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. The column is now biweekly, alternating with The Number Ones on Mondays.
For almost the first decade of the Billboard Modern Rock chart’s existence, it was impossible for a song to hold down the #1 spot for more than nine weeks at a time. Between 1988 and 1997, four songs topped the chart for nine weeks apiece: U2’s “Mysterious Ways,” the Lemonheads’ “Into Your Arms,” Live’s “Lightning Crashes,” and Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” That’s it. These were not all gargantuan event-songs that reshaped alt-rock culture. Thanks to the presence of “Lightning Crashes,” I can’t even really say that they were all good songs, necessarily. But they were all huge. If you spent any time listening to alternative radio in that time, you heard all of those songs one billion times each. In all of those cases, though, the chart eventually moved on. Nine weeks was the absolute ceiling of dominance for alternative rock songs. Then “Sex And Candy” happened.
You probably have some questions right now. The most important of those questions might be: What the fuck? Yeah. Me too. Marcy Playground are a kind of slapdash irony-damaged quasi-post-grunge trio from Minneapolis via New York. I’m sure they have some very strong feelings about Pavement. Frontman John Wozniak actually left the Pacific Northwest when he tried to start a music career in the early ’90s. In 1998, as “Sex And Candy” was exploding, Wozniak told the Phoenix New Times, “I wanted to find other musicians I could play with who weren’t necessarily doing the punk-rock thing. You know, people who could play more than three chords.” Did he lose you yet? He didn’t lose me, but only because he never had me.
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