Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - Simple Minds and "See The Lights"
Simple Minds encourage the listening audience to don't forget about them and "See The Lights," a single that reminds me that they're more than just that one song from the '80s
Simple Minds - “See The Lights”
Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 2 weeks (May 11 and May 18, 1991)
Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: R.E.M. - “Losing My Religion”
Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Elvis Costello - “The Other Side Of Summer”
Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:
Roxette - “Joyride” (5/11/91)
Hi-Five - “I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)” (5/18/91)
This Chart Chat project is personally illuminating, and I don’t mean that as an intentional or unintended pun on the title of this week’s Modern Rock Tracks #1 hit. For me, it’s all about exploring the music of bands I never heard of, revisiting tracks from bands I’ve loved most of my life, and in the case of Simple Minds, discovering new tracks from a band whose entire catalog, in my brain, comes down to a single sequence in an ‘80s movie:
As I mentioned in my writeup for Jesus Jones and their #1 hit “Right Here, Right Now,” I’m acutely aware of the age demographic for this particular Substack, and I would have to imagine that there’s a sizable percentage of you who grew up with movies like “Breakfast Club.” Even if you didn’t pay attention during the movie’s initial run, this timeless piece of ‘80s nostalgia played on repeat several thousand times on basic cable in the U.S. during the pre-cord-cutting era of the 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s. Even if you’ve never watched the movie all the way through, I’m certain you’ve caught the last few minutes, if for nothing else than to hear Simple Minds’ only Hot 100 chart topper, “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”
If “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” were the subject of this column, it’d get a 10/10 rating without a second thought. I hesitate to call it a “perfect song,” but it has to be in the conversation, right? It’s a near perfect mix of everything: solid bass line, that double crescendo with lead vocalist Jim Kerr belting out “Hey, hey, hey, HEY!” and that perfectly timed synth keyboard, all coming together sonically to blow your mind with each new listen. That it’s tied to one of the most influential and timeless works of movie director John Hughes just solidifies its bona fides as one of the most important and essential music hits of all time.
The band followed this megahit, which topped the Hot 100 on May 18, 1985, with three additional top 40 U.S. hits: “Alive and Kicking,” which peaked at #3; “Sanctify Yourself,” which topped out at #14; and “All the Things She Said,” which finished at #28. The album “Once Upon A Time,” the source of all of these hits, peaked at #10 on the Billboard 200 album chart and stayed in the top 10 on that list for five weeks. Following this breakthrough effort and massive chart dominance in 1985 and 1986, surely Simple Minds would go on to capture the hearts of U.S. music lovers, garnering many more Hot 100 hits and establish a long-running legacy of success.
Or not.
Fast forward to 1991, and the actual subject of this week’s writeup: “See The Lights,” which would become the first (and final) top 40 Hot 100 hit for Simple Minds since “All The Things She Said” graced the charts five years prior. Interestingly, this track topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart precisely six years to the day that “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” topped the Hot 100, and actually held on to the top of the MRT chart for one week more than their chart-topping Hot 100 effort from 1985. And the similarities don’t really stop there.
Simple Minds has a “sound,” which I put in quotes because I feel like their music is distinctly and effortlessly theirs, if that makes sense. If you listen to any of their tracks, there’s a low-level melancholy that permeates the track, which is not to say that it’s sad, per se, but rather just a low minor-key hum that gives their songs a bit of a dramatic edge. To be clear, we’re not talking about hyper emo songs or even the gothic traces of bands like The Cure or Love and Rockets, but more of a synthetic-sounding hum that keeps an otherwise upbeat song grounded. I wish I could write it better than this, but rest assured the quality I’m referring to is on display as much in “See The Lights” as it is in “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”
Punctuated by a piano and the occasional ring of a church bell, this song — led by Kerr’s signature vocals and John Giblin’s solid bass line — manages to take that low mechanical hum and turn it into what sounds like an uplifting plea to see the shining light that emanates from the song’s narrator. In my mind’s eye, however, the song is more of a lament about a summer romance gone awry. The narrator is beseeching his love interest to see those parts of him that shine so that they might recapture what he perceives to be lost from their relationship.
