September 21, 1991
- STAYED AT #1:5 Weeks
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.
September 24, 1991 has gone down in history as a great day in alternative music. A whole lot of popular and influential albums all happened to hit stores on that day: Nirvana's Nevermind, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik, A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory, Primal Scream's Screamadelica, the Pixies' Trompe Le Monde. Soundgarden's major-label debut Badmotorfinger was supposed to arrive on that day, too, but its release was pushed back a few weeks. Pearl Jam's Ten had just come out at the end of August. All of those records would cast cultural shadows, and some of them would soon impact the Billboard Modern Rock chart; we'll be discussing a couple of them in this space soon. But if you happened to look at that chart on the day those albums all came out, you would've had no idea what was about to happen.
Three days before that flood of wildly important records, the English eccentric Robyn Hitchcock ascended to #1 for the first and only time. Some people are simply born to live their lives as cult heroes, and Robyn Hitchcock is one of those people. The fact that Robyn Hitchcock ever had a #1 hit on a Billboard chart -- any Billboard chart, even the lowly-in-1991 Modern Rock one -- is an accident of history. For that to happen, things had to line up exactly right. Hitchcock was 38 at the time, and he'd been making music since the late '70s. He'd never had a crack at the pop charts, either at home or in America, but his psychedelic surrealism had won over certain important Americans. Those Americans happened to include the members of R.E.M., and R.E.M.'s approval meant a great deal in 1991.