I was given my first CD player for my birthday that year and had to choose one CD. A friend suggested I replace my favourite album. The Joshua Tree had been out for three months, ample time for me to decide - briefly - that it was the greatest record ever released, so that was the one. How fickle our young selves are.

I forgot about it for a few years, when chest-beating stadium behemoths were painted as the devil incarnate, but have come back to it a bit now, and it’s not too harsh a shock to see this song at the top of the pile. U2’s plodding and patchy recent efforts, and the “will this do?” likes of Coldplay’s vapid X&Y are giving impassioned, crowd-pleasing rock a bad name again, though, and the superior quality of The Joshua Tree is shown in stark relief.

Not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, and not really my favourite stuff these days. Some songs break through. I like the yearning and insistent chords, and the way it builds, shown to more obvious effect on Rattle & Hum’s gospelified version. The Chimes’ fantastic soul cover a few years later takes it even further, bringing out the potential Bono hoped it had.

Of course, it could just be a load of cod-religious, bombastic, empty posturing. Hey, that’s why we love them, right? Junior tried to get with the questing theme by working out how to sit up unaided. Didn’t quite manage it, but she put on a decent performance. Acting baby.

Junior thought this was coming from the light fittings and, let’s face it, that probably isn’t far off. When not staring at the ceiling, she spent the rest of the song craning to look around the room, determined to find that Icelandic pixie. We’re no wiser than we were back then.

Back then, I first heard about The Sugarcubes in Record Mirror, then saw a snatch of video on the Chart Show. You had to take notice. In Oxford Street’s Virgin Megastore, I saw 18 year old gothic indie chicks carrying the 12” of the Icelandic version, and felt intimidated. The shop was very different in the ’80s, not the shiny identikit middle-aged-50-quid-man haven it is today. It was dirty and seedy, and you were sneered on like a fish-out-of-water dad in a small, independent record store. Jelly-legged, I’d take my Microdisney tapes up to the listening booths, knowing I’d feel compelled to buy them however they sounded.

‘Birthday’ was alien and exciting. My big sister - by now a national luminary of youth music theatre - said that Björk would ruin her vocal chords screaming like that. I thought that this was beside the point. Now I’m hoping that Junior didn’t pick up any ideas.

So Prince got all socially conscious on us and it didn’t seem pious. He had no previous, you see. Stripped down, raw and funky, ‘Sign ‘O’ The Times’ came out of nowhere when we’d barely finished getting down to the ninth single from Parade. He was astonishingly prolific without dropping below the quality threshold, at least for another couple of years.

You have to do a silly, jerky dance to this. Junior understood. Attempting to stand up, with support, she let her knees give way a few times, and sometimes on the beat. I can’t remember whether we ever danced to this at teenage discos. Would’ve been excruciating, in our roll-neck tops and black jeans and Converse boots.

The breathtaking, hubristic album still takes your breath away and challenges the gods. Skip the loose jams and it’s filled with psychedelic pop/soul/rock beauties and singles that should’ve made this chart. He was on a huge, kaleidoscopic roll. If I’d had a boy, I’d have called him Nate.

This is the best single of 1987 by some distance, only I didn’t quite realise at the time. The “song with no chorus”, as Tennant and Lowe knew it, has drama, bitterness, regret and huge, warm hooks. It also has those synth horns on the second bridge that set you up for Dusty’s matchless second verse/bridge/kind-of-chorus. The catch in her voice here is not just the highlight of the record, it’s one of the pop highlights of the decade.

The kids like it as well. My brother was two when this was released and it’s the first of my records I remember him singing along with, in an early prototype of Jukebox Junior. Junior herself enjoyed this in a more stately manner, waltzing around the living room with her dad.

I haven’t paid much attention to the Pet Shop Boys in the last 10 years. I know they made a new soundtrack to Battleship Potemkin last year, and I’ve been dimly aware of the steady trickle of pale imitations of former glories. Nothing disguises the weakening grip on the mastery of pop. It would’ve been a tall order, anyway. In the ’80s they peered down on all except the pint-sized purple paisley poseur.

A second appearance from 1987’s self-proclaimed biggest star. ‘If You Let Me Stay’ was his first single, an ’80s soul rush with oomph to spare and the campest backing singers this side of Vegas. His bug-eyed James Brownisms were everywhere for a year or so, an effortless rise to the top of the tree that was almost as quick and remarkable as his subsequent fall.

