1989 Songs

The decade's biggest stars sign off in style

Madonna opened 1989 with "Like a Prayer", a gospel-choir single so controversial that Pepsi pulled a commercial built around it after the Vatican objected to its video. It still went to No. 1. Start with our best 80s songs guide for the whole decade; this page covers 1989 song by song.

Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 turned "Miss You Much" and the title track into hits with a social conscience behind the choreography, and Bon Jovi, Paula Abdul, Richard Marx and Prince all added more chart-toppers to a decade already full of them.

Hair metal's last big year before grunge

Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood, Guns N' Roses' continuing Appetite for Destruction singles and new records from Skid Row and Warrant made 1989 hard rock's biggest commercial year yet. MTV's Headbangers Ball was appointment viewing, and Sunset Strip bands were pop stars.

None of it survived contact with the next decade. Nirvana's Nevermind was less than two years away, and by 1992 most of 1989's biggest rock bands had lost their record deals or their audience, almost overnight.

Hip-hop's golden age keeps building

De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique both reimagined what a rap album could sample and sound like, while Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", written for Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, became one of the most politically charged songs to cross over to mainstream radio.

Young MC and Tone Lōc, both working with producer Matt Dike's Delicious Vinyl label, showed rap could be funny and still be huge: "Bust a Move" and "Wild Thing" were among 1989's biggest pop crossovers of any genre.

House and techno close out the decade underground

Chicago's Frankie Knuckles and Ten City, and Detroit's Inner City, Juan Atkins and Derrick May, spent 1989 refining a sound British DJs and dancers were about to fall in love with wholesale, setting up the acid house and rave explosion that would define British club culture into the 90s.

None of it had broken through to American pop radio yet; that would take techno and house crossing back over the Atlantic, remixed and repackaged, in the years just ahead.

Teen pop factories and one-year wonders

Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True" topped the chart in early 1989 and won the duo a Grammy for Best New Artist, an award they were stripped of the following year after it came out that Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan hadn't sung a note on their own record. New Kids on the Block, a Boston boy band built by producer Maurice Starr, had the biggest year of their career, and "I'll Be Loving You (Forever)" became their second No. 1.

Sheriff's "When I'm With You" is 1989's strangest chart story: the Canadian band had already broken up when a Las Vegas radio station started playing the song, originally released in 1982, until demand pushed it back onto the chart and to No. 1 in February 1989. Michael Damian, an actor on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, had his own oddball No. 1 with a cover of David Essex's 1973 glam hit "Rock On".

Fine Young Cannibals, Roxette and one very 70s medley

Fine Young Cannibals had the best year of their career, with both "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing" reaching No. 1. Sweden's Roxette crossed over to America with "Listen to Your Heart", and Will to Power's medley of Peter Frampton's "Baby, I Love Your Way" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" became an unlikely No. 1 built from two 70s rock songs.

Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings", from the film Beaches, won the Grammy for Song of the Year, a reminder that adult contemporary ballads could still be as big as anything on MTV.

The hits you already know, and 24 more

The year's biggest hits, from "Like a Prayer" and "Miss You Much" to "Batdance" and "We Didn't Start the Fire", open the player above. Each one is written up elsewhere on the site, or discussed above. The 24 songs below are the rest of the story, and the last chapter of this decade-by-decade series: alternative rock's approach, hip-hop's most inventive year, and house and techno handing off to the 90s.

Songs are filed by release year, so anything that charted into early 1990 but came out in 1989 is on this page. Every pick here follows our song selection rules.

The Songs

1. Round & Round — New Order

   New Order leaned fully into the house sound their own "Blue Monday" had once influenced, building this single from a squelchy bassline and a sampled vocal loop. It became a UK top five hit, the band sounding more like the dance producers they'd inspired than the post-punk band they'd started as.

2. Sowing the Seeds of Love — Tears for Fears

   Roland Orzabal wrote this lush, Beatles-indebted single, complete with a Sgt. Pepper's-style promotional video, as Tears for Fears' return after four years away. It reached the US top three, though the elaborate sessions and video shoot strained the band's budget and, eventually, its partnership.

3. It's Alright — Pet Shop Boys

   Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe's cover of a Chicago house track turns a club anthem into something more orchestral and hopeful, closing their album Introspective on an unusually optimistic note for a decade about to end.

4. Fascination Street — The Cure

   From Disintegration, the dense, deliberately uncommercial album The Cure made at the height of their fame, this song's droning bassline and Robert Smith's tense vocal reached the US top thirty anyway, proof the band could sound bleak and still get played on the radio.

5. Pop Song 89 — R.E.M.

   R.E.M. open Green, their major-label debut, with a song that mocks its own simplicity, repeating "should we talk about the weather" while Peter Buck's guitar rings out behind it. It's a wry joke from a band about to become one of the biggest in America.

