100 From 1977-2003

As the brain trust for Manchester mopesters the Smiths, Steven Patrick Morrissey and Johnny Marr wrote a lot of great singles and, admit it, quite a bit of wank (Four words: “Death at One’s Elbow”). But when it comes to finding the definitive moment in their tragically brief career, few will look past the splendorous six minutes and 43 seconds that is “How Soon Is Now?” And it can all be boiled down to one thing: That Riff. Like “Kashmir”, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”, “A Hard Day’s Night”, or “Layla”, the chugging, chorus-laden guitar riff that opens “How Soon Is Now?” is an instantly recognizable, indisputable classic. What makes the song all the more astounding is that seven seconds after That Riff, there is The Other Riff, where Marr lets rip with a bit that sounds like a police car rushing by, accounting for the Doppler Effect and everything. And then there’s Morrissey’s lyrics, whose melody works in complete odds with the song yet complements it perfectly: “I am the son and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar / And the son and the heir of nothing in particular”. It’s a typical Morrissey moment — he’s awkward, broke and worthless — but when the chorus comes, he steps up with the first ounce of nerve he’s ever shown and righteously declares, “I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does”. An unlikely rallying cry, yes, but it is in such moments that music history is written. For six and a half minutes, at least, the meek do indeed inherit the earth.
      — David Medsker

Arguably the greatest college radio song of all time, “Radio Free Europe” not only launched the career of one of Generation X’s most adored bands, it also ushered in a completely fresh, new sound to the American post-punk, post-new wave landscape. Originally released as an independent single in 1981 as a lively, propulsive blend of punk, new wave, and the jangly ’60s folk rock of the Byrds, the song was completely reworked for the band’s 1983 debut album Murmur by producer Mitch Easter. That version, slowed down and layered with lush overdubs, came to define R.E.M.’s sound during the early ’80s: you had Bill Berry’s exuberant drum fills, Peter Buck’s unobtrusive Rickenbacker guitar, Mike Mills’s melodic bass lines, and of course, the mumbled ramblings of the enigmatic Michael Stipe. Like the poetry of Jack Kerouac, Stipe’s lyrics were often chosen more for their sound than for their meaning, yet to this day, fans try to decipher what exactly Stipe was meaning when he sang lines like, “Beside defying media too fast / Instead of pushing palaces to fall”. No matter how oblique Stipe’s lyrics got, that still didn’t deter kids from singing along to one of the catchiest choruses we’ve ever heard, as “Calling out in transit” became the unlikeliest of rallying cries.
      — Adrien Begrand

“1989, another number, another summer”, Chuck D hollered in that distinctive cavernous bellow that no one else in hip-hop — then and now — could match. “Our freedom of speech is freedom or death!” And that’s what it felt like, sitting there and watching Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, try to shut down alternative music that the dominant culture couldn’t stand, mainly because it told or reflected Reagan/Bush America’s ugly truths. Tipper and her lame-duck PMRC were, like Reagan himself, simple figureheads, but what they represented — virtual homegeneity and vanilla hegemony — was grating on youth culture’s last nerve like another Milli Vanilli industry sham. While many would rightly point to Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back as not only their finest work, but hip-hop’s most important release to date, “Fight the Power” articulated the pent-up frustrations of the alternative subcultures that would come to dominate pop culture a scant decade later. It was equal parts signature soundtrack for Spike Lee’s seminal Do the Right Thing — which lost an Academy Award race to the patently offensive Driving Miss Daisy — and protest song, used at length on campuses and marches across the world. It was also a touchstone for dialogue and division on racial harmony, a pefect crystallization of Generation Next’s multi-hued makeup. “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me”, Chuck D sneered, knowing full well he had destroyed one of rock’s idols to millions of head-bobbing kids, black and white alike. “Fight the Power” reinforced the point that music could still be a galvanizing force rather than just disposable entertainment; in fact, it demanded the destruction of the “disposable” ethic altogether. Public Enemy changed hip-hop for good, but “Fight the Power” changed lives. I saw students at Berkeley walk blithely past protests for racial and curricular diversity; that is, until someone started rocking PE’s singular chant, at which point they were standing rapt, ready to storm the doors. More than any act I can recall from that period or this one, Public Enemy got people involved; in what, well, that was up to them. But it sharpened their minds, made them take a stand, and that was enough. Pop music had no heart at that point; it was filled with metal lite — just like now — bubblegum pop — just like now — and major label swill — just like now. The fact that PE lost the battle to bling-blingers and rich white boys wishing they were bulletproof black ones doesn’t mean they lost the war. There are still those today who hear “Fight the Power” and reach for their phones, wallets, picket signs, laptops or guns. And there will be tomorrow.
      — Scott Thill