The Trout (thanks, Smash Hits) saw his debut album spend at least six months in the chart even before it reached No.1 in early ’88, where it stayed for a couple of months. A huge, heady success. The second arrived in 1990, entered at No. 12 and was gone in four weeks, never to be seen again. He didn’t miss his water, ‘til his well ran dry.

Junior was caught up in the whirl, laughter tinkling with each of Terence’s whoops. I was throwing her up in the air at the same time, admittedly. Still, the song whistles past and leaves you smiling.

A song about child abuse, and the powerlessness and denial of living next door. Not one for Junior to boogie around to, then, so I left her sitting quietly while I became reacquainted with the record. She was much more interested in the email mum was sending to her boss, anyway.

Natalie Merchant had a voice that only Michael Stipe could love, allegedly, although its ticks and quirks interested me today. In this song, she uses the beat to punctuate her words and it makes an uncomfortable whip-crack effect. She’s telling a story at the start, then in the middle eight she adopts the voice of the abuser and alternates between quiet menace and swooping anger. In the last verse, she gives vent to the bafflement we’d all feel as neighbours and the result is rousing. Packs a punch, this.

When I bought this (a 3-inch CD single, nostalgia buffs), it was the tune I loved while I allowed myself a suitably serious nod towards the content. It gets more unsettling as you get older, even if the cynical adult is inclined to notice triteness in the lyrics. For all the brow-beating, hectoring and polemic across their albums, at least they give it a melody here.

We’ve already done this one in the Christmas section. Gratifyingly, Junior again sings along with the intro.

Festive records shouldn’t be in year-end Top 10s. It feels wrong, no matter how right the record is.

They replaced Bobby Gillespie with a drum machine (there’s a thought) and revved up ‘Some Candy Talking’ to make a straight-up indie pop grower. It’s more unusual than that. You get two verses and then two choruses, and this makes it feel like it’s forever building to a big finish. In a way, it is. Jim Reid lets rip with what sounds like real drive, something that Psychocandy didn’t quite give us.

Junior was distracted this morning. We think she might’ve been peeved at wearing a blue vest and blue sleepsuit. She likes her girlie accoutrements. The Jesus and Mary Chain get a passing nod. She’ll learn though, when she’s decked out in black at 14 years old and telling us how she always liked The Velvet Underground.

Listening to ‘April Skies’ again makes me wonder whether we’ve got The Strokes all wrong. They like the skinny ties, trousers and baseball boots of new wave, but they want to make goth surf pop.

A blistering white soul attack on Thatcherite Britain, or Matt Bianco with balls? You decide. Junior threw some shapes to it and thanked her lucky stars that the Kane brothers weren’t looking for Linda.

The dizzy heights of No.9 might be stretching it slightly for this, but it sustains a cracking tempo and some handily spat out lyrics. A friend of mine drops this into the mix occasionally when exercising his ninja DJ skillz, and it isn’t too out of place. Strange, as it’s dated in more than just its meaning.

We enjoyed the brassy few minutes, although some of its gloss was scuffed when I didn’t turn the tape off quickly enough at the end of the song. No.8, you see, is a stone cold classic.

Junior looked a bit bewildered at this one, particularly with her dad struggling manfully to sing along with the samples. I do a mean Ofra Haza. As with the 1987 British public, however, bewilderment gave way to enthusiasm and we had a hit on our hands.

Colourbox were known for a maverick ‘86 World Cup theme, and AR Kane indulged in psychedelic shoe-gazing pop. Dave Dorrell and CJ Mackintosh bucked up their ideas for them and gave us a seminal No.1. Yeah, sampling wasn’t new, but for the punter at large a record consisting solely of samples was a new and frightening thing. It’s odd to think of the furore now. Lawsuits aplenty, not least from the blissfully backward Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Weeks earlier, they’d delighted in white labels of ‘Roadblock’ fooling the fashion-conscious DJs into championing Rick Astley’s svengalis, now they took their ball home when they could’ve been enjoying even greater kudos. Ironic, doncha think?

Oddly, this is still a meaty-sounding record. Put it next to the flimsy ‘Jack Your Body’ and see the Brits breaking the new ground. By the end, Junior was applauding.

