Buzzcocks

This is the Buzzcocks album to buy. Collecting singles from the band's first two years, these sixteen roaring, catchy songs spill into each other, resulting in one of the best Punk albums ever. Nearly all the sharp-witted, melodic songs from the late 1970s were perfect singles, with the A- and B-sides carrying equal weight.

Three albums and nearly a dozen singles after turning London on its jaded ear in 1976, the
Summer of Punk, the Buzzcocks continue to wrestle with the problem of reconciling
leader Pete Shelley's incurable romanticism with the cathartic attack of staccato guitars
and Gatling-gun drums that marks the best New Wave records, the Buzzcocks' included.
Singles Going Steady, the band's first American release, crystallizes Shelley's dil... More >

The title is the perfect conceit for this collection of eight relentless British forty-fives--arranged chronologically, the A sides on the A side and the B sides on the B--about love and lust among the unmarrieds. The Buzzcocks' knack for the title hook and the catchy backup chorus, along with their apparently asocial lyrics, tempts tastemakers in jaded olde England to dismiss them as mere pop, but over here their high-speed, high-register attack sounds powerful indeed. The best song on the record, "Orgasm Addict," is the most cynical; the second-best, "Everybody's Happy Nowadays," is the most gleeful. Good sign. (Grade - A-)