"Hey Venus," That Petrol Emotion (1990)

A monster British rock song, sung by an American

Peak: #9 on the alternative rock chart
Streams: 819,000

“Hey Venus” is one of the reasons I launched this newsletter.

For the last few months, I’ve been reading through back issues of Billboard, which are helpfully archived at this website, and it has given me endless amounts of pleasure. I’m reminded of intense music business debates that now seem ludicrous (“will retailers ever accept CDs that aren’t sold in cardboard longboxes?”) and of chart columns that I remember reading over 30 years ago. Like… I don’t know why I’ve held on to Fred Bronson’s assessment of infant pop novelty singer Jordy, but I really have. When I recently rediscovered his 1993 column about the kid, I could picture my exact location the first time I read it. (I was crouched by the magazine section in the downstairs Waldenbooks at the Hamilton Place Mall in Chattanooga. Yes, there were two Waldenbooks there.)