20 Landmark Songs Of The 80s

17. Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK3iSglbZUM In the midst of all the polished production and synths of the decade the guitar was anything but dead, and towards the end of the 80€™s there was a sound emerging that would eventually be given the name of grunge in the 90s. But before the explosion of Nirvana, The Pixies were the leading alt-rock guitar band from the US; they wrote terrifically weird stories and wrapped them up in equally weird tunes which were so irresistibly catchy and powerful, if they didn€™t have your heart by the end of the verse, you would certainly fall in love when their choruses hit you. Whilst Heavy Metal had its troubles, embracing the hair rock of Guns and Roses and Bon Jovi, the then what was then known as the milieu of independent music was a melting pot for the guitar and what it could achieve in the 80€™s pop song. The Pixies had a simple formula; big riffs, quiet, then loud, then quiet and then very loud again indeed. On €˜Monkey gone to heaven€™, lead singer Black Francis sounds like a preacher, telling a tale of the imminent impact of the O-zone layer and the environmental corruption of the oceans in such a casual offhand manner, but these were incredibly dark and portentous words indeed. This was the song that announced a band who were leaders of a movement, as wonderful as their earlier songs were, this is the tune where they took American guitar music by the scruff of the neck and showed how it should be done. And the proof in the pudding? When €˜Smells like teen spirit€™ was released, it was initially asked for in record shops as €˜Can you get me that song that sounds like the Pixies?€ Here was a band of trailblazers at their peak.