The Clash's 40 greatest songs ranked! | The Clash

Forty years on from the London Calling album, we rate the best tracks by the genre-hopping punks

40. 1977 (1977)

A historical artefact, not for the proto-punk music, but because the lyrics epitomise the new wave’s perceived threat to the old guard. “No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones / In 1977,” sang Joe Strummer, hardly about to let his love of such pop greats get in the way of punk’s declaration of year zero.

39. White Riot (1977)

Guitarist Mick Jonesnow dislikes the first Clash single, its lyrics written by Strummer after the band were caught up in the 1976 Notting Hill riots and he concluded white people needed “a riot of our own”. The sentiment hasn’t aged well, but the song exemplifies the amphetamine-fuelled punk the band would leave behind.

38. What’s My Name (1977)

A Clash curio in that it’s the only one of the group’s songs to bear a writing credit for Keith Levene, the band’s original guitarist. Levene showers melodic gold dust all over this otherwise shouty punk stomper, but is better known for his work with John Lydon in Public Image Ltd.

37. Know Your Rights (1982)

From Combat Rock, the final album by the classic quartet of Strummer, Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon. The tank was getting emptied, but Strummer’s black humour brims through lines such as “You have the right to free speech / As long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.”

36. I’m So Bored With the USA (1977)

This hugely anthemic track on debut album The Clash began life as I’m So Bored With You, a song about Jones’s girlfriend, before Strummer’s ad-libbed “… SA” took it in a new direction. The blistering critique of US imperialism and exported culture (“Yankee detectives are always on the TV”) didn’t stop the Clash’s love of American iconography, cars and clothes.

35. Janie Jones (1977)

Original Clash drummer Terry Chimes – uncharitably credited as Tory Crimes on The Clash – propels the debut’s storming opener, a eulogy to a 60s pop celebrity and libertine who had been jailed for vice offences in 1973. On release, the convicted madam returned Strummer’s affections in the song Letter to Joe.

34. Charlie Don’t Surf (1980)

By the epic three-disc fourth album, Sandinista!, the Clash arguably had too many ideas for their own good, but within the 36-song sprawl are undoubted treasures. Titled after a Lt Col Kilgore quip in Apocalypse Now, there’s an element of the doo-wop era to this sweet song about, well, cultural imperialism.

33. Brand New Cadillac (1979)

This bracing cover of a 1959 Vince Taylor and the Playboys track refers to the early Brit rockers’ glamorous dream car (when most of them probably had to make do with a humble Ford Anglia). From the double album London Calling, the Clash’s creative zenith.

32. The Guns of Brixton (1979)

Brixton boy Simonon wanted some songwriting cash and so penned this memorable song about police harassment and discontent in his London neighbourhood, two years before the district exploded into rioting. In 1990, Simonon received an unexpected windfall when Norman Cook (later Fatboy Slim) sampled the groove for Beats International’s hit Dub Be Good to Me.

31. Clash City Rockers (1978)

Year zero meant many punks hurriedly buried their pasts in pub rock bands with long hair, but this 1978 single reworks a song from Strummer’s old pub rock band, the 101’ers, around trademark Clash self-mythology. The shift from aggressive guitars (surely copied from the Who’s I Can’t Explain) to something more mournful suggest musical adventure to come.

30. Rudie Can’t Fail (1979)

According to long-time Clash associate Don Letts, this London Calling gem is the fruit of a long hot summer that the Clash spent smoking herb and going to reggae clubs. It’s a horns-drenched homage to Caribbean culture, “drinking brew for breakfast” and the “chicken skin suit”.

29. Tommy Gun (1978)

A great single from the not universally adored second album, Give ’Em Enough Rope. Strummer is scathing about the idea that terrorists see their cause as glamorous, yelling: “You’ll be dead when your war is won”, while Headon’s snare drum rolls resemble gunfire. This didn’t stop the singer posing for photos in a T-shirt honouring Italian-based violent leftist organisation Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades).

28. Police and Thieves (1977)

This cover of the Lee Scratch Perry-produced Junior Murvin hit stands out a mile on The Clash. It’s their first attempt at reggae, played punkier, with a new, Jones-penned intro. That summer, Bob Marley (working with Perry) acknowledged the burgeoning punk/Jamaican music love-in with Punky Reggae Party.