We could talk about the winding bassline that creeps under your skin, or the swirling synths that give it that danceable sheen, or the blood-quickening way the song builds in the opening seconds with that splash of guitar and those persistent drums, but “Love Will Tear Us Apart” — and Joy Division — ultimately comes down to one thing: Ian Curtis. Recorded in April 1980, what would become Joy Division’s biggest hit seemed nothing less than a glimpse into their grand future. A month later, lead singer Curtis was found dangling from the ceiling, and the promise of Joy Division had soured into a prophecy of Curtis’s demise. The song brims with paradoxes, not the least of which is its odd marriage of upbeat synths and chilly sentiment — a harbinger of the band’s post-Curtis evolution into New Order (whose biggest hit, coincidentally, sits just below). Quite literally Curtis’s epitaph — his wife had the lyrics etched into his tombstone — “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is also Joy Division’s crowning achievement, a ghostly, twilit remembrance of what was, and a haunting echo of what could’ve been.
      — Elbert Ventura

There are few songs that you can honestly say forever altered the course of pop music history — and even fewer so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness as to be essential to our understanding of contemporary music. Yet “Blue Monday” is that rare song. The perfect amalgam of the synthetic and organic, “Blue Monday” provided the necessary bridge between punk and new wave, between rock and dance. It’s a snapshot of a watershed moment — Peter Hook’s slinky bass line and Bernard Sumner’s glassy monotone both summed up an era and begat a thousand possibilities, many of which are still being expanded upon today. You don’t need to have been born before “Blue Monday” was released to understand its impact. Turn on any contemporary radio station, pop in almost any CD, and you’ll hear the fruits of their innovation.
      — Jon Garrett

In many ways, you can blame Michael Jackson for Justin and Kelly. He was the first real, multi-media American Idol. And while the gloved one, today, is a punch line — far from the King of Pop — he was much more than just a face on the cover of a teen magazine. M.J. was the first black artist to get major airplay on the predominately white MTV. If not for Jackson, would Prince have been possible? And while you can make the argument that the man’s artistic merit meant more when there were five Jacksons involved, Thriller was as much a statement as a financial phenomenon. Yes, there are debts owed all over the record and its most significant (artistically speaking) single “Billie Jean”. But the arrangement is creative for its time and when the strings enter a few bars into the song, over that haunting baseline, you get the feeling something is up. And is it ever. This isn’t a feckless song about falling in love in the summer, it’s searing indictment of the relationship between the sexes. There’s a woman obsessed; a man who won’t take responsibility for his actions, though he knows better. The kid is not his son. What a great line. When you go back and listen to “Billie Jean” you here a performer with an air of vitality around him. Too bad the sins of the latter day Michael are concealing his past achievements.
      — Mitch Pugh

Originally recorded to cash in on the local popularity of the improvised entertainment at New York City block parties, “Rapper’s Delight”, the first single to use the fundamental elements of hip-hop (a flow of semi-improvised lyrics over borrowed music), revealed for the first time to a wide audience the style that has come to dominate American popular music. Mimicking the technique of cross-fading between the instrumental sections of two copies of the same record, “Rapper’s Delight” features studio musicians playing the groove from Chic’s “Good Times” over and over again while a more or less random selection of Bronx DJs recite boasting lyrics accumulated from years of neighborhood exposure. The braggadocio says nothing about the individuals involved, but instead reveals the collective assurance that comes from indisputable authority over a new artistic form, and the self-worth that can derive from an obviously shared communal joy. Only a disenfranchised class could indulge in the blatant and liberating disregard for property rights the borrowed music and the stolen rhymes represent; that the culture industry has been so quick to co-opt, neutralize and make proprietary stars out of the genre suggests just how threatening a message its original flowering sent.
      — Rob Horning

