Enola Gay – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
A toy-bright synthesiser states a melody you could whistle in a playground, and Andy McCluskey starts singing the name of an aeroplane as if the name were a girl's, which, terribly, it was.
Hey Boy Hey Girl – The Chemical Brothers
The intro is a tease, a thin bright line, a voice already calling hey boy, hey girl, as if the room had been invited and not yet told the price.
Why – Annie Lennox
A piano states a small, adult figure, no drum yet, and Annie Lennox's voice enters as if she had been sitting with the same sentence all night and had finally decided to say it aloud.
Can I Kick It? – A Tribe Called Quest
The upright bass does not hurry, because it has already done its walking on another record.
1979 – The Smashing Pumpkins
A drum machine keeps a small, stubborn pulse, closer to a car idling than to a band arriving.
Stop Making Sense
David Byrne walks on with a boombox and an acoustic guitar, and the concert has already started.
Rooster – Alice in Chains
The guitar crawls before it strikes.
Virginia Plain – Roxy Music
An oboe and a synthesizer collide in the first seconds, glamorous and slightly unhinged, and Bryan Ferry starts listing places as if a postcard had been cut up and thrown into the wind.
Black Steel – Tricky
The tempo has been taken down until the threat can sit.
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