag - Naïve Art - 5-Jul-89
The The - Mind Bomb - 11-Jul-89
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mother's Milk - 16-Aug-89
The Jesus and Mary Chain - Automatic - 9-Oct-89
Erasure - Wild! - 16-Oct-89
Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine - 20-Oct-89
Ministry - The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste - 14-Nov-89
Peter Murphy - Deep - 19-Dec-89
Notes about this list:
A few albums require some explanation for how they arrived on this list. There was a time before 1987 when U2 and INXS were alternative acts but both bands were poised for mainstream success as their trajectories brought them regular radio airplay on Top 40 stations so that by 1987 the listening public was groomed by their increasingly mainstream sound, not only because the bands were shifting but so too was the listening public, and because of their histories both bands were still considered part of the alternative oeuvre though 1987 marked the end of that slippery slope as the people I knew who had listened to U2 and INXS previous to 1987 were now considering them sellouts with the releases of The Joshua Tree and Kick. Both albums were so pervasive in 1987 that there was no way for anybody to not be familiar with them, and this definitely put the nail in the alternative coffin for both bands and neither album is celebrated as a part of the alternative movement per se from the time by the people who were active listeners at that time. With all that said, they were successful because of the songs and they are alternative because of their pedigrees. Echo & The Bunnymen’s self-titled, while not nearly as wildly successful as the aforementioned, is relegated to the same fate as it is seen as pandering to the John Hughes crowd; for my money though I actually prefer the 1987 self-titled, for while the argument that it’s watered down E&tBM could certainly be made, their earlier albums to me were very uneven and this was the first time they turned in an album with strong songwriting front to back. Fine Young Cannibals’ The Raw & the Cooked was a bona fide mainstream smash hit, but has the distinction of being released on the I.R.S. record label which was a favorite of the alternative scene and the band itself was made up of ex-members of The (English) Beat of “Mirror in the Bathroom” fame, so they kind of got a pass at the time by the usually discerning alternative music listening crowd.
There are compilations on this list, but not without reason. The Smiths' Louder Than Bombs, New Order's Substance and Joy Division's Substance were essential listening during this period. Louder Than Bombs was released the same year The Smiths broke up and was a collection of non-album singles and b-sides, a Peel Session or two, a non-released song, and an alternate single mix, all spanning the entirety of the band's short career, and the vast majority of which were never available in the U.S. until its release. New Order's Substance is the closest of the three listed compilations resembling a greatest hits collection, but its value lies in the fact that these are the 12" mixes all collected in one place along with their b-sides, as well as a couple of 1987 re-recorded improved songs from earlier years (seriously, that sounds like the kiss of death in this day and age, but go compare the Substance version of "Temptation" to the original). The cost to have collected these singles individually would have been ridiculous and would have taken forever. As a primer for New Order that felt like the best possible extension of the band's art after the wonderful Low-life album and as an amazing stop-gap leading up to Technique, my 1980's would have been a lot different, and a lot worse, without it. Joy Division's Substance was a bit of a package deal with New Order's Substance, considering their shared lineage, but as a collection it more closely resembled Louder Than Bombs in the way it was constructed mostly of non-album singles and b-sides. For my peer group we would have been way too young when these Joy Division tracks originally came out, and it wouldn't have mattered much anyway because of the rarity of a good portion of the featured songs at that time, so to have this compilation released felt like an absolutely incredible gift, and to this day it's my go-to Joy Division when I need a fix.
Things to look out for: I can imagine that all albums by Erasure listed would have a very tough time (even moreso than everything else) when it comes to criticism. The fact of the matter is that we as a subculture in 1987 had a Big 4: The Cure, Depeche Mode, New Order, and Erasure. Erasure unfortunately never put out a great album, most times rising to just ok, but their output was incredibly prolific and they were the very definition of a singles band and those singles were as good and important to us as anything by those other three bands; it also didn’t hurt that Erasure was a byproduct of two other seminal bands in the scene, those being Depeche Mode and Yazoo. You’ll notice The Smiths are not part of the Big 4; The Smiths were a very polarizing group even at the time because of their frontman Morrissey, who was as equally considered a douchebag as he was a bad singer. Smiths fanatics would have them in the Big 4 while everyone else would admit (many reluctantly) that they would be #5 of a Big 5. I was a Smiths fanatic in a past life and always became recalcitrant when this discussion would come up because I was always taken by surprise by those in the scene who would dismiss The Smiths, and there always seemed to be more of them than I could fathom existing.
There’s a severe lack of U.S. guitar oriented alternative rock in this list. Quite frankly, that stuff wasn’t what was getting the majority of attention on the alternative airwaves at the time. It’s possible that on the east and west coasts of the U.S. this was not the case, and I'm positive college radio was delving deeper into the homegrown scene, but in the heartland most of what was being heard was synth heavy, more dance oriented music, much of it from overseas. The biggest breakthrough bands of this ilk were R.E.M., Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pixies, and Jane’s Addiction, though even they were somewhat a far cry from the Hüsker Dü/Replacements/Smithereens set and even further removed from the likes of The Circle Jerks and Minor Threat. All of these bands had a real presence in the scene as did the Dead Kennedys still, and much of it was what we others called skater music, which was not a pejorative term. Noise-rock was big on college radio with the likes of Butthole Surfers, The Jesus Lizard, and Scratch Acid. Dinosaur Jr. had some classic releases during this period, but that was more in hindsight of the alternative rock explosion of the early 90’s than it was a testament to their popularity within the scene in the late 80’s though my best friend of the time swore by them (incidentally, I saw them live for free in 1991 and walked out because it was so bad). The same could be said in an even more pronounced way for those who would remind you that Nirvana and Soundgarden started in the late 80’s; it’s historical refraction to include them just because they got popular in a very few short years when practically nobody knew who they were in the late 80’s. And I’m sure someone will complain about the lack of Mudhoney or Spacemen 3. Then there were the non-U.S. guitar bands like The Fall, New Model Army and The Mekons, all of whom had strong releases during this period, but none of whom necessarily reached critical mass in the scene. The releases listed represent the boiler plate bands and albums that were major at the time within a still somewhat minor scene and are not listed because they are some kind of definitive “best” of what existed. In that regard, this list is meant as a time capsule from my perspective of what the late 80’s alternative scene was really like for the majority of people within the scene, certainly at least in my little world, which keep in mind was High School in the boonies, so it may be normie, but I believe it’s a very clear and accurate snapshot of the time.
Submitted May 16, 2019 at 07:24AM by Scourge1973 http://bit.ly/2JlViM7
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