The Alternative Number Ones: Siouxsie And The Banshees’ “Peek-A-Boo”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #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 subscribers only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

In September 1988, Billboard tried something new. The magazine already had its big charts for singles and albums, and it had genre-specific lists for R&B, country, adult contemporary, dance, Latin, and "hits of the world," as well as plain ol' regular "rock." But something was happening on the margins, and a few radio stations were doing their best to capture and capitalize on that thing. The new Billboard chart, announced to very little fanfare, would attempt to chronicle that thing.

There was no hard definition for this new chart's genre, but the Billboard headline announcing the new chart used the term "alternative rock." For its first 21 years, the chart itself was called Modern Rock Tracks -- "modern rock" being a descriptor that's really just as vague and frustrating as "alternative." The new chart covered radio airplay at the 29 stations that reported. (Eleven of them were college radio stations; the rest were commercial.) What counted as modern rock? Well, the people who programmed music at those stations got to decide, and their definition changed radically over the decades.