So why So why is Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
When I began to develop an appreciation for punk rock in my youth-type days – a musical genre I still love dearly to this day – I latched onto a theory that the three most “important” bands who kicked off the punk rock scene were the Ramones, from Queens, New York (the very borough of NYC I was born in and lived in for a spell post-college), and The Clash and the Sex Pistols from merry old England.
While I’d come to understand that there is a range of sounds and bands, especially proto-punk, that helped inform punk rock, and that there are a bunch of great bands that were also around and very much part of the scene during the late ‘70s (the Buzzcocks being a great example that took me a number of years to find my way to), it’s actually not a terrible framework for kicking off one’s old school punk rock education, were one so inclined.
Steve Huey from All Music has a great take on Never Mind the Bollocks:
While mostly accurate, dismissing Never Mind the Bollocks as merely a series of loud, ragged midtempo rockers with a harsh, grating vocalist and not much melody would be a terrible error.
Which is why unless you’re a big punk rock fan, this is likely not an album you’re going to be throwing on that often. But when you allow the mood of it to wash over you, the raucous and raw, exciting and vibrant, explosive and exuberant energy is like no album produced before or since.
And that Sex Pistols sound is best expressed by what’s arguably their best-known song, “Anarchy in the U.K.”
Over time, I started gravitating to relative deep cuts on the album, including the absolute smasher, “No Feelings.”
And I recall a phase I went through years back when I couldn’t get enough of “Pretty Vacant.” The chorus is completely catchy even within all of the raw and raucous caveats: We’re so pretty oh so pretty… vacant!
And songs like “God Save the Queen,” in addition to the word “bollocks” in the album title, both emphasize the band’s anarchic fervor, and relate to why the band and album were so controversial when they burst onto the scene in late 1977.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
A few years ago, an FX miniseries called Pistol presented a fictionalized version of the Sex Pistols’ origin story, rise, and quick fall, based on the memoir by guitarist Steve Jones.
While it’s not a great TV show, it’s quite interesting and watchable. The performances are quite good, including Anson Boon as John Lydon, and we also got two actors on the show who are Game of Thrones alums: Maisie Williams and Thomas Brodie-Sangster, the latter of whom played Malcolm McLaren, who helped assemble the band out of an avant-garde clothing store circa mid-‘70s London.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the iconic “History of Punk” comedy sketch from Saturday Night Live, which features Ian Rubbish (Fred Armisen) and the Bizzaros. Ian’s a true punk rocker in the tradition of John Lydon… except he happens to be a huge fan of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s just fantastic.
Some stats & info about Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Punk Rock, British Bands, Old School Punk, Rock Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #80
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols released? 1977
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #188 out of 1,000
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
I wanna be anarchy.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.