The Spice Girls - Wannabe
This is just deliberate trolling isn’t it? What could be less rock ‘n’ roll than this particular track? Well, I’m glad you asked. My definition of “rock” is less about guitars and drums and shouty vocals and more about absolute commitment to the thing that you are doing. Beyond being cool or knowing or above it all. Being present, in your body, in the moment, in the thick of it. And The Spice Girls are committed to this song. From the vocals to the dancing. They are committed to being the most Spiciest Girls that they can be. So, yes. This rocks. Bite me.
The Stooges - Search and Destroy
Lets not muck about. This is the most intense, deranged piece of rock ‘n’ roll ever recorded. It is constantly on the point of collapse. How do we know how hard this particular version rocks? Well, every other version is lame. With the exception of the cover by Peaches. Not normally an artist I have a lot of time for, she takes the original Iggy explosion and turns it in on itself - so it collapses under its own rock gravity into nervous paranoia.
Public Enemy - Rebel Without A Pause
Obviously Chuck D and Flavor Flav are good. But it’s Terminator X and the Bomb Squad that take this anthem to the next level. The huge slabs of scratching noise they throw into the instrumental sections are awe-inspiring. And D is never less than totally, absurdly committed to what he is doing. And as far as he’s concerned, if you can’t hear that he is the living embodiment of Revolutionary Black Truth then that’s a massive failure on your part.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Possibly the most film I have ever seen.
NK Jemisin - The Broken Earth Trilogy
A book series that starts with a terrorist catastrophe that kills millions and the up-close-and-personal murder of a child by their parent. This starts at 11 and then cranks it up from there to a wholly earned series of emotional pay-offs three books later.
PJ Harvey - Dress
Few tracks dramatize the hideous embarrassment of being trapped in your own teenage body and the society that simultaneously valorizes and detests it. While sung from a female perspective and the particular issues that entails, few things captured my own puberty blues quite so vividly. Also contains the most rock ‘n’ roll cello part ever.
Lil Jon - Get Low / The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
80s U2-style rock is all nobility and vision and standing on a mountain like a cowboy-booted Caspar David Friedrich. These two tracks are the opposite of whatever that is. They are wallowing around like willing pigs in filth. They are basically the same song and no matter how hot the shower you take afterwards or how much soap you use, you still don’t feel clean.
Josh Wink - Higher States Of Consciousness
The Tweekin Acid Funk mix obviously. The soundtrack to a nuclear reactor melting down. Wink releases ungodly, inhuman forces with merely two Roland TB-303 machines and a shockingly dainty breakbeat.
There is a line in "Get Low" that I persist in hearing as "till the sweat runs down my balls". That's how I've heard it for years and then recently I checked on the internet and in fact it's not the line - it's something slightly less lowly. Still, I persist, and indeed insist, on hearing it as "till the sweat runs down my balls". Because it could easily be the line - and it should be the line.