Buzzcocks

Essential Albums

  • Singles Going Steady (Deluxe Version)
    Singles Going Steady (Deluxe Version)
    Singles Going Steady (Deluxe Version)

    Of the three great first-wave British punk bands, Buzzcocks were the one that seemed to exist out of time. The Sex Pistols wanted to piss on tradition and take your money. The Clash challenged institutions of power. Buzzcocks wrote love songs from the vantage of someone being thwarted at every turn—“This pathetic clown’ll keep hanging around, that’s if you don’t mind,” Pete Shelley sings in “I Don’t Mind”. Singles Going Steady, in its original vinyl edition, collects the A-sides and B-sides of eight singles Buzzcocks (no The in the name, as their Twitter bio proudly reminds people) released during a remarkably fertile 21-month period, from November 1977 to July 1979. (Oh, and they also produced two albums in that fevered time span.) This four-piece band from Manchester quickly developed a sound—economical, punchy, unflagging—that comprised the most melodic side of punk, but they also wandered curiously into experimental moods, as on “Something’s Gone Wrong Again”. Singles Going Steady combines both their punchiest, catchiest songs (the A-sides) and their weirdest and most daring (the B-sides). Shelley’s lyrics could be hilarious and crude (“Orgasm Addict”), nearly existential in their bewilderment (“Everybody’s Happy Nowadays”) or both (“Why Can’t I Touch It?”), and he sings, in a pinched voice, usually at the unbalanced top of his range. He and co-guitarist Steve Diggle play jagged, staccato chords or needling hooks, and in bassist Steve Garvey and drummer John Maher, Buzzcocks had a versatile, shifty rhythm section that not only stomped, but could swing as well. Thanks to Shelley’s melodicism and intelligence, and the band’s tight playing, Buzzcocks have been widely influential. Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s called them “probably the one band we all loved.” Mission of Burma and Hüsker Dü, two of the most important American punk bands of the ’80s, covered Buzzcocks songs. Even Outkast’s André 3000 was a fan—he wrote “Hey Ya!”, he said, under the influence of Buzzcocks. Because Singles Going Steady was the band’s first American release, this is where their influence comes ashore. The band never locked in better than on “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve),” which has become their most famous song, partly because Fine Young Cannibals and Pete Yorn later covered it. The entire track is a barrage: The guitars enter like they’re crashing a party, Maher creates an anxious mood by moving into and out of a displaced drum pattern and Shelley, who wrote the lyric he later said was about a man he was in love with, depicts a familiar topic—unrequited love—in its most universal form.

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About Buzzcocks

For generations, Manchester has been ground zero for forward-thinking indie music—and for that, you can thank Buzzcocks. College mates/guitarists Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley formed the band in 1976 at the dawn of punk’s first wave and, that June, booked the notorious Sex Pistols gig at Lesser Free Trade Hall where future members of Joy Division and The Fall found their calling. And their 1977 debut EP, Spiral Scratch, was not only among the first UK punk releases, but also the scene’s first truly DIY artifact. Buzzcocks would be legends for those feats alone—however, following Devoto’s departure in 1977, Shelley and bassist-cum-guitarist Steve Diggle brought their innate ear for Beatles-esque melody to the fore and invented pop-punk as we know it, yielding timeless expressions of sexual frustration (“Orgasm Addict”) and, through the lens of the openly bi Shelley, unrequited queer desire (“Ever Fallen in Love”). After splitting in 1981, Buzzcocks enjoyed a fruitful second act in the ‘90s, just as the sound they pioneered was enjoying its Green Day-powered resurgence. And even after Shelley’s 2018 death, Diggle has taken the reins, ably honouring the group’s legacy on the revved-up 2022 single “Senses Out of Control”.

ORIGIN
Bolton, Greater Manchester, England
FORMED
1976
GENRE
Rock

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