Top 10 Songs-The Clash

The Clash were once described as “the only band that matters”. That’s probably the most perfect way to describe them.

Formed in 1976, The Clash were along with the Sex Pistols, became one of the leading bands of the punk movement. They described the feelings that alienated teenagers were feeling brought on by their surroundings. Feeling they were no hoper’s and they had no future.

But, The Clash changed all that, attacking every injustice from the Government to the over indulgent music that was going on at the time.

The band would be driven by the songs of guitarist and singer Joe Strummer and lead guitarist Mick Jones. They would be the ‘Lennon/McCartney‘ of the punk movement.

The band originally performed punk music on their 1977 album The Clash. However, the cover of the reggae song ‘Police and Thieves’ showed that they could other music.

By their second album Give’Em Enough Rope, the band had begun to tire of punk music and were looking for new forms of music.

By London Calling, the band had broken free and would experiment with all kinds of music, from reggae to rockabilly. They would continue this trend for the rest of their career.

Musically The Clash showed as long as you have the genes of punk, you can go into all forms of music no matter what it is. This list isn’t really in a chronological order, just some of their best songs in my opinion.

1. Career Opportunities

One of the highlights of their debut album. This showed not only what The Clash could do musically, but what they could lyrically. Accompanied by some fast music, Strummer sings the frustration of young people feeling of trying to find a job. Such lyrical highlights include lines like,

career opportunities the ones that never knocked, every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock, career opportunity, the one that never knocked.

The song also has a timeless quality as young people can easily relate to it today, just as they did in 1977. A true classic that stands the test of time.

2. Rock the Casbah

One true quality that can be said about The Clash is that they were always looking for a new sound to play around with.

However, the genesis for the song didn’t come from Strummer or Jones but it came from drummer ‘Topper‘ Headon. He plays bass,piano and drums on the track.

With those three instruments he creates a hypnotic grove that instantly gets the listener hooked. The lyrics take addressing the Iranian clampdown on imports of Western music.

Such an odd but fitting topic to a song with such a danceable beat. Their most grooviest song.

3. Straight to Hell

Straight to Hell contains some of Strummer’s most passionate and vulnerable singing yet.

Always thought more of a better lyricist than a singer by the general public, he puts the notion to bed with the best singing of his career on this track from Combat Rock. 

Featuring a bossa nova beat played by Topper, Strummer sings the injustice of Thatcher’s Britain at her action taken against the Industrial sections up North leaving thousands without jobs.

He soon shifts his attention to singing as a child, singing about the abandonment of a child fathered by American soldiers stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.

The line ‘there ain’t no asylum here’ is fitting due to the tough border patrols taken during the Syrian Refugee crisis.

Their most passionate song about the injustice taken against people.

4. Safe European Home

The loud bang at the beginning of Safe European has The Clash come back with a bang.

The opening track on their second album Give’Em Enough Rope, the song deals with Strummer and Jones’s trip Jamaica.

The song is driven by stiff and loud music. However, bassist Paul Simonon is there to play a bouncy and lively bass line to help make the song loose.

The moment all the music fades out except for a guitar with Jones’s and Stummer’s voices is just pure magic.

5. The Magnificent Seven

This song sees The Clash actually move into rap music, making them one of the first rock bands to do so.

This Sandinista track released in 1981 is driven by a lively bass line and a quite funky rhythm. The song feels like Strummer’s been rapping his whole life that’s how natural he sounds in this song.

The lyrics show the drudgery that is associated by working class men and their jobs.

Lines like “working for a rise, better my station, take my baby to sophistication” shows The Clash are inspired and intelligent as ever about the common man.

6. Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)

This track also released on Sandinista features a change of pace.

The song deals with shabby council flat blocks that people must live in. It is Jones instead of Strummer this time singing about the injustice.

Quite an underrated song, it may have got lost in the shuffle due to Sandinista being a triple album.. Jones sums up the problem with council flats in one line.

you can’t live in a home which should not have been built, by the bourgeois clerks who bear no guilt

Jones, who previously lived in a council block uses his experience to sing about the poor treatment that people have to show for working hard but having to live in an awful place.

Accompanied by some great music, it helps it to make it one of the highlights of Sandinista.

7. White Man in Hammersmith Palais.

When White Man in Hammersmith Palais was written, it really surprised the band with Strummer saying ‘we were a big fat riff group, we weren’t supposed to do something like that’.

