 | Dave’s Faves:My Album Collection in 1988 |
By year’s end, this was what my collection looked like. Albums acquired in 1988 are marked with an asterisk.
Resources and Related Links:
First posted 8/31/2021. |
DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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Saturday, December 31, 1988
Dave’s Faves: My Album Collection in 1988
Alternative Rock #1 Songs (1976-1988)
 | Alternative Rock:#1 Songs (1976-1988) |
In 2019, I published the book Charting the Classic Rock Hits 1962-1981 (click here to order on Amazon). The idea was to create a companion piece to the rock chart created by Billboard magazine in 1981. That chart tracked mainstream rock songs. I created a system to weigh different songs and see how they might have fared had their been rock charts dating back as far as 1962. Similarly, Billboard started a chart in 1988 to track modern rock songs and I developed a system to weigh how songs might have fared had such charts existed as much as two decades earlier. Up until late 1976, results were spotty so I’ve used the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” as my starting point to track songs that might have been #1’s on an alternative rock track through the ‘70s and ‘80s. Modern rock, also known as college rock and later as alternative rock, was a reference to rock music that was a little left of center. It grew out of garage rock in the mid-‘60s and, with the arrival of the Velvet Underground, a new off-the-beaten-path form of music was born which would come to be known as proto-punk (Velvet Underground, the Stooges, New York Dolls). The ‘70s saw the arrival of glam (David Bowie, Queen, T-Rex) and punk (Sex Pistols, The Clash, Ramones). By the early ‘80s, a more synth-driven form of music known as new wave (Talking Heads, Duran Duran) emerged. The ‘80s then saw the explosion of college rock (U2, R.E.M., Depeche Mode, The Cure, INXS). As the genre developed in the ‘80s and into the ‘90s, it became harder to distinguish “alternative” rock from “mainstream.” Originally, though, the idea was that alternative rock was built on punk and new wave and the kinds of off-kilter songs beloved by college radio stations. Nonetheless, you’ll still see a fair share of major hits on this list as some of the acts embraced by the alternative crowd would find mainstream success even in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Note: dates indicate when the song was first released or charted. Asterisks (*) indicate that the song was an album cut and the date is therefore the date of the album’s release. Two asterisks (**) indicate the song hit #1 on the Billboard modern rock chart. Check other lists based on charts, sales, and airplay here.
Related Dave’s Music Database Lists:
First posted 3/27/2025; last updated 4/5/2025. |
Saturday, December 24, 1988
Guns N’ Roses “Patience” charted
 | PatienceGuns N’ Roses |
Writer(s): Guns N' Roses (see lyrics here) Released: April 4, 1989 First Charted: December 24, 1988 Peak: 4 US, 4 CB, 6 RR, 7 AR, 10 UK, 10 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.2 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 319.5 video, 185.72 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:After the success of their 1987 Appetite for Destruction album, Guns N’ Roses released G N’ R Lies as a sort of stopgap. The collection packaged the group’s 1986 Live Like a Suicide EP with four new songs. They included an acoustic reworking of “You’re Crazy,” which had appeared on Appetite, the eyebrow-raising “Used to Love Her” about killing one’s girlfriend, and the highly controversial “One in a Million” which insulted homosexuals and immigrants. The song’s big hit, however, was the ballad “Patience” about “waiting it out in a relationship.” SF The song has often been assumed to be about Axl Rose and his troubled relationship with Erin Everly, but the band has said Izzy Stradlin wrote the song about his ex-girlfriend Angela Nicoletti McCoy. WK The song was originally recorded with all acoustic instruments and no drumming, although they use electric guitar and drums when performing the song in concert. The song also features Axl Rose whistling – something he also does on the GNR hits “Paradise City” and “Civil War.” The song is a favorite for karaoke, but Kimberly Starling of The Karaoke Informer says it is one of the top 5 songs that tends to bomb. SF A version of the song by Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave) was released posthumously in 2020. He recorded the song after helping his daughter, Toni, learn it. He took it to #1 on the Billboard mainstream rock chart. Resources:Related Links:
First posted 8/6/2022. |
Poison “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” hit #1
 | Every Rose Has Its ThornPoison |