27. London’s Burning (1977)

Also from the debut album, this most captures those punk rock summers of 1976 and 1977, with its bone-crunching verse and rabble-rousing chorus. The imagery is a comprehensive list of the band and movement’s inspirations, from high-rise living above the Westway (where Jones lived with his gran) to a capital city “burning with boredom now”.

26. Somebody Got Murdered (1980)

According to Pat Gilbert’s superb book Passion Is a Fashion, the Clash were approached by producer-arranger Jack Nitzsche to provide a song for the William Friedkin movie Cruising, but he never called again. Thus, the song lit up Sandinista! with its effervescent tune and film noir-ish imagery about a random killing.

25. Career Opportunities (1977)

The limited youth employment of the 70s is timelessly skewered (“Career opportunities, the ones that never knock”) in this gem from the debut. The line “I won’t open letter bombs for you” refers to an actual job once held by Jones, checking government mail for explosive devices.

24. Pressure Drop (1979)

The B-side of the slightly hackneyed English Civil War and one of the Clash’s great covers, of Toots and the Maytals’ 1970 reggae/ska classic (as heard in the 1972 film The Harder They Come). Later, Strummer was at pains to point out that they recorded it in 1977, hence it pre-dates 2-Tone.

23. This Is England (1985)

Headon and Jones had been sacked by now (for heroin abuse and behavioural issues, respectively) as a remodelled, five-piece Clash made a sixth album. The otherwise unloved Cut the Crap did herald this final terrific single. Keyboards and guitars drive Strummer’s withering take on our national strife.

22. Gates of the West (1979)

The Clash had been singing about the US since I’m So Bored With the USA. Based on Rusted Chrome, an early Jones composition, this stormer from the Cost of Living EP describes their New York experiences, the characters, imagery and anthemic tune all reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen.

21. Hitsville UK (1980)

From Sandinista!, this eulogy to pop is a bubblegum delight that namechecks the UK’s emerging independent labels and argues that a great “two minutes 59” single can triumph over industry sharp practice. With its Motown (the original “Hitsville”) groove and sugar-coated duet between Jones and his girlfriend, Ellen Foley, the Clash’s remaining hardcore punk fans hated it.

20. Police on My Back (1980)

Another terrific example of the Clash’s ability to cover a song (the original was by Eddy Grant’s old band, the Equals) and make it sound as if they had written it. Jones’s guitar wails like a siren, and the song has all the adrenalin rush of a police chase.

19. Lost in the Supermarket (1979)

In the tradition of the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and the X-Ray Spex back catalogue, this is a great Strummer-penned/Jones-sung song about the dehumanising effects of advertising and the consumer society. (“I came in here for that special offer / A guaranteed personality.”)

18. I Fought the Law (1979)

The band reputedly heard the Bobby Fuller Four original on the studio jukebox in San Francisco while recording Give ’Em Enough Rope. Writing credits aside, this is a trademark Clash smash, full of outlaw rebel posturing and laden with Headon’s six-shooter drum cracks.

17. Death or Glory (1979)

Strummer’s ferocious blast at ageing, sellout rock stars builds to a hurtling climax on a lyrical twist as he fears a similar fate himself. Presumably it was ruled out as a single because of the infamous, hilarious line: “But I believe in this and it’s been tested by research / He who fucks nuns will later join the church.”

16. Safe European Home (1978)

Strutting around Kingston, Jamaica, in full punk regalia (in theory to stir the creative juices for Give ’Em Enough Rope) proved a rude awakening, but did produce this untypical example of Clash self-mockery. “I went to the place where every white face / Is an invitation to robbery / And sitting here in my safe European home / Don’t want to go back there again.”

15. Clampdown (1979)

Strummer’s view that capitalism was endangering people and the planet was sharpened by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, which inspired this London Calling highlight. The Clash were exploding with musical ideas by now, and packed rock, funk and disco into this fiery, timeless anthem.

14. Garageland (1977)

The rock critic Charles Shaar Murray’s dismissal of the Clash as a “garage band” in an early live review prompted this defiant riposte, which also reflects the band’s fretting that signing to a major label would be selling out. It’s a furious but somehow melancholy anthem: “People ringing up making offers for my life / But I just wanna stay in the garage all night.”

13. The Card Cheat (1979)

Surely channeling Jones’s love of Mott the Hoople, this is the sort of thing that presumably inspired the Libertines. Horns, drum rudiments, a sublime piano hook and vivid imagery (“To the opium dens and the bar room gin ... The gambler’s face cracks into a grin”) combine in a song about a card sharp who is shot for cheating.

