Madchester
The 8 Best Madchester
Tracks of All Time
What happened when a guitar city discovered ecstasy and a drum machine. From 1988 Manchester bands stopped separating the band from the DJ, and British indie spent five years trying to be a dance record.
- Origin
- Manchester, England, 1988
- Tempo
- 100–125 BPM
- Also known as
- baggy, indie dance, manchester
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
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Number 1: The Stone Roses / Fools Gold
1989 · Silvertone
A funk break lifted off a Bobby Byrd record, a wah-wah guitar and nine minutes of nobody hurrying. An indie band's biggest single is essentially a groove with some singing on it, and the country followed.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — Both Rooms, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 2: New Order / Blue Monday
1983 · Factory
Five years early, and the reason everything after it was possible. A guitar band making a twelve-inch club record on sequencers, in packaging that lost money on every copy sold.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — Both Rooms, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 3: Happy Mondays / Wrote for Luck
1988 · Factory
The album version is a shambling indie record; the remixes are a house record. Both are the same performance, which is exactly the point the whole scene was making.
Number 4: Primal Scream / Loaded
1990 · Creation
Andrew Weatherall took a mediocre rock song, kept almost none of it, and handed the band a career. The most consequential remix in British music.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — Both Rooms
Number 5: Electronic / Getting Away with It
1989 · Factory
Bernard Sumner, Johnny Marr and Neil Tennant making an unembarrassed pop record. Three people from three separate British traditions agreeing that the argument was over.
Number 7: The Shamen / Move Any Mountain
1991 · One Little Indian
Indie-dance at its most shameless and most effective. By this point the band had dispensed with the band, and nobody in the top ten minded.
Number 8: Flowered Up / Weekender
1992 · Heavenly
Thirteen minutes about a wasted weekend, released as a single, and the scene's obituary written from inside it. The comedown record, and the best thing anyone made about what the party cost.