I'm in a broken dream I stare out into space
You know I called you up cause nothing takes your place
I've got a heart of stone and it's sinking deep inside
I want to tell you love I'm too proud to cry
If you can see the lights shine in front of me
If you can see the lights, shout out where you'll be
This feels like a nice extension of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion,” a song that tackles the uncertainty behind expressing one’s romantic interest in another. With Simple Minds, the issue is less about expressing that initial infatuation and more about finding a way to keep that spark going, yet feeling too proud or too uncertain about the best way to do that.
Listening to the song, you don’t necessarily get a sense of that angst and emotional pull; instead, you get a song that builds from a slow hum into an orchestral explosion, building and building from a soft beginning into something that gets your heart racing and your toe tapping. It’s a solid effort from Simple Minds, and it’s strange that this one didn’t find its way into a movie soundtrack or onto more radio playlists.
I never heard this song before I started listening to it this week (a common occurrence for so many of the earliest songs that topped this chart), but I regret that I didn’t listen sooner. It’s so easy to get trapped into the robotic algorithmic playlists set out by music streaming services or even current top-40 or alternative rock stations, where songs like this don’t make the cut and ultimately get lost to time for all but the most devoted fans of particular bands. I really like it, and I’m glad to see that Simple Minds found another in-road to reach U.S. music audiences, even if this ultimately was their last gasp of chart success here.
“See The Lights” topped the MRT chart for two weeks and managed to squeak into the Hot 100 top 40, peaking at #40. The streaming numbers are modest at best: the track has just more than 5 million streams on Spotify, nowhere near the 835 million “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” has at present, and certainly not anywhere near even the top 10 tracks from the band (“Promised You A Miracle” holds down the #10 streaming spot at 15 million streams).
That said, if you’re worried that music fans have forgotten about Simple Minds, you’d be mistaken. Though they only had a handful of U.S. hits, they have 21 top-20 hits on the U.K. charts as of this writing, and were prolific hit makers well into the aughts across the pond. My friends at Wikipedia tell me they were the most successful Scottish band of the 1980s as well, which ain’t too shabby.
We won’t see Simple Minds again in this space, but as this track shows, sometimes a band is more than just a couple of chart hits and a timeless movie reference. I learned my lesson here and hope this will open the door to other bands who I’ve dismissed due to algorithms and pop-chart snobbery, and perhaps I too can “see the lights” of bands’ lesser-known successes.
Rating: 7/10
Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period
This is as eclectic as it gets for Chart Check. We start off slow, get weird, and eventually just rock out…
“There She Goes” by The La’s: Ubiquitous radio earworm “There She Goes” was first released in 1988 by British rockers The La’s, but didn’t find its way into heavy radio rotation until 1990-91, where it finally peaked on alternative radio at #2 behind Simple Minds. This song was covered in the late ‘90s by Sixpence None The Richer, achieving a #32 peak on the Hot 100, which eclipsed The La’s version (it finished at #49 on the flagship Billboard chart).
“American Music” by Violent Femmes: The elder statesmen of “folk punk,” Violent Femmes released their album “Why Do Birds Sing?” in 1991 and quickly reached their all-time chart peak with “American Music.” This song managed a #2 peak behind “See The Lights.” It’s an interesting song from this band, best known both in the ‘80s and again in the late ‘90s for “Blister In The Sun.” Makes me want to watch “Grosse Pointe Blank” again…
“Sunless Saturday” by Fishbone: Holy crap! Why is this the first song I’ve heard from Fishbone? This song rocks so much. Damn. This track would be the band’s highest-charting single, peaking at #7 on the MRT chart behind Simple Minds. Pretty hard-hitting punk-rock vibes from this track, and I suspect I’ll have to dig a little deeper into these guys. Any suggestions on where to start?
While I loved the movie and the single, Simple Minds weren't really on my radar. Thanks for brining them back in front of me. I'm going to do a deep dive. I'm sure I've missed some real gems.