Buzzcocks

Group / 1976 - present / United Kingdom

English punk band

power pop punk rock pop punk post-punk new wave punk indie rock pop rock

Biography

Buzzcocks are an English punk rock band formed by singer-songwriter and guitarist Pete Shelley and singer-songwriter Howard Devoto in Bolton in 1976. They achieved commercial success with singles that fuse pop with rapid-fire punk energy, inspiring the power pop and pop punk movements; these singles were later collected on Singles Going Steady, an acclaimed compilation album music journalist and critic Ned Raggett described as a "punk masterpiece".

Source: Wikipedia -- text available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Image via Wikipedia -- Buzzcocks.

Elsewhere

Analysed songs (10)

Boredom

Buzzcocks

A blunt, sneering anthem of anti-affect, "Boredom" turns the emptiness of punk's stock subject into a self-parodying joke,…

boredom and apathy self-parody punk minimalism

Breakdown

Buzzcocks

A jittery first-person monologue about mental and physical disintegration, delivered with the manic energy of a nervous…

mental collapse alienation sensory overload

Don't Come Back

Buzzcocks

A brisk breakup song dressed as a pep talk, where the narrator's encouragement to move on curdles into something closer to…

breakup and detachment false encouragement moral relativism

Ever Fallen in Love?

Buzzcocks

A power-pop punk song about the humiliation of loving someone who treats you badly, built around a chorus whose grammar…

romantic humiliation self-recognition through a partner codependency

Fast Cars

Buzzcocks

A short, sneering punk song that uses fast cars as an emblem of empty status-seeking, environmental menace, and mechanized…

consumerism and status environmentalism/safety alienation from modern life

Fiction Romance

Buzzcocks

Buzzcocks turn the language of pulp romance novels and magazine love stories into a way of talking about the gap between…

mediated desire self-deception longing vs cynicism

I Believe

Buzzcocks

This is a catalogue of belief statements—political, religious, personal, absurd—delivered with equal flat conviction, building…

ideological exhaustion disorientation and derealization the emptiness of dogma

Poetic Machine Gun

Buzzcocks

A speaker pitches his own verbal outpouring as a weapon of seduction — a "poetic machine gun" that's supposed to get someone…

failed seduction language as weapon/drug male bravado vs. rejection

Queen Of The Scene

Buzzcocks

A late-period Buzzcocks track that trains its pop-punk energy on reality-TV celebrity culture, watching a media-manufactured…

celebrity and spectacle media saturation self-destruction as performance

Time's Up

Buzzcocks

A jittery catalogue of mundane waiting -- supermarket queues, phone calls, cigarettes -- becomes a comic study in erotic…

impatience and waiting sexual frustration consumer banality