Writer(s): Bret Michaels, C.C. DeVille, Bobby Dall, Rikki Rockett (see lyrics here) Released: October 12, 1988 First Charted: October 28, 1988 Peak: 13BB, 14 BA, 14 CB, 14 GR, 12 RR, 11 AR, 13 UK, 2 CN, 16 AU, 5 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 0.5 US, 0.2 UK, 0.7 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 1.0 radio, 70.9 video, 306.55 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:“This is the textbook rocker-dude move. You establish yourself as the king of the party, the debaucherous demon among debaucherous demons. Then, when you’ve got people on your side, you pull out the acoustic guitar and you get sensitive.” SG “Poison were one of the definitive party bands of their era, and yet their biggest hit is ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn.’” SG In 1986, Poison released their debut album, Look What the Cat Dragged In, “an album where the sleaze is so joyous that it’s almost wholesome.” SG Lead singer “Bret Michaels doesn’t have much of a voice, but he gets over on pure David Lee Roth-style strutting showmanship.” SG The 1988 follow-up Open Up and Say… Ahh! “isn’t quite as inspired…but it’s sleek and sharp, and almost every song sounds like a hit.” SG “The anthemically cheesed-out lead single ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ became the band’s biggest hit yet, peaking at #6…The follow-up ‘Fallen Angel’ just missed the top 10, peaking at #12…Poison offered no indication that they were into depth at all.” SG As such, Capitol Records was understandably reluctant to release “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” despite a slate of hair bands finding success with power ballads. As Michaels said, “We’re not trying to be AC/DC and we’re not trying to be Bob Dylan. But I have both those artists in my record collection. Why can’t I have influences from both?” FB Regarding the origins of the song, he explained that the band were playing a club in Dallas and staying in a sleazy hotel. He and drummer Ricki Rockett were talking in the laundry room and the idea for the song came to Bret. FB He “had called his girlfriend back in LA, and a man’s voice answered the phone.” SG Surprisingly, the song “isn’t a sneering, snarling woman-done-me-wrong song. Instead, Michaels simply tries to make sense of where things went wrong and of what he could’ve done differently.” SG Resources:
First posted 2/20/2024. |
Thursday, November 24, 1988
50 years ago: Roy Acuff charted with “Wabash Cannonball”
 | Wabash CannonballRoy Acuff & the Smoky Mountain Boys |
Writer(s): J.A. Roff, adapted by A.P. Carter (see lyrics here) First Charted: November 24, 1938 Peak: 12 US (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, -- UK, 10.0 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 3.31 video, 1.97 streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details.
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About the Song:This is “a genuine knight-of-the-road ballad with a touch of the Paul Bunyan flavor,” RA “perhaps the greatest of all train songs.” SS The song originated in the 1880s, In 1882, J.A. Roff wrote words and music for “The Great Rock Island Route!,” a song about a mythical train which traveled coast to coast. It became an anthem for hoboes. In Southern America in the late 19th century, the railroad offered a different form of work for those wishing to escape the farms and served up a touch of romanticism for those who wanted to live a less conventional life, riding the rails and going wherever the trains would take them. William Kindt adapted Roff’s piece in 1905 under the title “Wabash Cannonball.” There were several Wabash Railroad passenger trains dating back to the 1880s while the term “cannonball” was used to reference a fast train. When the song entered the public domain in 1928, it was reworked and claimed by A.P. Carter whose group, the Carter Family, recorded the song the next year, but didn’t release it until 1932. In the meantime an unissued version was recorded by Clark & Edans in 1928 and Tennessee singer and guitarist recorded and released the song in 1929. Roy Acuff, who was billed as “the King of Country Music,” SS recorded the song in 1936 with Dynamite Hatcher on vocals, but didn’t release it until 1938. NRR He didn’t record it with his vocal until 1947, although he performed it regularly on the Grand Ole Opry, SS where he first appeared in 1938 and was its top star by 1942. NRR His “voice was pure country and he was one of the first to carry the title ‘hillbilly’ proudly.” AC He embraced the plain and simple values of poor, rural Americans and gained an audience via his recordings, tours, and movie appearances. NRR In 1962, he was the first living artist elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame. NRR Resources:
First posted 11/24/2014; last updated 8/26/2022. |
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