Fight the Power
1989 · From Fear of a Black Planet
Spike Lee asked for a defiant anthem, and the Bomb Squad answered with layered samples and Branford Marsalis's saxophone.
★ 9.0
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1989
Showing 155 works across all media from 1989
Paul's Boutique
1989
It uses well over a hundred samples, which would be unaffordable to clear today, and it sold so badly the label gave up on them.
★ 8.5
Like a Prayer
1989 · From Like a Prayer
Patrick Leonard co-wrote it, Prince played the intro guitar, and Pepsi pulled its five million dollar ad but paid anyway.
★ 8.5
3 Feet High and Rising
1989
They sampled so freely that the Turtles sued them, and the case helped make sample clearance the expensive business it has been ever since.
★ 8.2
Do the Right Thing
Directed by Spike Lee
1989
No American film has been braver about refusing to resolve: one Brooklyn block on the hottest day of the year, and Lee will not tell you who was right.
★ 8.2
The Remains of the Day
1989 · 245 pages
Driving across England in 1956 to see the housekeeper he worked beside, a butler remembers the Nazi sympathizer he served with pride. What he cannot bring himself to say is the whole novel.
★ 7.7
Disintegration
1989
Robert Smith turned thirty, decided he was finished, and made the biggest record of the band's life about it.
★ 7.7
Personal Jesus
1989 · From Violator
Priscilla Presley's memoir gave Gore the idea, Flood cut it in Milan, and Cash later called it evangelical.
★ 7.6
Free Fallin'
1989 · From Full Moon Fever
Two days of writing with Jeff Lynne, Mike Campbell's twelve-string, and Ventura Boulevard turned into the whole San Fernando Valley.
★ 7.6
Rockin' in the Free World
1989 · From Freedom
Sampedro joked about the free world after a Soviet tour collapsed, and Young debuted the song in Seattle unrehearsed.
★ 7.5
Me, Myself and IDe La Soul
Me, Myself and I
1989 · From 3 Feet High and Rising
Prince Paul flipped Funkadelic's Knee Deep; De La Soul resisted the beat, then got their only R&B number one.
★ 7.3
When Harry Met Sally
Directed by Rob Reiner
1989
Every romantic comedy since has been trying to write this conversation: two people argue for twelve years about whether men and women can be friends, and Ephron's dialogue wins.
★ 7.2
Express Yourself (Madonna)
1989 · From Like a Prayer
Madonna and Stephen Bray built it on horns and handclaps; Fincher's Metropolis video cost a reported five million dollars.
★ 7.2
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1989
Casting Sean Connery as the father was the best idea the series ever had: the bickering carries a treasure hunt that would otherwise just be a rerun.
★ 7.1
Love Shack
1989
Don Was suggested welding a fifteen-minute jam to a shouted chorus, and Cindy Wilson's tin-roof ad-lib stayed in.
★ 7.0
Monkey Gone to Heaven
1989 · From Doolittle
Gil Norton brought in two cellos and two violins, and Black Francis rhymed ocean pollution with borrowed numerology.
★ 7.0
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Directed by Woody Allen
1989
Allen's most serious film, and his only one that asks whether anyone is watching at all: a respected doctor is cornered by a woman he cannot pay off.
★ 7.0
When Harry Met Sally... · 1989
Pictures of You
1989 · From Disintegration
A house fire left Smith with photographs of Mary salvaged from his wallet, and one became the single's sleeve.
★ 6.9
I Won't Back Down
1989 · From Full Moon Fever
Harrison on acoustic guitar and harmonies, Lynne producing, and Petty answering the arsonist who burned his house down.
★ 6.9
The Killer
Directed by John Woo
1989 · Hong Kong
Woo shoots gunfights the way other directors shoot musical numbers: two pistols, slow motion, doves, and underneath it a straight-faced story about honor between a hitman and the cop hunting him.
★ 6.8
Glory
Directed by Edward Zwick
1989
The Civil War film that finally noticed who else was fighting it: the 54th Massachusetts fights for boots, for pay equal to white soldiers, and for permission to be used at all.
★ 6.7
Runnin' Down a Dream
1989 · From Full Moon Fever
Mike Campbell's fuzz riff, then a closing solo of nearly two minutes he nailed in a single take.
★ 6.7
The Dance
1989
Tony Arata's lyric works as a breakup song or an elegy, and Brooks' video chose the elegy.
★ 6.6
Just a Friend
1989
Freddie Scott's "(You) Got What I Need" rebuilt on piano, with Markie singing the hook himself, flat and irresistible.
★ 6.6
Here Comes Your Man
1989 · From Doolittle
A teenage demo the band mocked as their Tom Petty song, until Gil Norton talked it onto Doolittle.
★ 6.5
Citizens
A Chronicle of the French Revolution
1989 · 948 pages
Violence was not the French Revolution's tragic accident but its engine, Schama argues, and the Terror merely 1789 with a higher body count. The book drew furious rebuttals from historians on the left.
★ 6.4
Barbarians at the Gate
The Fall of RJR Nabisco
Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
1989 · 563 pages
In 1988 the chief executive of RJR Nabisco moved to buy his own company and set off a bidding war that closed at $25 billion. Burrough and Helyar put you inside every meeting.
★ 6.4
Epic
1989
Bottum, Gould and Bordin had the riff before Patton arrived; the bass and that piano coda did the rest.
★ 6.3
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
1989
American independent film became a business the week Soderbergh took the Palme d'Or at twenty-six: he made it for a million dollars, and it is four people talking about what they want.
★ 6.1
The Little Mermaid
Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
1989
Disney's renaissance starts here: Howard Ashman and Alan Menken wrote the songs like Broadway numbers, and the studio remembered how to make an animated musical that adults would sit through.
★ 6.1
The Joy Luck Club
1989 · 288 pages
Four women who fled China met over mahjong in San Francisco, and when one dies her daughter takes the empty seat. Tan's sixteen interlocking stories carry the mothers' buried lives across.
★ 6.1
Dead Poets Society
Directed by Peter Weir
1989
Nobody who saw it at the right age has stopped quoting it: Robin Williams plays a teacher who tells boys at a 1959 boarding school that poetry is worth risking something for.
★ 6.0