Top 10 Albums of 1989

It’s Friday, so trivial nostalgia time, and this week it’s a continuation of Simon’s Year-Ending-In-Nine request spot. So what was I listening to in 1989?

- Julee Cruise Floating into the Night
- The Blue Nile Hats
- Stone Roses Stone Roses
- Jane Siberry Bound by the Beauty
- He Said Take Care
- Madonna Like a Prayer
- XTC Oranges & Lemons
- Pixies Doolittle
- AR Kane i
- The Cure Disintegration

Compared to my 1979 list (22 Feb), this looks almost conventional. Bubbling under are New Order’s Technique, Soul II Soul’s Back to Life, and De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. It was the time of Indie and Acid House (though the latter passed me by), and the beginnings of Ambient House (The Orb’s A Huge, Ever Growing Pulsating Brain ‘single’) and Shoegazing (My Bloody Valentine). There were some fine singles - though not albums - by Kate Bush (The Sensual World), Electronic (Getting Away With It), Wire (Eardrum Buzz) and the last of The Sugarcubes (Regina) before Bjork went solo; even Debbie Harry (Brite Side). But best of all, for me, was Julee Cruise who came out of that whole David Lynch / Angelo Badalamenti / Twin Peaks thing.

Live-wise, I saw a spellbinding Mary Margaret O’Hara before she disappeared off the planet, Dead Can Dance (at University of London Student Union, including a drink with Brendan Perry at the bar beforehand), Elvis Costello (my only time), Pet Shop Boys and The Cure (at Wembley Arena, separately), Debbie Harry (still a siren), Laurie Anderson (in New York, he said, showing nonchalant cool), Swans, Einsturzende Neubaten, Front 242, The Residents (at Sadlers Wells of all places), Lights In A Fat City (at the Scala), Bow Gamelan, and several performances by ‘new music’ friends Graham Fitkin, Laurence Crane and Simon Rackham. Oh yes, and Reading Festival featuring New Order, The Pogues, Sugarcubes, House of Love etc from the vantage point of a tent in an inevitably rain-soaked field.