“Rrrright! Nowww…” American bands like the Stooges, the New York Dolls, and the Ramones might have helped create punk rock, but with Johnny Rotten’s two word intro to The Sex Pistols’ epochal 1976 single “Anarchy in the U.K.”, and his wickedly maniacal laugh that followed, punk belonged to the British, and rock ‘n’ roll was forever changed. The most confrontational rock song in history, “Anarchy”‘s timing could not have been more perfect. Morale among British youth was at a new low, rock music was in a sorry state, and young British musicians were quickly becoming the voices of dissent, with the Sex Pistols leading the way, and the tabloid press there to eat it all up. A massive gob of spit upon the mainstream, the single was a chaotic blast by a band who always sounded like they’d implode at any second. Just listen to it: the song’s production is horrible, Steve Jones’s sloppy guitar chords are too shrill, and Paul Cook’s drumming is weak. But it’s Rotten, in a stunning vocal performance, who makes the single what it is. His combination of ludicrous, ridiculously blunt poeticism (“I am the Antichrist / I am an anarchist”) and blind, seething rage (“I wanna destroy passersby”) is still chilling today, but the real clincher is Rotten’s razor-sharp, sardonic wit. His line, “Another council tenancy”, sneered so dryly, perfectly encapsulates his peers’ “what the hell is happening here?” sentiment at the time. We probably won’t live to hear another single as earth-shattering as this, but if something crazy happens and lightning does strike twice, we should consider ourselves very lucky.
      — Adrien Begrand

The best song from the best album by one of the best bands ever, and a call to arms no matter how you want to read it. Cultural critique, political screed, joyous celebration of fatalistic youth, middle finger to the control of monolithic governments over individual lives — any of them seem valid after forging through this song’s apocalyptic imagery and massive sense of human spirit. “London Calling” is more than a lyrical litany of the end times; declarations like “Phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust . . . War is declared and battle come down . . . come out of the cupboards you boys and girls” are a take-to-the-streets punk uprising, not a meek preparation for Cold War cataclysm. In 1979, punk was on the decline, mutating into less visceral New Wave and American post-punk, but “London Calling” was the genre’s final stand and finest moment. If the Clash had released “London Calling” on some obscure 7-inch vinyl single and never been heard from again, they still would have been “the Only Band that Mattered.”
      — Andrew Gilstrap

Blame it, if you must, for every whiny emocore tantrum and mumbly shoegazer dirge of the last decade. Point out, if you dare, that its mythic status was greatly enhanced by the untimely death of its main author. But two things about “Smells Like Teen Spirit” remain irrefutable: first, that its success lifted the American music industry out of a malaise that was, if anything, even worse than the one it’s in now; and second, that it’s still a flat-out great song. In 1991 every rock fan alive, from post-punk burnouts to jaded indie rockers to the fist-pumping mosh pit masses that Kurt Cobain so detested, was in desperate need a good, old-fashioned anthem, one that wasn’t full of U2 pomp and circumstance or Springsteen world-weariness, but just that gleeful, youthful, bratty abandon that the overproduced rock of the late ’80s had sucked out of the whole genre and 11 years of Republican rule had seemingly sucked out of the whole world. And Nirvana gave it to them, everyone, all at once: in five minutes of thundering four-chord glory, heavy metal crunch, raw-throated punk, ragged indie rock and, yes, Beatlesque pop catchiness all came together, announcing the arrival of a talent in Kurt Cobain that was so huge, you could make the case that everyone out there is still trying to figure out what to do next.
      — Andy Hermann