What song held the number one spot for the longest in 1989?
Acid house, illegal raves, and the fall of the Eastern Bloc; the 1980s, contrary to the neon-hued image of nostalgia which seems to prevail these days, was a pretty dreadful decade for most ordinary people, what with the devastating effects of Thatcherite deindustrialisation and the constant threat of nuclear war.
Still, by the time 1989 rolled around, there was a definite sense that things were on the up, at least as far as the music industry was concerned.
While the soulless output of fresh-faced pop stars continued to dominate the pop charts, just as it had done for much of the decade, there was a definite shift in the sounds of the charts as 1989 went on, noticeable only to keen viewers of Top of the Pops. All of a sudden, dance music, DJs, and hip-hop began to be interspersed with old faithfuls like Phil Collins, reflecting the changing tides of the music industry and the birth of modern dance music, which had a lot to answer for as the 1980s drew to a close.
Every generation has its period of musical revolution, and for the youth of 1989, that came in the form of acid house. In the nightclubs, warehouses, and countryside fields of the United Kingdom, repetitive, drug-fueled beats reigned supreme during what was later dubbed the ‘second summer of love’. Thatcher might have done everything in her power to crush these illegal raves and MDMA-addled dancers from enjoying their weekends immersed in acid house, but even she couldn’t halt the unstoppable rise of dance music.
Acid house and the emerging club culture were well-represented in the UK singles charts of 1989, with the likes of 808 State scoring major hits and alerting the wider nation to this blossoming subculture. What’s more, indie heroes The Stone Roses emerged during 1989, combining a far-out acid house-influenced sound with an indie rock sensibility, which ultimately changed the landscape of independent music indefinitely.
So, which song was number one for the longest in 1989?
It should come as no real surprise, therefore, that the biggest-selling and longest-running number one single of 1989 in the UK was a dance classic: ‘Ride On Time’ by Italo house masters Black Box.
Despite the group’s insistence that the single would only sell a few hundred copies, mainly to club DJs, the utterly iconic dance hit ended up topping the UK singles chart for six weeks – even beating out that damned rabbit, the bizarrely unstoppable juggernaut that was Jive Bunny.
Dance music was dominating the pop charts both in the UK and all across mainland Europe, but the power of acid house hadn’t quite stretched to the other side of the Atlantic just yet. So, what were the US public buying in the year that the Berlin Wall was finally toppled? Black Box didn’t chart in America, and the best-selling singles of the year included the likes of glam metal stalwarts Poison, R&B titan Bobby Brown, and the fraudulent Milli Vanilli.
Fittingly, then, for a yearly chart filled with such a diverse range of guff, the title for the longest-running US number-one of 1989 is shared between two artists: Janet Jackson, with ‘Miss You Much’, and Phil Collins with ‘Another Day In Paradise’. And while neither of those number ones is particularly offensively bad, I know which side of the Atlantic I would have preferred to be on.
