The Alternative Number Ones: Simple Minds’ “See The Lights”

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.

Anglophilia is a hell of a drug. Simple Minds are Scottish, not English, but the point stands. How else do you account for this? The song that finally knocked "Losing My Religion" out of the #1 spot on 1991 alternative radio was a puffed-up, self-serious, ultra-produced track from an across-the-pond band that was six years past its biggest hit. It's not like Simple Minds were all over 120 Minutes in 1991. It's not like they were in the same cultural conversation as the Cure and Depeche Mode. They were a big mainstream band making big mainstream music, but they were just British enough for America's modern rock radio programmers. That's all I can really tell you.

It's not that "See The Lights," Simple Minds' one chart-topper on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, is a bad song. It's that "See The Lights" represents a sound, and maybe even an outlook, that was about to be wiped off the planet. Listening to "See The Lights" today is like imagining daily life in Pompeii just before the eruption. I'm being overdramatic here, but "See The Lights" is overdramatic, too. The '90s alt-rock revolution wasn't as quick or merciless as I'm making it out to be, and Simple Minds were able to elbow their way into alt-rock radio rotation as late as 1995. Still, songs like this are now extinct beasts. They truly don't make 'em like this anymore.