Modern Rock Tracks No. 1s - The Church and "Metropolis"

One week after Midnight Oil's run at the top spot, fellow Australian rockers The Church reach #1 with a softer, dreamier tune about yearning to recreate past memories

The Church - “Metropolis”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart: 1 (April 14, 1990)

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Tommy Page - “I'll Be Your Everything”

I was a late bloomer when it came to indie rock, a genre I didn’t really recognize or appreciate until sometime in the mid to late 2010s. With the fragmentation of music into genres and subgenres and sub-subgenres, you can only listen to so much, and often I find myself listening to the “mainstream” versions of hits that fall into more generic categories of “alternative” or “pop.” Every now and then a song or band that falls into one of those subgenres will emerge from their smaller ponds into a more mainstream flow, and if it catches on, they’ll develop a bigger audience.

I mention this because there might have been a time where I wouldn’t have recognized The Church’s beautiful “Metropolis” as a distant cousin to some of the songs produced by largely “indie” acts like The War On Drugs or The National.

When I listed to the Metropolis track this week, the first song that popped into my head was TWOD’s “Pain,” the track off the band’s Grammy-winning album “A Deeper Understanding” that got the most radio airplay in 2017. The song has a similar vibe: a dreamy, almost psychedelic backdrop for expressing pain, sorrow, regret and uncertainty. I fell in love with that band and that album as a result of that single, an example of an “indie” act bubbling to the surface and finding a bigger audience.

Similarly, I found myself thinking of The National and their 2017 hit “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness,” a song that isn’t in the same vein tonally as the first two listed here, but still evokes a dreamlike state that I think closely resembles the artistic intent of the others. As it turns out, you could classify all of these songs as “alternative,” or “indie,” or into sub-subgenres like “art rock,” “dream pop,” “psychedelia,” “neo-psychedelia,” “synth pop,” or the old standby for most of the bands in this MRT retrospective: “new wave.”

I guess the point I’m making by these connections is that it seems like so many of these subgenres exist and flourish in the modern day thanks in large part to the exposure of bands like The Church in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In a monocultural world where distributing and learning about different musical styles was far more difficult, the prestige and airplay generated by these early MRT charting bands seemed to push more bands into experimenting with their sounds and ultimately explore new avenues of musical artistry.

If you’re looking to start a band with a dream-pop/psychedelia/new wave aesthetic, you could do far worse in terms of role models than The Church, who started in 1980, are Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Famers, and are still releasing music to this day (their latest album, “The Hypnogogue,” was released in February 2023).

The band had several hits in Australia throughout the ‘80s, including new-wave adjacent “The Unguarded Moment” in 1981 and “Almost With You” in 1982, but their breakthrough moment with American audiences came with the release of 1987’s “Under The Milky Way,” which hit #24 on the U.S. Hot 100 and #2 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart. For you “Donnie Darko” fans, you might recognize it from a pivotal scene in the movie.

Artists have interesting connections with their art. Some bands relish the hit that made them popular, while others blanche at the mere mention of that particular track. Steve Kilbey, lead guitarist and vocalist for The Church, spoke in less-than-glowing terms about the track in a 2006 interview for the book “Molly Meldrum Presents 50 Years of Rock in Australia”:

"It's actually flat lifeless and sterile.
Great song, sure, but the performance, the sounds are ordinary.”

Say what you will about “Under The Milky Way,” but it sparked interest in the band in the U.S. and attracted a following from music lovers seeking that type of alternative, dream-pop vibe. It’s no surprise, then, that the band’s next release would spark interest in the alternative music scene. With the release of “Metropolis” as the first single off their 1990 album “Gold Afternoon Fix,” The Church had their first bona fide #1 hit in any country on any chart, and in fact had their first (and so far only) top-20 hit in Australia as well (it peaked at #19).

I could argue that the track is riding the coattails of their previous hits, but I actually found “Metropolis” to be a refined, improved track from “Under The Milky Way.” The haunting lyrics and vocals from Kilbey work so well juxtaposed against a lush guitar/drum backdrop, like a voice speaking to you from within a dream. It’s polished and well-imagined, and fits comfortably with the theme of the lyrics.

The song evokes memories of the narrator and their love interest living life in the city and feeling invincible, that “nothing will ever topple us.” But it begins with a declaration that things might not be good between the two people, that the narrator is invested in the relationship but that things might be getting rocky:

I'm so involved with everything you do.
Don't say nothing good will ever come of this.
Don't say the damage is worse than it is.

After recalling all the things about life in the city/metropolis and how great it was, the narrator earnestly suggests they try to go back there again, perhaps to rekindle what they lost after they left, or perhaps just to have one last memory before they ultimately end their relationship:

And it's only a day away
We could leave tonight
You could sleep along the way
Dream in black and white

It’s haunting and open-ended, leaving the listener to decide whether that overnight, dreamy drive will lead to good things or spell the end of whatever it is they’ve built.

While “Metropolis” was a hit and garnered solid airplay in the U.S. and abroad, the momentum from the track would not propel the band forward into continued mainstream or alternative success. Follow-up single “You’re Still Beautiful” stalled at #27 on the MRT chart, and the first single from their 1992 album “Priest=Aura,” “Ripple,” hit #3 on the MRT before fading. As of this writing, the band has not made a reappearance on the MRT chart.

“Metropolis” would easily qualify as a lost hit*, a former chart-topper with a somewhat paltry 3 million streams on Spotify as of this writing (the aforementioned “Under The Milky Way” is currently charting at 78 million streams, for the sake of comparison). Sometimes hits get lost to time, and it’s probably better that way, but this is one that I think even modern indie-rock fans would appreciate and seamlessly incorporate into playlists with more contemporary artists. We likely won’t see The Church in this column again, but this is another good example of a track that I wouldn’t have found without this project.

(* - Pretty soon in this space, I will be featuring guest columnist Mark Blankenship, author of The Lost Songs Project. He writes about songs like “Metropolis,” former hits that have seemingly been lost to time. Through his work, I’ve rediscovered songs I’d forgotten about and learned about others that I never knew existed. I’ll plug his Substack in greater detail when he formally appears in this space, but this song felt like a good opportunity to introduce you all to his work.)

Rating: 8/10

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Chart Check: A look at other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

Most of the MRT top 10 this week is a mix of former chart toppers or soon-to-be chart toppers, so I had to reach a little deeper to find some tracks that peaked behind The Church. Turns out there’s some decent songs bubbling underneath the top 10.

“Let It Be Me” by Social Distortion: The punk-rock outfit Social Distortion had been around for a few years but didn’t crack the MRT chart until the release of their self-titled third album. The first single, “Let It Be Me,” fell just short of the top 10, and peaked at a respectable #11 on the MRT chart behind The Church.

“Room At The Top” by Adam Ant: The last time I talked about Adam Ant, I had his mid-’90s hit “Wonderful” stuck in my head. Prior to that, he scored what would be his second-highest Hot 100 hit with “Room At The Top,” the lead single off his 1990 album “Manners & Physique.” The track peaked at #17 on the MRT chart behind “Metropolis,” and also peaked at #17 on the Hot 100.

“Come Back Down” by Toad The Wet Sprocket: Future MRT #1s artist Toad the Wet Sprocket peaked at #27 with this lead single from their 1990 album “Pale.” The band’s real breakout would come with their 1992 release “Fear,” but the seeds of what they would become are all over this track.