Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Ian McCulloch and "Proud to Fall"
Despite its chart-topping success and lyrical depth, "Proud to Fall" is merely an echo of what McCulloch was able to pull off with his Bunnymen.
Ian McCulloch - “Proud to Fall”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 4 (Nov. 11 to Dec. 2, 1989)
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Bad English - “When I See You Smile” (11/11/89 and 11/18/89)
Milli Vanilli - “Blame It On The Rain” (11/25/89 and 12/2/89)
The late 1980s on the Modern Rock Tracks chart served as a victory lap moment for British legacy acts who never reached a sizable mainstream audience and never had a true chart presence in the U.S. So far, having covered nearly all of the 1980s chart-topping hits on the MRT chart, only Lou Reed hit the #1 spot as a solo artist who formerly played in a much bigger band.
Ian McCulloch, longtime lead vocalist of British post-punk sensation Echo and the Bunnymen, became the second solo artist to break away from his band and hit the top of the charts. That said, based on repeated listens to “Proud to Fall,” I really feel like McCulloch fell short of the band in which he rose to prominence.
And listen, I’m not here to pooh-pooh on an artist’s attempt to carve out a niche of their own and strike out as a solo artist. There are plenty of examples of artists who broke away from the bands they started with and found massive success going it alone. Just off the top of my head, I can think of artists like Lionel Richie (formerly of the Commodores); Michael Jackson (Jackson 5); Paul McCartney, John Lennon and George Harrison (Beatles); and Beyonce (Destiny’s Child) who all became juggernauts playing their own stuff.
And make no mistake about McCulloch’s legacy: As lead vocalist of Echo and the Bunnymen, McCulloch and the band have been lauded by post-punk/alt-rock fans across the globe. Even though the Bunnymen never made much of an impact on the American music charts (their 1985 album “Songs to Learn & Sing” was the only part of the band’s discography to chart in the U.S. prior to 1989, peaking at #158 on the Billboard 200 album chart), they’re far more popular in their native England. The band notched five top-20 hits on the U.K. charts in the 1980s, including British top-10 hits “The Cutter” and “The Killing Moon.”
“The Cutter” is a weird amalgam of post-punk new-wave influences, and feels like it should have found a place in the second British invasion of the early to mid-’80s in the U.S. The track is really not that far removed from songs like “I Ran” or “Melt With You,” but it never found an American audience. “The Killing Moon” has a softer touch and is generally considered to be one of the band’s hallmark songs (McCulloch lists David Bowie as a major influence for this and other tracks), though it didn’t find its larger audience until much later when it became a popular soundtrack piece for movies and TV shows. I personally recognized it immediately from the opening sequence of 2000s cult classic “Donnie Darko,” a movie with a treasure-trove of ‘80s music greatness. (Forgive me in advance for not only posting the movie’s intro with the Bunnymen, but also the terrific sequence featuring recently spotlighted Chart Chat artist Tears For Fears.)
All of this is to say that, when compared against the successes of the Bunnymen, McCulloch didn’t quite resonate as well with the music-listening public when his first solo album “Candleland” was released in September 1989. But, as I’ve noted in many other articles here, it didn’t take long for alt-rock radio programmers to make the connection between McCulloch and his work with the lauded Bunnymen tracks of the early ‘80s, and the song generated enough buzz that it charted at the top of the MRT charts for four weeks into December 1989.
It’s not a bad song by any stretch. The narrative voice in “Proud to Fall” is clearly wounded by an experience where he was looking for the support of a friend or loved one, and though that person came in as a “savior” looking to “learn to face what we’re becoming,” in the end, McCulloch’s narrator finds them running away in the other direction.
I’m terrible at interpreting an artist’s message, even if it’s purposefully vague or open to interpretation, but at its heart I feel like McCulloch’s narrator finds themselves in a dark place, but that they’re proud for having withstood the hardship when others turned away from it. I think everyone can relate to that message, and lyrically the song touches on some raw emotion.
