The Alternative Number Ones: World Party’s “Way Down Now”

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.

Writing this column is funny, especially now, when we're looking at the moment before alternative rock became a giant cultural wave in America. Once grunge arrives, alternative rock will get a whole lot closer to becoming an identifiable thing. In this moment, though, we're still dealing with a nebulous, mysterious category of acts that don't necessarily have much in common with each other, then or now. Some of the time, we're looking at artists who joined the cultural firmament. Some of the time, we're looking at artists who have basically been erased from the historical record. World Party belong in the second category.

In one million years, you could not invent a band name that's more evocative of the late '80s and early '90s than "World Party." Say those two words out loud, and the sound tastes like Fruitopia with a Crystal Pepsi chaser. It looks like Corin Nemec's haircut on Parker Lewis Can't Lose. There's so much going on with those words. They evoke the short-lived and misplaced end-of-history optimism that popped up when the Berlin Wall came down. They sound like African masks mounted on liberal yuppies' walls. They sound like whatever was happening when someone came up with the phrase "Rock The Vote."