The 8 best Madchester tracks of all time
Madchester
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.
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The Stone Roses / Fools Gold
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.
New Order / Blue Monday
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.
Happy Mondays / Wrote for Luck
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.
Primal Scream / Loaded
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.
Electronic / Getting Away with It
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.
The Shamen / Move Any Mountain
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.
Flowered Up / Weekender
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.