The best bit of this record is the end. By the time we put this on, Junior had resorted to playing hide and seek by sitting on dad’s head (you try and find a baby that’s sitting on your head).

When I say the end, I mean the last minute. The flame-haired, jewel-toothed, priapic, McCutcheon-bothering minstrel changes the key and stretches his ad lib wings, and we can forget the dry work-out of the first three minutes. Nothing special, though. Hucknall was never as special as he thought, unlikely voice apart.

I heard ‘Something Got Me Started’ the other day. Horrible song, yet brimming with enormous, tangible confidence. It got me thinking that it wasn’t just the broad appeal MOR coffee-table soul that made him so successful; it was also his unstoppable, brash belief that he had everything and could do anything. Without that, he was just another Sade, albeit one a little less easy on the eye.

Now, don’t go deserting 1987 in your Duranie-like droves. The Top 10’s mustard.

Bear with me, Raintown was a good album for all its vanity and overarching straight-facedness. Everyone hated Ricky and Lorraine though, didn’t they? Things got worse when he grew a bob and she grabbed more vocals.

Not a hit with Junior, this. Her reactions were a little sluggish after staying up to watch Celebrity Big Brother last night, and it would have taken more than the aspirations of a Scotch binman to wrest her from her torpor.

This is another of those records that I clearly liked more 19 years ago. Not quite as inexplicable as the next one, but overblown and ’80s as it gets.

Like a typical Duranie of the period, Junior was indifferent to this. There was a brief slapping of the thighs at the start, yet attention soon turned to the socks. So, what made the fans desert in their droves? I don’t think it’s a bad record even now, but it was the first to miss the Top 10 in years. Maybe it’s because it had an almost intelligible lyric.

Arcadia and the Power Station diluted the fanbase and the preceding single ‘Notorious’ scraped to No.7 on comeback power alone. A-ha had nicked the girls and the CD age had come and populated the chart’s upper reaches with the more ‘serious’ artists. The biggest bands in the country were now Dire Straits and U2. Duran Duran’s fabled mix of the Sex Pistols and Chic - without the Sex Pistols and the disco joy - wasn’t cutting the ice.

So, Simon, we’ve explained the reason for this strange behaviour. Perhaps you shouldn’t have allowed all those Taylors to jump ship, and then replaced them with AMERICANS.

Junior’s mum reports that this was a bigger success: it had Junior up and boogie-ing with panda, a handy Robert Smith lookalike. The song reminds me of the summer, and getting a taste of heartbreak, but otherwise I was a bit ambivalent about The Cure while somehow having loads of their records.

It’s a lovely tune - even the Dinosaur Jr version is sweet until he starts roaring - and Smith keeps the yelping in check. I saw Katie Melua performing it on Popworld or something a few weeks back, treating us to an acoustic take which was designed to show the astonished masses that she’d cleverly found a Real Song behind the nasty loud rock noise. Well done, Katie.

Come the revolution…

Foreshadowing James Blunt by a couple of decades in the rhyming slang stakes, Miles Hunt introduced his troupe of Black Country grebo-pop rockers to the world with this quickfire, snotty-nosed number. They were the greatest band ever for a year, before I woke up, got serious and cared more about girls. As late as 1990 though, I was bonding with fellow undergraduates over Stuffies (as the Melody Maker undoubtedly called them) t-shirts and posters.

The twin millstones of ‘Size Of A Cow’ and ‘Dizzy’ will live longer in the collective memory, but over a couple of albums they brought together countless floppy fringed and oversized topped teenage boys with their spiky, catchy pop punk. We even turned up to their gigs a couple of years back. It’s hard to let go.

Junior was asleep when I left for work this morning, so for a change she’s listened to this and the next tune with her mum. Speaking to her mum just now, I’m told that while this was playing Junior was lying stock straight on her mat, waving her arms and legs just a little. She’s growing up a bit faster than her dad.

Hilarious stuff - “Lord, imagine my surprise!” - and a raucous, headlong assault on the heart of the rawk. I still think it’s a bit of a gem, and Junior looked like she was having a ball as well. There were squeals to accompany the now standard claps, and she grinned like she could see herself in the mirror. 

