Sam Slaughter loves this fucking song. It makes him feel like summertime and being a dad.

I think about this song a lot. More than I should, really. Fuck an earworm, this is an aural Mantra, a thesis statement breaking like a wave on the forefront of my awareness, all sturm und drang, then receding to the hum and drone of baseline consciousness. Why? Is it the “News of the World” sample looping like a great bird of prey to open the song? The specificity of detail that are hallmarks of Jason Williamson’s writing, e.g., Fred Perry Bollocks as sign and symbol of corrosive, late capitalist, consumer culture bullshit (of course, JW loves him some of the “right brands”)? The Grand Canyon-size chasm choked with flaking, rusted rubbish, and broken-down cars? Of course it is. But there’s one moment in this song from the early Sleaford Mods’ discography that sticks the knife and twists. Cheryl Cole, Gary Barlow, and Ashley Cole form a grim triptych of third-tier losers who’ve hit the jackpot with the attention economy. In one compact verse, we’re offered the secret history of status-loss and sex for barter teetering at the edge of the same choked chasm. JW stretches the moment, will they spill over, will they survive before hitting the smoking glue punchline? They’re implicated; we’re implicated. We’re all victims, we just don’t know it yet.

Look, everyone hates the Eagles, and rightfully so. It’s hard to imagine a band that’s sold so many albums where the front man (or men, in this case, in Henley and Frey) are so lacking in, well, nuts. Not Joe Walsh though. Joe Walsh is the sonic incarnation of nuts. Nothing but face-melting riffs and TVs thrown out of windows for that guy. And so people shrug and nod at Walsh’s solo work, sure that’s fine, it’s the dick-swingin’ guy from the Eagles singin about bein’ a rock star. But man are they missing the point, because somewhere in that aw shucks exterior lies a lyrical genius, able, like Tom Petty (the greatest American rock songwriter of all-time don’t @ me) to find the sublime in the simplistic. Find me a metaphor that better covers the entirety of the late capitalist experience than “My Maserati goes 185/I lost my license now I can’t drive”. Give me a line in any Biggie song that goes harder than “I got a mansion, forget the price / ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice.” And if “I can’t complain but sometimes I still do” doesn’t explain your own lived experience, well then, you’re doing it all wrong.

Yeah, Prince wrote it. Yeah, Sinead O’Connor owns it. Pile your descriptors: haunting, beautiful, aching, sorrowful, plaintive, powerful, cathartic, ad nauseum. You still can’t capture the titanic grace of this song. And this song is brutal for all its beauty: Newly gained freedom curdled with bitterness because it was unwanted. The video also adds to the legend of the song. Yeah, a lot of the editing dates the video. But when it’s just her filling the screen singing, it’s utterly captivating (Watch Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” video from later in the decade and consider if it could exist without her video).

When James Osterberger tells you what it means to him to be a punkrocker. Listen to him.

I first read about the undertones before I heard The Undertones. It would have been in Spin or Rolling Stone or in the liner notes of a CD. The Undertones would have been listed out as part of a punk genealogy leading to whatever early to mid 90s band was having a moment in Alternative Rock. Of course, I tracked down a cd and bought it. To this day I only remember More Songs about Chocolate and Girls, and of course Teenage Kicks…

It would be years later that I’d hear the legendary Jon Peel’s legendary history with the band and the song. And, on most things musical, he was right. Try not cracking the biggest shit eating grin when the drums kick in four beats before that first, now indelible, chord hits. It’s one of the purest dopamine hits ever. And the hand clap breakdown with the guitar solo at the end… the Derry boys really did it. The B-side true confessions had its own legendary intro too.

The Butterfly Collector" by The Jam is not on the standard UK or US versions of the "Setting Sons" album. It was included on the Canadian pressing of the album. It was also released as a single, backed by "Strange Town", and later appeared on compilation albums like "Snap!"