The song itself, however, feels like it’s lacking the depth of musical texture and energy that even comparable songs from the Bunnymen era seemed to have. I’m impressed with the lyrics but unimpressed with the musical shroud from which they come out. The arrangement feels listless and, for whatever reason, didn’t resonate with me like it did for so many others.
I can’t help but think the song benefitted from the same bump that TFF’s “Sowing The Seeds Of Love” did a couple weeks ago: a legacy act, coming off of recent success, getting a chart bump from a hungry audience. Unlike his work with the Bunnymen, “Proud to Fall” doesn’t seem to have a high level of long-term recognizability. Using the arguably unscientific metric of Spotify streams, “Proud to Fall” has a modest 750,000 streams as of the time of this posting. “The Killing Moon,” by contrast, has more than 150 MILLION streams, 200 times more than “Proud to Fall.” To be fair, less ubiquitous hits from the Bunnymen, like “The Cutter” or “Lips Like Sugar” have far fewer streams than “Moon” (20 million and 40 million, respectively), but still many times more than McCulloch’s most-streamed solo hit.
McCulloch never matched the success of “Proud to Fall” as a solo artist. Follow-up single “Faith and Healing” peaked at #10 on the MRT chart in February 1990, and album title track “Candleland (The Second Coming)” didn’t chart at all. He contributed to a Leonard Cohen tribute album which generated a modest hit in 1991, “Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye,” which peaked at #13 on the MRT chart in early 1992. The release that year of “Mysterio,” McCulloch’s second solo album, generated top-10 hits with “Honey Drip” (#6 MRT) and “Lover Lover Lover” (#9 MRT).
After a stint working solo and on a couple of side projects, McCulloch reformed Echo and the Bunnymen in the late 1990s and continue to release music. And while McCulloch never replicated the fervor as a solo artist that he did with the Bunnymen, he does have an MRT chart topper to his name. Not many can say that.
Rating: 3/10
Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
A nice cross-section of tracks and influences spread out in this week’s Chart Check, including a preview of coming attractions in the main Substack and some solid contributions from other acts.
“A Girl Like You” by The Smithereens: There aren’t a lot of songs on the early MRT charts that still have a home on modern rock radio, but this one seems to find its way into recurrent status on channels I frequent. This is a good thing; The Smithereens released “A Girl Like You” as the lead single off their album “11,” and found crossover success with pop audiences. The song cracked the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, cresting at #38. On the MRT chart, it reached its peak of #3 behind McCulloch, but hung around the top five for more than a month afterwards. The song feels like it could come from any number of different eras of alternative music, which may explain its longevity.
“Into The Heart Of Love” by The Mighty Lemon Drops: I couldn’t resist looking into this band and track given the band’s unique name, and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a nice indie-pop-bubblegum ditty with a fluttery jangle on the guitar and an upbeat tempo, the kind of track to have blasting in the car on a sunny summer day, though its winter release may have blunted that vibe. In any case, the Lemon Drops peaked at #5 behind “Proud to Fall.”
“Crossroads” by Tracy Chapman: Capitalizing on “Fast Car” vibes, Chapman’s second studio album “Crossroads” launched with the title track as the lead single, and Chapman settles nicely into a mellow coffeeshop pastiche. It was a minor pop hit, topping out at #90 on the Hot 100, but it found an audience on alternative radio, notching a #7 peak on the MRT chart behind “Proud to Fall.”
“The Line Between The Devils Teeth (And That Which Cannot Be Repeat)” by Peter Murphy: I listened to this and both appreciated the artistry behind the track and generally disliked the musical style. It’s just not my genre, but Murphy’s 1989 “Deep” album would eventually find itself in the commercial spotlight. I picked this track because of its unusual name, as it only peaked at #18 on the MRT chart behind Ian McCulloch, but we’ll be talking about Mr. Murphy again real soon.