When we were 15, most of my friends were into heavy metal or rock at the very least. I didn’t really catch the bug, but I always reckoned this was because I’d been a record buyer for years. For many of them, this was the first time that music was twitching their synapses, and a teenage boy can hardly start with an A-ha single. I no longer had this kind of shame, but I liked a bit of Aerosmith and AC/DC. The rest could go hang.

It’s a mixed bag, this 1987 set. That was the identity I seemed to be forging, and it’s stayed with me - anything goes as long as it’s good. A formative year, then, that’ll do for my novel.

Taking INXS’ Kick into school in the fifth form brought some unexpected kudos, but they were never really loved, were they? There were enormous global sales, unprecedented female attention for Michael Hutchence and a funky bar room sound that could appeal to the boys, yet still no one would ever say that they were their favourite band.

So when Hutchence knuckle-shuffled off this mortal coil, the posthumous Number Ones didn’t ensue. There were no voices raised in grief, wailing “First Kurt, then Diana, now Michael - when will the killing end?” and no fountains commissioned. No, we became voyeurs, and took cheap shots at the names of Paula Yates’ children.

‘Need You Tonight’ has retained its groove. Junior, in fact, is in raptures as it kicks off and Dad discovers he can do a passable Kanye Gold Digger dance to it. It’s a sexy record, I suppose, of the sort that INXS could pull off every album or so, but it’s ultimately unsatisfying. It peters out, and loses its gist through false endings. Even its real ending seems false. You can almost sense the ghost of Bruno Brookes wondering when to cut in.

This record ended Apartheid.

It’s also used by advertising frippers to sell stuff to us, which I don’t think is the point at all. Faced with this song, we have to adopt worthy poses and wring our hands. Junior and I try this for a bit, but we soon lapse into pat-a-cake. We weren’t prepared for serious records when counting down the 1987 chart. Things will get right back on track next time, when we dust off our Michael Hutchence jokes, although I appear to have forgotten the fab new one I made up the other day.

‘(Something Inside) So Strong’ isn’t a bad tune, it’s just tainted by memories of the politically correct, cause-fixated ’80s. Gives it a pomposity it might not have otherwise - well, maybe - and we all like to prick that bubble.

But let’s not bandy the “pompous” adjective around too cheaply, with Mick Hucknall and Ricky Ross still to come.

Before we have to face that fear, though, there are lots of boys with guitars and big teased hair and make-up and Bass Things.

Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy BETRAYED the Goths with the fantastically derivative yet ace Electric.

Junior rejoices in the power of the ‘Start Me Up’ riff. Propped up by a couple of cushions, she rocks out, claps her hands, grins and shakes her stuff. Loud guitars are a new thing for her but, as she indicated with ZZ Top, she’s ready to embrace the rawk.

The single sleeve claims that ‘Love Removal Machine’ will make you “boogie ‘til you blow chunks”.

The mind boggles.

“A wishing well, a crock of dog shit”. Not like Terence to put his ego to one side and deliver a frank broadside against his own song. Disappointingly, the official line is “of crocodile cheer”, so it wasn’t like him at all. I thought he was pretty damn great at this point, and his disastrously received second album was even greater, but I know I’m in the minority.

Junior starts off fairly perky about ‘Wishing Well’ but, in a devastating parallel to TTD’s commercial success, this young fan soon loses interest. She’s itchy long before the end, craning her neck to see herself in the mirror. Maybe this is in tribute to the beleaguered singer.

Star fact:  this song reminds me of dancing with the girl who went on to be Lovejoy’s daughter in the BBC show. Such brushes with fame make the man.

I was 15, remember. But what mighty wordplay is to be found here: “My love has taken a tumble, but I’m still standing”. The speakers are shining with the medium-transcending glare of Marti’s grin. The boy had fangs, didn’t he, before they were eroded away by substance abuse. If you see him now, he has the smile of a hippopotamus.

This is equal 20 on our 1987 chart. Not through any exact science, I’m guessing. A betting man, I’d say that when I got to the nominal No.11 I found that I still had five minutes left on the first side of the C90, so something came in with a bullet and the rest got shunted back.

Say what you like, Wet Wet Wet appeal to the kids. Junior is beaming (not Pellow-style), and slapping her hands on her thighs. I have harrowing memories of singing along to this in my bedroom, to the unfettered delight of my sister and her friend in the room below. Apparently, I wasn’t yet fit to go before Simon Cowell.

Cloth-eared know-nowts.