The song has a strong ska rhythm and it is exciting. It is that feeling that rubs on the listener.

Strummer famously covers a number of topics in the song famously finishing with ‘all over people changing their votes, along with their overcoats, if Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway’ famously summing up what state Britain had found itself in by 1978.

8. London Calling

The stomping guitar heard at the beginning of London Calling makes it feel like a rock song but, when Simonon’s bass comes in it helps to change the rhythm of the song into a reggae song.

A nice trick to throw the listener from where they think they song was going to go.

Strummer, using his old trick of mentioning several topics in a song, was inspired by reading the newspaper and seeing the paranoid fear of the world at any second the world could end. This paranoid feeling mixes well with what is quite a loose reggae song.

This helps to kick off the album London Calling in style.

9. Spanish Bombs

Another song off London Calling, ‘Spanish Bombs’ is one of the more melodic songs in The Clash’s songbook.

The singing from Jones and Strummer is top notch as it lets Strummer about the Spanish Civil War.

The band also works in Spanish words into the song. ‘Yo te quiera infinito, yo te quiera, oh mi corazón’ (I want you forever, I want you, oh my heart).

As with the rest of London Calling, it shows not afraid to move outside of their comfort zone with what is quite a poppy song.

10. Guns of Brixton

Often the black sheep in terms of song writing, bassist Paul Simonon’s first is really good for a first try.

A huge reggae fan, the song has a strong reggae influence. The beat however by Topper is something akin more to funk or rock than reggae.

Simonon wrote about police brutality and harsh events taking place in Brixton.

The song would pre-date the infamous riots in Brixton in the following decade. Simonon sings with anger and it helps to make an impact on the listener.

A true classic.

The 10 Best Joy Division Songs

Joy Division were a gloomy and moody quartet that were formed in Manchester in 1976 and lasted and only until 1980 due to the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis which would lead the remaining members to form New Order.

So in that four years, they only released two albums, an EP and only a handful of singles. According to bassist Peter Hook in Punk Britannia: The Post Punk years, the band was only professional for nine months.

So its incredible to think that in that sort space of time a band like Joy Division has a song catalogue far superior to some bands that have been around for 20 years!

Joy Division were able to use the energy, anger and simplicity of punk music to help express complex human thoughts and emotions. This was reflected in their first album Unknown Pleasures. 

After that master piece the band soon began to write songs with a danceable beat and even moved into a more electronic area in their second and final album Closer. 

What Joy Division could show was that punk music could allow you to move into new areas of music and be revolutionary in your own way.

These songs on the list aren’t in a chronological order but more a list to show what songs showcased their strengths the best as a band.

 

1. Insight

The head of their label Factory Records Tony Wilson, mentioned in the 2007 Joy Division documentary that “punk had enabled you to say fuck you” but in his words post punk had enabled young people to say “I’m fucked”. That thought is expressed beautifully in this song.

The sound can also be attributed to their revolutionary producer Martin Hannett. His work is clear on this as the drums are given an electronic touch to help make them stand out more. The bass by Peter Hook does a great job by carrying the melody on the high end of the bass.

Curtis also expresses the complex human thoughts with lines like “I don’t care any more, I’ve lost the will to want more”. The way he delivers is chilling as you really do feel that he thinks like this.  A great track.

2. Isolation

A step in a new direction for Joy Division as a new instrument had been started to be introduced during the past few months, the synthesiser.

Although used a bit on Unknown Pleasures it had really come to the forefront on Closer . What’s even more noticeable is that the band’s guitarist Bernard Sumner doesn’t even play any guitar on the track, instead he uses the synthesiser to great effect.

The synthesiser is then backed up by the solid rhythm section in Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris.

Curtis also is at the forefront again with chilling lyrics like “Mother I tried please believe me, I’m doing the best that I can, I’m ashamed of the things I’ve been put through, I’m ashamed of the person I am.” Really rare to see a singer criticise himself so hard.

3. She’s Lost Control

She’s Lost Control is a track that makes the listener feel very uneasy once again.

A very dark song with a dance beat highlights the band as a whole. Once again Morris is there with the electronic sounding drums, coupled with Peter Hook’s high bass and Bernard Sumner’s simple but effective guitar.

The track has a profound effect on the listener, making them freeze as if the band is able to demand they stop and listen to this revolutionary song. Curtis calmly sings the unfortunate situation of a woman in need of some sort of support from anybody in “she’s clinging to the nearest passer by, she’s lost control , and she gave away the secrets of her past”.

