Song · Lloyd Cole
“Downtown” by Lloyd Cole
“Downtown” by Lloyd Cole appears on 8 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 1990 and 2023. Its best result is #81 on the KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1990. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #206 alternative song of 1990 and #3,254 alternative song of all time.
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"Downtown" was the third and last single Lloyd Cole pulled from his self-titled solo album, out in October 1990. He wrote it with Blair Cowan and produced it with Fred Maher and Paul Hardiman, and it's an unhurried evening song, warm at the edges, with a harmonica that NME's Andrew Collins rated as hot as the one on David Bowie's "A New Career in a New Town". Music Week's Selina Webb heard classic Cole in it, though she felt the melancholy the intro hints at never fully arrives.
Britain shrugged, and it never made the UK singles chart. America was kinder: it climbed to number 5 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, MTV put the video in medium rotation, and the song found its way onto the soundtrack of Bad Influence, a psychological thriller from the same year.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 81 | KROQ Los Angeles, CA | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1990 | 107 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 1751 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2001 Songs of All-Time (December 2000) | 2001 |
| 2001 | 1751 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 2002 |
| 2002 | 1740 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2003 Songs of All-Time (December 2002) | 2003 |
| 2002 | 263 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (July 2002) | 2002 |
| 2003 | 874 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
| 2022 | 681 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 900 Songs of the '90s | 900 |
| 2023 | 651 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 800 Songs About Places | 800 |
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