Punk
The 9 Best Punk
Tracks of All Time
Two years in which rock was stripped back to speed, volume and refusal, and the barrier to making a record collapsed. Musically narrow on purpose; its consequences are the widest of anything on this map.
- Origin
- New York and London, 1976
- Tempo
- 140–200 BPM
- Also known as
- punk rock, proto-punk, 77 punk
- Tracks
- 9
- Updated
- 2026-08-30
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
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Number 1: Sex Pistols / Anarchy in the U.K.
1976 · EMI
A rolled R, a guitar sound like sheet metal, and a record its own label withdrew within weeks. Whatever was manufactured about the band, this is not a manufactured performance.
Number 2: Ramones / Blitzkrieg Bop
1976 · Sire
Four downstrokes, a count-in and a chant. The Ramones removed everything that was not essential and discovered that what remained was enough for a career and a genre.
Number 3: The Clash / White Riot
1977 · CBS
Ninety-nine seconds, written after Strummer and Simonon were at Notting Hill Carnival. A song about wanting to be as serious as somebody else's politics, which is a stranger idea than it first sounds.
Number 4: Richard Hell & The Voidoids / Blank Generation
1977 · Sire
Hell wrote the look and half the attitude, and Robert Quine plays a solo that has no business on a punk record. The most musically interesting thing here by a distance.
Number 5: X-Ray Spex / Oh Bondage! Up Yours!
1977 · Virgin
Poly Styrene opens by saying little girls are supposed to be seen and not heard, then a saxophone arrives. Funnier, smarter and angrier than most of its neighbours.
Number 6: Buzzcocks / Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)
1978 · United Artists
Manchester works out that the speed and the distortion also suit a pop song about humiliation. Pete Shelley's melodies are the reason punk had anywhere to go afterwards.
Also on Sung to Someone
Number 7: The Stooges / Search and Destroy
1973 · Columbia
Three years early, mixed by Bowie into a thin, trebly mess that turned out to be exactly right. Everyone on this list heard it and most of them admitted it.
Number 8: Patti Smith / Piss Factory
1974 · Mer
Self-released, spoken rather than sung, about a summer job. Proof that the form was a permission structure before it was a sound.
Number 9: Stiff Little Fingers / Alternative Ulster
1978 · Rough Trade
Belfast, where the boredom being complained about had rather higher stakes. The most convincing anger on this list, and the least stylised.