The Best Punk Albums of the '70s

Four Queens misfits in matching leathers spent about $6,400 and 29 minutes changing everything — Sire released it in April 1976 and guitar music split into before and after. 'Blitzkrieg Bop' is the founding document: three chords, a 'Hey! Ho! Let's go!' chant, zero solos, no apologies. Every record below this one exists because these fourteen songs made it look easy.

One studio album was all it took, and all there ever was. Virgin released it in October 1977; a Nottingham shop manager was prosecuted just for displaying the word 'Bollocks' — and acquitted — while the record hit No. 1 anyway. 'Anarchy in the U.K.' still opens like a threat, Johnny Rotten rolling that first 'right... NOW' over Steve Jones's guitar avalanche.

Three weekend sessions produced the most complete debut of 1977 — CBS pressed it in April while America stalled, delaying the US release until 1979 with an altered tracklist. 'White Riot' is done inside two minutes, Joe Strummer shouting class politics over chords that sprint to keep up with him. Punk as pamphlet, and the pamphlet still reads.

Punk annexed reggae, rockabilly, and soul here without asking permission — border case by ambition, flagged. The Clash forced CBS to sell the December 1979 double LP at a single-album price; Guy Stevens produced; Pennie Smith's photo of Paul Simonon smashing his bass sits under lettering that pastiches Elvis's debut. The title track 'London Calling' remains the decade's best air-raid siren.

Art-punk border case, flagged and unbothered. Television played CBGB's dirt stage with conservatory patience — Elektra released this in February 1977, and the title track 'Marquee Moon' spends ten minutes trading Tom Verlaine's angular lines against Richard Lloyd's, building to the least punk and most thrilling climax of the era. Nobody moshed; everybody took notes.

Twenty-one songs in thirty-five minutes, on Harvest of all labels — Wire treated punk as a formal exercise and accidentally invented three genres. 'Three Girl Rhumba' bends a nursery-simple riff sideways; Elastica lifted it for 'Connection' seventeen years later and settled out of court. The record that proved shorter and stranger beats louder and longer.

'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine' — the decade's best opening line arrives before the band even kicks in. John Cale produced Patti Smith's Arista debut in 1975, a year before punk had a name; 'Gloria: In Excelsis Deo' hijacks Van Morrison's garage standard and rebuilds it as beat poetry with a pulse. Proto-punk border case, flagged; also the reason half these singers dared to sing.

First out of the gate on every count: 'New Rose' beat the Pistols to the shops as the UK's first punk single in October 1976, and this Nick Lowe-produced Stiff LP followed in February 1977 as the first UK punk album. The song still opens with 'is she really going out with him?' before the drums fall downstairs in the best possible way. Speed as a statement of intent.

Brisbane, Australia was further from CBGB than London was, which makes the achievement ruder: The Saints self-released the '(I'm) Stranded' single in 1976 on their own Fatal label, Sounds called it 'Single of this and every week,' and EMI came running. The title track — 'I'm Stranded,' as streaming styles it — is a buzzsaw with a hangover, Chris Bailey slurring like the song owes him money. Punk happened in three cities at once; this is the third city's receipt.

Richard Hell co-founded Television, moonlighted in the Heartbreakers, and finally made his own album on Sire in 1977 with Robert Quine playing solos like snapped cables. The title track 'Blank Generation' handed punk its defining shrug — a blank you could fill with anything, he insisted. The look, torn shirts and safety pins, crossed the Atlantic and became a uniform; the songs stayed too weird to copy.

A teenager in braces fronting a saxophone-led punk band — Poly Styrene made EMI release the era's most prophetic album in 1978, all dayglo consumerism and identity panic. On 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo' the sax (session player Ted Bunting on this one) leads the charge while she inventories a plastic world with delight and horror at once. More relevant every single year.

Cleveland exported its nastiest: Dead Boys grew out of Rocket from the Tombs, carried 'Sonic Reducer' with them, and let Genya Ravan produce the 1977 Sire debut at Electric Lady. The song remains the great abdication anthem — 'I don't need anyone' snarled by Stiv Bators like a kid burning his own yearbook. The missing link between the Stooges and hardcore, with worse manners than both.

John Peel loved 'Teenage Kicks' so much that a line from it — 'teenage dreams, so hard to beat' — is carved on his gravestone. Derry's Undertones wrote it amid Northern Ireland's worst years and left the Troubles out on purpose; the Sire album's expanded 1979 edition carries it, two minutes of fuzz and want. Perfect pop wearing a punk jacket, or possibly the reverse.

Six years early, and flagged as the proto-punk border: Don Gallucci, once of the Kingsmen, produced the Stooges essentially live in Los Angeles in 1970, stripping the studio's soundproofing to get the room sound; Steve Mackay's saxophone crashes the back half. 'T.V. Eye' is Iggy at maximum coil, one riff wound tighter and tighter until the band snaps. The source code, still uncorrupted.