The bass announces, it declares. And from there, Damaged Goods unspools like a manifesto with a backbeat, equal parts lust and Lenin. Though it sounded unlike anything else on it, it was the song that launched Gang of Four onto the post-punk scene in 1978.
While Parklife was Blur's technicolour pop explosion, Trouble in the Message Centre is the half-broken neon sign in the corner, uneasy, throbbing. Midway through their classic 1994 album, it's the song that murmured where the group was truly heading while everyone else was still singing
When I Was Born For Lovin' Hitting the airwaves in 1979, you broke heads rather than simply turning them.
Some songs walk into a room. Smiling as the mayhem develops, Richard III kicks the door off its hinges and hurls a pint across the floor. By the time Supergrass released this beast in 1997, already shed their "cheeky chappies" image from I Should Coco.
The beginning riff is more of a snap than a sound. Like someone flipping a switch labeled “chaos” and seeing the amps catch fire.
There is almost not time to blink. The phone rings, the line clicks, and suddenly you're in it—hanging on the Telephone doesn't so much start as ambush you.
The beginning twitches. nervous twitch. A guitar that keeps trying to settle but can’t quite decide where to land.
Though it is over in two minutes and twenty-eight seconds, it could well be the most flawless two minutes and twenty-eight seconds in pop music history.
In a quiet corner of eternity, we sat down for an impossible conversation with John Lennon, not the myth but the man, to talk about music, peace, and the world he left behind.
Reptilia kicks its heels in, grins its teeth, and erupts into one of the tightest, leanest rock attacks of the 2000s just after that squirming bassline slithers out of the shadows.
