The Alternative Number Ones: The Church’s “Metropolis”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Most of the time, the term "space rock" is not a literal thing. It's the name given to a freaked-out, astrally inclined form of psychedelic rock that arose in the early '70s -- the bugged-out style popularized by Hawkwind and early Pink Floyd. Those bands sometimes sang about interstellar adventures, but for them "space rock" was less of a lyrical descriptor, more of a state of mind. In 1988, however, a group of woozy Australians hit the big-time with a rock song that's about space -- or, more specifically, about the kind of blissed-out, romantic alienation that you might feel when you consider the utter insignificance of your own life on a galactic scale.

Stylistically, the Church's "Under The Milky Way" probably doesn't scan as space rock. It's not wild or giddy enough, and it probably won't inspire the kind of chaotic chemical euphoria that I tend to associate with Hawkwind and their aesthetic descendants. "Under The Milky Way" belongs more in the zone of dreamy late-'80s college-rock. It's still psychedelic, but it's also languid and expansive -- opium-den shag-carpet music. But when I encountered "Under The Milky Way" on the radio as a kid, the song still gave me a sense of vast mystery, a feeling of worlds and mental planes beyond mine.