Quote:
Originally Posted by Dharma & Greg
Damn. I don't have a history with them or anything but Singles Going Steady is a top 10 punk or pop album.
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Definitely. One song in particular from that album ("Something's Gone Wrong Again") has been a persistent earworm for me since 1979. Every time I've broken an egg yoke while frying an egg over the past 39 years, the line "tried to fry an egg, broke the yoke, no joke" pops into my head every ****ing time.
Damn you, Pete Shelley.
Quote:
While punk rock's key themes have long been anger and frustration, "Something's Gone Wrong Again" dealt with something a bit trickier -- the thin edge of anxiety, where the operative emotion isn't rage so much as a furious confusion over the troubling realities of everyday life. As Pete Shelley is faced with a litany of minor annoyances -- cutting himself shaving, missing the bus, ruining breakfast, no change for the cigarette machine -- the tenor of both the song and Shelley's performance becomes more and more intense with each repeat of the chorus (which is, of course, the title). The song, however, doesn't build up to a burst of cathartic fury, but turns inside itself in an expression of confusion and maddened resignation, with the horrible reality that these things will never go away or get better clearly looming in the background. The song's themes are reinforced by the music: a simple, monotonal melody that keeps following itself in an increasingly shrinking circle, aided by a moronically simple single-note piano riff right out of the Stooges' "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog."
- Song Review by Mark Deming
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