Tainted Love – Soft Cell
A drum machine snaps, a synth bass ducks under it, and Marc Almond's voice arrives already too much, pleading and showing off in the same breath, as if the club had no back room to hide in.
Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
Two chords, clean and almost kind, and a voice that sounds as if it is answering from the other side of a wall.
Windowlicker – Aphex Twin
The breakbeat is indecently tight, a hip-hop chassis with the bolts showing, and then the melody smears, too sweet, too close, a tune that might be a love song if the love song had started to melt.
Everlong – Foo Fighters
The intro is a chase already in progress, two guitars locked in a figure that feels like running downhill and refusing to fall.
The Sound of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel
Two voices enter with almost no accompaniment, close enough to be one instrument, and the first line greets the dark as if it were a person who has been waiting.
Interview of Debbie Harry (1981)
BBC Newsnight in 1981 follows Debbie Harry into the biomechanical world of H.R.
Respect – Aretha Franklin
The band hits, and she is already ahead of them, piano in the left hand of the arrangement, voice in no doubt at all.
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