35 Highlights From 35 Years of Billboard’s Alternative Airplay Chart: Red Hot Chili Peppers, U2, Billie Eilish & More

“In 1988, after a short-lived format boom in the early MTV era, alternative radio was again attracting the attention of major-market group broadcasters,” Ross on Radio editor, and Billboard alum, Sean Ross wrote in 2013.

“In the late ’80s and early ’90s,” Ross noted, “the core acts of alternative were still very much The Smiths, Depeche Mode and The Cure, but 10,000 Maniacs also [had] a place, and there [was] a significant female singer-songwriter presence, with Edie Brickell, Tracy Chapman, Patti Smith and Joan Armatrading.”

Reflecting the format’s ascent, in the Sept. 10, 1988, Billboard issue, the Alternative Airplay chart, then titled Top Modern Rock Tracks, began. Siouxsie & the Banshees’ “Peek-a-Boo” led the first list — becoming the first of 434 No. 1s and counting, through Bad Omens’ “Just Pretend” on the latest, Sept. 9-dated chart.

Over the chart’s first 35 years, alternative has welcomed acts ranging from one-time entrants to those that have been core to the genre over the survey’s entire existence. Along the way, British bands and singer-songwriters, as Ross chronicled, served as key hitmakers, followed by the format’s segues to grunge, nu-metal, Lilith Fair-era female folk-rock and a return to synth sounds in recent years.

Summarized Ross in 2013, “The alternative radio format is built upon the promise of what’s coming next.”

(Similarly, when the chart began, 29 stations comprised the reporting panel; today, over 50 do. Shout-out to the two both at the start and now: KROQ Los Angeles and XTRA San Diego. Tracy Chapman’s chart presence is likewise as welcome in 2023 as it was in 1988.)

As Billboard celebrates the Alternative Airplay chart’s 35th anniversary, below are 35 of the most notable feats achieved on the ranking. Included are the acts with the most No. 1s and top 10s, the elite songs that hit No. 1 on both Alternative Airplay and the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, and more.

Given the winding road that the format has traversed, it’s difficult to predict what artists and songs will rewrite records by the time of the Alternative Airplay chart’s 40th anniversary. As Chris Payne, former Billboard writer (and author of the newly-released book, Where Are Your Boys Tonight), wrote for the survey’s 30-year mark, echoing Ross, “A period of considerable destabilization in alternative very well may prove to be healthy long-term — a sort of refresh on the genre, in which artists and programmers will no longer be beholden to the bedrocks of alternative radio past, and can try anything and everything to see what works.”