Sunday, April 29, 2012

1992: Top 50 Singles

It's the end of the month, which means it's time for another trip down the '90s memory lane for the unveiling of our latest Top 50 Singles list from the last decade of the 20th century.

This time we're going exactly 20 years back to 1992, the year PJ Harvey released her stunning debut album "Dry". A few months earlier, in February, the instant classic "Sheela-Na-Gig" was released as her second single on Too Pure backed by two more songs that would also become part of "Dry", "Joe" and "Hair" (on the 12 inch only). The song was originally written in 1986 when Harvey was just seventeen years old and took its title from the Sheela-na-gig statues - carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva found in old buildings throughout Britain and Ireland for keeping evil spirits away.

Other highlights from 1992 include The Fall's apocalyptic electro of "Free Range" (with the lyric "Europa, every second Third World" sounding very real in the current economic climate), Belly's debut EP "Slow Dust" featuring the amazing "Dusted", Screaming Trees' grunge anthem "Nearly Lost You" and the three further hit singles that were taken from Nirvana's "Nevermind", which, by January 1992, it had replaced Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" at the top of the Billboard charts.

Check out below our Top 10 Singles of 1992 and click here for the complete Top 50 list published in Cool Music Database, the central hub of all our year-end lists from 1980 and onwards:
 
1.   Sheela-Na-Gig - P.J. HARVEY
2.   Free Range - THE FALL
3.   Slow Dust EP - BELLY
4.   Lithium - NIRVANA
5.   Nearly Lost You - SCREAMING TREES
6.   100% - SONIC YOUTH
7.   Reverence - THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN
8.   Bruise Violet - BABES IN TOYLAND
9.   Trigger Cut - PAVEMENT
10. Drive - R.E.M.

P.J. Harvey - Sheela-Na-Gig

You can listen to most of our selections by pressing play below:

1 comment:

ody said...

And I just realized by listening to "Wicked" in the playlist that today is also the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots!