Annivyrsary: 1989

ISSUE #41

Let me bring you back to 1989: the number, another summer, sound of a funky drummer. Ten years after "Rapper's Delight," hip hop was in full-roaring-force ramping up to the Golden Age of the 1990's, and one of the biggest works of art that year was Spike Lee's incendiary Do the Right Thing. Lee sat down with Public Enemy and asked them to write a theme for the film, and they came back with "Fight the Power," the original woke anthem. Listening to the song today is like digging up the Rosetta stone for how we talk about representation and reparations today: "Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps / Sample a look back you look and find / Nothing but rednecks for four-hundred years if you check."

Lee was completely snubbed at the Oscars that year while Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture, an atrocity that would look silly if weren't that something similar is set to happen today with BlacKkKlansman and Green Book. The fact that Lee was at least nominated this time is a paltry consolation. It's representative of exactly how thirty years feels in our culture: recent enough that not much has changed in attitude (hip hop still dominates as it did then, with big releases like Paul's Boutique and debuts from Neneh Cherry, Queen Latifah, The D.O.C., and Gang Starr), but far enough back that everything sounds beamed from a neighboring planet (the bombastic syncopation, the electronic indulgences).

This doubles as a nice dance playlist, just by nature of the era. It was all about the drum machines in 1989. We went wild for those icy snares, the itchy high-hats, the 808's and every other sound available on those Roland machines. The culture drank deeply from the cup of electronics, and we were refreshed. This was the year of "Like a Prayer," and "Pump Up the Jam," and Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. House music had kicked open the door, and I'm happy to make a playlist that features the likes of Orbital, 808 State, and Virgo—all stuff that would pave the way(v) for raves.

Rock, on the other hand, was a thorough disappointment this year, with the exception of three luminary albums: Pixies' Doolittle, The Cure's Disintegration, and Nirvana's Bleach. There were a few tiny highlights, like twee and dream pop coming through with The Field Mice and Galaxie 500, sweet music for sweet hearts, but the aforementioned albums were really doing the heavy-lifting. Without Doolittle, I can't imagine a Modest Mouse (Black Francis and Isaac Brock both sing like they're shouting through cupped hands); without Bleach, of course, we would barely have the Pacific Northwest of the next ten years; and without Disintegration, I would've had to endure years of crippling introversion without any solace whatsoever (cue the eye rolls, please and thank you).

The only others to survive the Rock Drought of '89 were the bands that turned full force into adopting the machines like New Order and Nine Inch Nails, whose essential Pretty Hate Machine arrived this year. Thirty years later they'd be on stage at the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks: The Return, but that's not the only time Reznor and Lynch shared cultural moment together. The Twin Peaks theme debuted this year in the form of Julee Cruse's "Falling," with lyrics by Lynch and music by frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. The very next year, with the murder of Laura Palmer, we'd all be swept off into the sun-scorched nerve of the Nineties. Let's rock.