The track was actually inspired by a woman that Curtis was helping when he was working at Department of Disabled Services in Manchester and he would witnessed a young woman collapse with an epileptic fit.

He would later learn that she would die from the fit, having a massive effect on him to pen such chilling lyrics.

 

4. Transmission

A song that instantly grabs the listener with some mysterious echoes before being hit over the head by the force that is the music.

Sumner really shines hear in what is probably his best Joy Division performance ever with some great guitar work.

Not to be outdone Curtis howls  “and we would go on as though nothing was wrong, and hide from these days as we remained all alone.” It’s as if he is singing some sort of dystopian future or hellish future.

The chorus of “dance! dance! dance! dance! to the radio!” seems more like an order than a plea!. This track would also be a great as a live song for the band

5. The Eternal

Probably one of the most heartbreaking songs that Joy Division ever recorded. The moody and brooding track showcases Sumner on synthesiser as it swarms the listener.

The song continues for a minute before Curtis comes singing in such a heartbroken and delicate tone. The line “procession moves on, the shouting is over,” is very worrying as it foreshadows Curtis’s suicide only a month later as if he can already see what his own funeral is going to be like.

Hook also experiments on the track with a six string bass to help compliment his unique bass playing. The six string bass is something he’d continued to use in New Order.

A real fore shadower of the genre of ‘gothic rock‘. Really helped with the production of Hannett.

6. Komakino

An often overlooked track but ranks up there with their best. Released as a single in 1980 it didn’t receive much attention but has grown in the last few years.

It is probably only one of the rare songs that Curtis takes a back seat which you’d think hurts the track but, it allows the band to really take over and show what they’re about.

The song is held together by Morris’s primal jungle like drumming. The bass and guitar really compliment each other as well. Hook really stands out as he really lets himself go during the instrumental part and plays some awesome bass. Easily his best bass line in Joy Division.

One their best in my opinion.

7. Love Will Tear Us Apart

Everyone knows this song even if they’ve never heard of Joy Division. It’s really odd considering the band haven been known as a gloomy band come out with a stunning pop song.

Released as a single in 1980, it was their first and only chart hit as Joy Division.

The songs begins with it’s famous bass riff, followed by a hard acoustic guitar strum and then is uplifted by the famous synth strings by Sumner once again.

The song is able to let Curtis feel some real vulnerable emotions as he comments on a doomed relationship. Lines like “why is this bedroom so cold?, you’ve turned away on your side,” and “you cry out in your sleep, all my failings exposed” could show Curtis was capable of writing a love song albeit about a failing relationship.

A classic.

8. Disorder

The song that kicks off Unknown Pleasures really sets the tone for the whole album. It kicks off with a drum sound never heard before.

The whole show has a vibe of a sci-fi trip of Manchester gone horribly wrong.

The song represents the motto Tony Wilson’s view of “I’m fucked” for post punk as Curtis begins to sing the type of lyrics that he’d become known for.

He wails “I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand,” as if he’s been waiting his whole life to be in a band to say what he really felt. The line  “could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?” shows Curtis maybe feeling normal for the first time in his life and feeling content.

However this would be the only time where we would ever hear Curtis feeling content.

9. Atrocity Exhibition

One of the most angriest songs Joy Division ever recorded.

Kicking off Closer, Curtis sings off the position he finds himself as the front man of a band beginning to find fame and the pressure associated with it.

He sings “asylums with doors open wide, where people had paid to see inside, for entertainment they watch his body twist, behind his eyes he says, ‘I still exist.”. This shows a man thinking being a singer of a band isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

The track also sees Hook and Sumner swap instruments. Hook plays the guitar with effects that make it feel like a cat wailing at you. With a hypnotic rhythm played by Morris really helps the stand out as one of their finest.

10. Atmosphere

Released only as a single in France in 1980, this haunting is probably the best song Joy Division ever wrote.

Accompanied by some epic synth strings that really help to add some melody, some rumbling high end bass and hypnotic drums help to show that musically it could be their most innovative song.

The production by Hannett really helps the song to stand out helping it to sound epic and grand.

Curtis shows how he approaches his problems with depression and epilepsy by quietly sing “walk in silence” which shows how unhealthy his position and mental health has become. He also shows perhaps his jealousy towards those who have it easy  in the line “people like you find it easy”, showing how big his depression is.

Their most emotional song.