Shoegaze
The 10 Best Shoegaze
Tracks of All Time
Guitar bands who buried the song under effects pedals and sang like they were in the next room. Named as an insult by the British music press in 1990, and reclaimed by roughly every guitar band since.
- Origin
- England, 1988
- Also known as
- shoegazing, dream pop, the scene that celebrates itself
- Tracks
- 10
- Updated
- 2026-08-28
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Number 1: My Bloody Valentine / Only Shallow
1991 · Creation
Four snare hits and then the most disorienting guitar sound ever pressed to record. Kevin Shields bent pitch with a tremolo arm until the instrument stopped behaving like a guitar.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — A Way In, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 2: My Bloody Valentine / Soon
1990 · Creation
A dance groove underneath a wall of detuned noise. Brian Eno called it the vaguest music ever to have been a hit, and meant it as the compliment it is.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 3: Slowdive / Alison
1993 · Creation
Savaged on release and now the genre's most beloved song. The guitars shimmer rather than roar, and the melody underneath survives every layer piled on it.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 4: Ride / Vapour Trail
1990 · Creation
A string coda arrives in the last minute and reframes everything before it. The most conventionally beautiful song the scene produced, and the least afraid of being one.
Number 5: Cocteau Twins / Cherry-Coloured Funk
1990 · 4AD
Elizabeth Fraser sings in a language she invented and communicates more than most lyricists manage in English. The template shoegaze spent a decade chasing.
Number 6: The Jesus and Mary Chain / Just Like Honey
1985 · Blanco y Negro
A Ronettes drum intro drowned in feedback. Predates the scene by years and supplies its founding idea: bury a perfect pop song and let people dig.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 7: Slowdive / Souvlaki Space Station
1993 · Creation
Dub techniques applied to guitar music, with Eno's fingerprints somewhere in the background. The most spatially adventurous thing anyone in the scene attempted.
Number 8: Chapterhouse / Pearl
1991 · Dedicated
A sampled breakbeat welded to a wall of guitars, years before anyone called that a genre. Shoegaze's most convincing argument that it belonged on a dancefloor.
Number 10: Swervedriver / Duel
1993 · Creation
Shoegaze with actual muscle and an American road-movie sensibility. Heavier than its peers and unfairly overlooked because it refused to sound fragile.