12. Spanish Bombs (1979)

A favourite of the late INXS singer, Michael Hutchence. The melody is glorious and Strummer’s lyrics contrast the freedom fighters of the Spanish civil war with modern tourists. The singer partly sings it in what he called “Clash Spanish”. Olé!

11. Rock the Casbah (1982)

Headon wrote and played most of the music on Combat Rock’s club/chart smash, which innovatively combines rock, funk and a slightly eastern feel. Strummer’s lyrics are inspired by Iran’s post-Islamic revolution ban on pop music, the singer’s idea being that the people would rise up and “rock the casbah”.

10. Train in Vain (1979)

After a planned NME flexidisc fell through, this sublime Jones unrequited love song was added to London Calling too late for listing on the initial sleeves. Pete Townshend’s favourite Clash tune, this is the band at their unashamedly poppiest. Headon’s killer drum intro fires one of the rhythm section’s funkiest grooves.

9. Stay Free (1978)

Jones’s sublime, heartfelt eulogy to his old Strand school friend Robin Crocker, who became known as Robin Banks after a sting of heists landed him a stretch inside. Some fans were delighted to discover that Banks subsequently punched the song’s producer, Sandy Pearlman, who had previously worked with Blue Öyster Cult and is largely blamed for Give ’Em Enough Rope’s not exactly punky gloss.

8. The Magnificent Seven (1980)

Having rattled through punk, reggae, ska, dub and rockabilly inside five years, our boys assimilate the emerging hip-hop sounds they heard while in New York, and Strummer turns white rap pioneer. A terrific groove forms the platform for daft-but-inspired wordplay: “Italian mobster shoots a lobster.”

7. The Call Up (1980)

Following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, as the US geared up to reintroduce the draft, the Clash spearheaded the resistance with this fantastic Sandinista! single. “It’s up to you not to heed the call up / I don’t wanna die ... I don’t wanna kill,” cries Strummer, over a magnificently eerie reggae-ish backdrop.

6. Bankrobber (1980)

So many great songs poured out of the Clash that this Mikey Dread-produced gem was almost thrown away as an import-only 45, which didn’t stop it making it No 12 in the UK charts. It’s dub music with folk storytelling – Strummer’s “daddy” wasn’t really a bank robber, but a diplomat.

5. London Calling (1979)

The Clash’s highest-charting UK single, until Combat Rock’s rather banal Should I Stay Or Should I Go reached No 1 in 1991 after being used in a Levi’s ad. Years before the climate crisis and flooding sparked public concern, Strummer fears an imminent biblical apocalypse, hence “London is drowning and I live by the river”.

4. Armagideon Time (1979)

The flip of the London Calling single, this superb reworking of Willie Williams’ social justice anthem is the definitive example of the Clash playing reggae. Strummer’s “OK, OK, don’t push us when we’re hot” is his shouted rebuff to then-manager Kosmo Vinyl, urging him to scrap the allotted three-minute length and keep the tapes rolling.

3. Complete Control (1977)

After CBS infuriated the Clash by releasing Remote Control as a single against their wishes, the band responded with their punk-era high watermark. Lee Perry produces, and Strummer’s yelled “You’re my guitar hero!” during Jones’s blistering guitar solo is one of many goosebump moments.

2. Straight to Hell (1982)

Headon’s bossa nova rhythm and a haunting hook (later sampled by MIA for 2007’s Paper Planes) power Combat Rock’s finest. The band’s unity was already fracturing, but Strummer rightly called this vengeful tirade against imperialism and American soldiers in Vietnam who left local women pregnant (“Go straight to hell, boys”) “one of our absolute masterpieces”.

1. (White Man in) Hammersmith Palais (1978)

Any of the Clash’s best songs could grace the top spot without too much argument, but this edges it. The collision of reggae (verse) and rock (chorus) epitomise what the critic Lester Bangs described as the Clash’s fusion of “black music and white noise”. Lyrically, a disappointingly lightweight reggae gig (in the Hammersmith Palais) triggers Strummer’s blistering state of the nation address, in which he considers everything from music (“Turning rebellion into money”) to racism and rising nationalism (“If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they’d send a limousine anyway”). Forty-two years on, it remains a tour de force and as relevant as ever.

Various 40th anniversary super deluxe editions of London Calling are out now on Sony.

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