6. All I Want Is You — U2

   U2 close Rattle and Hum with this tender, string-laden ballad, arranged by Van Dyke Parks, a quieter note after an album full of roots-rock experiments. It became a longtime concert closer and one of the band's most enduring love songs.

7. Here Comes Your Man — Pixies

   The closest thing to a conventional pop song on Doolittle, with a bright, chiming riff and Black Francis singing gently instead of screaming, this became the Pixies' best-known song years before alternative rock broke into the mainstream.

8. Free Fallin' — Tom Petty

   Tom Petty wrote this open, unhurried song about a Los Angeles boy leaving a "good girl" behind with co-writer Jeff Lynne, and its plainspoken chorus made it one of his most-loved singles despite a modest chart peak. It's a staple of classic rock radio today.

9. Janie's Got a Gun — Aerosmith

   Steven Tyler wrote this dark, string-backed song about a girl fighting back against her abusive father after reading a magazine article, a serious subject far from Aerosmith's usual party-rock lyrics. It won the band a Grammy and reached the US top five.

10. I Go to Extremes — Billy Joel

    Billy Joel's Storm Front album, produced by Foreigner's Mick Jones, gave him a harder, more processed sound than his earlier records, and this song about mood swings and instability became one of two US top-five hits from the album.

11. Yo Mister — Patti LaBelle

    Patti LaBelle's powerful voice takes on a socially conscious lyric about a homeless man, unusual subject matter for a dance-pop single, and turns it into one of her most affecting late-80s recordings.

12. Can't Get Over You — Maze ft. Frankie Beverly

    Frankie Beverly's warm baritone carries this slow, aching ballad about a love that won't let go, a quieter counterpart to Maze's better-known uptempo funk. It stayed a steady presence on R&B radio through 1989.

13. My First Love — Atlantic Starr

    Atlantic Starr, already known for the ballad "Always", returned with this sweet, harmony-driven song about young romance, a hit that showed the group's knack for gentle, radio-friendly soul hadn't faded as the decade closed.

14. Hey Ladies — Beastie Boys

    Built from a dense collage of samples assembled with the Dust Brothers, this playful, name-dropping single from Paul's Boutique shows the Beastie Boys' evolution from the blunt party-rap of Licensed to Ill into something far stranger and more inventive.

15. I Get the Job Done — Big Daddy Kane

    Big Daddy Kane's rapid-fire, technically dazzling rhyme schemes on this single from It's a Big Daddy Thing showed why he was considered one of the most skilled rappers of the era, an influence nearly every fast, dense MC after him has acknowledged.

16. Eye Know — De La Soul

    Sampling Steely Dan, Otis Redding and the Mad Lads all in one song, De La Soul's "Eye Know" turns crate-digging into a sunny, whistled love song, a good-natured contrast to the tougher rap dominating 1989. It's one of the most beloved tracks from 3 Feet High and Rising.

17. Funky Cold Medina — Tone Lōc

    Tone Lōc's gravelly voice narrates a shaggy-dog story about a magic love potion over a sample of Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin'", proof that rap could crack pop radio with humor as easily as bravado. It reached the US top three.

18. Principal's Office — Young MC

    Young MC, already known as a songwriter before he became a performer, raps this comic tale of a classroom troublemaker sent to see the principal, more of the witty, story-driven rap that helped bring hip-hop into the pop mainstream in 1989.

19. Only the Strong Survive — Frankie Knuckles

    Frankie Knuckles, the Chicago DJ widely credited as the godfather of house music, built this soulful, gospel-tinged track that shows the genre's roots in disco and R&B as clearly as its drum-machine pulse.

20. That's the Way Love Is — Ten City

    Ten City's Byron Stingily sings this warm, string-swept house song with the vocal power of classic soul, a reminder that Chicago house grew out of disco and gospel as much as drum machines. It became one of the genre's biggest club and radio crossovers.

21. Ain't Nobody Better — Inner City

    Kevin Saunderson's production and Paris Grey's vocal turned Inner City into Detroit techno's most pop-friendly export, and this bright, driving track became a UK top twenty hit, helping carry Detroit's underground sound to a mainstream British audience.

22. Ace in the Hole — George Strait

    George Strait's confident, mid-tempo title track from his 1989 album is built around the metaphor of a winning hand, and its polished honky-tonk sound helped the record become one of his most successful of the decade.

23. Long White Cadillac — Dwight Yoakam

    Dwight Yoakam's cover of a Dave Alvin song, one of several tracks connecting his hard-country sound to the LA cowpunk scene Alvin came from, became a showcase for Yoakam's raw, twangy voice and his band's rockabilly-leaning backing.

24. Southern Star — Alabama

    Alabama's title track for their 1989 album is a warm, string-laced tribute to Southern identity, the kind of broad, radio-friendly statement that had made the group the most successful country act of the decade.