Topic summary
Modern Rock Tracks
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Alternative Airplay.
History
The first alternative chart, called Modern Rock Tracks, appeared in the September 10, 1988, edition of Billboard magazine. The first number-one song of the chart was Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Peek-a-Boo", which topped the charts for two weeks. In the chart's early years, the chart was closely associated with college rock, new wave, post-punk and electronic genres with a large presence of British, Irish and Australian artists, as only 24 of the chart's first 82 number-one hits were by American acts. Bands such as Depeche Mode, R.E.M., the Cure, the B-52's, the Replacements, and Midnight Oil scored multiple number one hits on the chart in the late 1980s and early 1990s.