Guest List: Stephen Stec's Top 10 #1 Modern Rock Tracks, Part 2

The Top Five

It's Friday; and, as promised, I give you the top 5 tracks on Stephen Stec's list of the top 10 songs ever to have reached number 1 on Billboard's "Modern Rock Tracks" chart.

If you missed the Introduction or Part 1 of the list, you may want to check those out before continuing. And don't forget that Paper Streets will be in Asbury Park tonight, playing at The Berkeley on the eve of the annual Zombie Walk.

Thanks to Stephen for all of the work he put into this one. I hope we hear from him again soon.

Now, the list.

My Top 10 Modern Rock Tracks, 5-1

By Stephen Stec, Guitarist for Paper Streets

5. The Sundays -- “Here’s Where The Story Ends” (90). Look at the jangles on these guys. I mean was this the prettiest sounding song to ever go #1? Yes. Probably yes.

I’m constantly dealing personally with the internal conflict between turning up the Big Muff and trying to make my guitar jingle and jangle half as well as the Sundays do on this song. When you hear this song, you understand the brilliance of a beautiful clean tone. It blows my mind that this beautiful song managed to top the chart when it did, during the height of what seemed to have been more dance crazed waters of the early 90s.

4. Phoenix -- “1901” (09). The song that saved Alt Rock from itself. This song, maaaaybe more than any other the list, teetered on the brink of what I considered to be a breakthrough, era-defining song. It is by far the most New Wave song that’s more familiar to its young listeners than the word New Wave.

To me, “1901” represents Phoenix beating all the other similarly-minded, yelpy voiced indie bands like Vampire Weekend and the Strokes -- culturally impactful American bands (from New York no less!) that managed five top 5 albums between them but no #1 singles. If you think trying to get big in your town is hard, try starting a band in Versailles, France. How do you think the music scene is over in Versailles? Yeah, probably just like Williamsburg.

3. The Cure – “Fascination Street” (89). I’m relatively sure high schools were a LOT more Goth in 89 than they are nowadays (editor’s note: They were. I’ll show you CoolMom’s yearbook picture someday.), and The Cure were obviously a big reason why. Half this list could, quite frankly, be composed of Cure songs that crossed over to the mainstream -- “Friday I’m In Love,” “Lovesong,” and “Just Like Heaven” -- but “Fascination Street” never quite reached that level of cultural recognition so it makes this list. It’s no doubt just as well written as all of those songs, it just displays The Cure at the top of their powers in a different direction than those pop tunes.

“Fascination Street” is a hauntingly dark and nervous composition off of Disintegration that was a throwback to The Cure’s early songs from albums like Seventeen Seconds and Pornography. It ended up surpassing the content on those albums, becoming their most successful “Goth” sounding single. It marked the point in The Cure’s history where Robert Smith noted that they had, “despite my best efforts, actually become everything that I didn’t want us to become: a stadium rock band.”

2. Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians – “So You Think You’re In Love?” (91). Although Robyn was sometimes called inaccessible and sometimes inexplicably dismissed by some as being little more than a Syd Barrett-eqsue ripoff throughout his career, this single is as accessible as it gets in showcasing Robyn’s whimsical lyrical style trough the filter of pure Byrds / Beatles music circa ‘65. “So You Think You’re In Love” may be the most hummable melody on this list. Adding to the already sugary goodness and pop magic of the track, the song even includes a particularly jangly Rickenbacker guitar played by none other than Peter Buck of REM.

Lyrically, the song one of the most straightforward things Hitchcock’s done, that’s true; but Robyn’s “It’s beautiful today but it’s going to snow tomorrow” mantra is on full display. Though he starts off asking the title question, he soon starts asking “So you sure that it’s wise?” answering “Oh, you probably ain’t.” The lyrics were described as being “paradoxically detached but exuberant” and yeah, that’s probably just about the best way to put what Robyn did on this track. It’s also a big reason why he’s this high on the list.

1. New Order – “Regret” (93). Almost like what Phoenix did on “1901” but with everything turned up to the max (including the ridiculousness). It almost sounds like a Disney Channel song / what I hope One Direction sounds like. To be up front with all of you, “Regret” would have been #1 of the #1s solely for this video of the band miming on Baywatch Beach while being watched over by none other than Dave Fuckin Hasselhoff. Was there ever really any doubt that Hoff was the best man for the job here? I half expect to see Zach Morris floating around every time I watch this video.



In all honesty, the video is an accurate representation of exactly what this song is: a PARTY that is very much tied to its specific era. It does almost sound like a song you would hear on the Disney Channel / what I hope One Direction sounds like, except, you know, it’s the dudes who were hanging out with Ian Curtis in Manchester a little more than a decade prior.