Friday 26 October 2018

Teenage Kicks - The Undertones

Of the millions of songs which have been recorded, only 30 songs can make it into The Lucy Museum of Musicians who deserve entry to Lucy's Museum of Musicians and at number 6 we have Teenage Kicks by The Undertones (1978).

With a riff so sharp you could grate cheese on it, us Brits should hang our collective heads in shame that one of the greatest records ever made, only crept to number 31 in the music charts.
The guitar shifting up and down just the three chords through the verses is so catchy it's almost so simple to be an insult to all other songs but that's what makes punk so brilliantly effective, you didn't need to have the fretboard skills of Slash or Jimi Hendrix to create a masterpiece.
Radio 1 DJ John Peel was such a fan of this song that he said he had the opening lyrics inscribed on his gravestone and although the song is one of the most enduring from the Punk era, John O'Neill, Undertones guitarist and writer of the song explained that he had three chords and tried to write a Buzzcocks style song with them and the rest is the best number 31 we have ever had in the British Charts.

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