“London Calling” by the Clash

The endlessly influential punk rock album turns 45.

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Welcome to a new edition of the Best Music of All Time newsletter!

Today’s music pick is arguably the best album ever made about rock and roll rebellion, courtesy of Britain’s foremost authority on the subject.

Genre: Punk Rock, Alternative

Label: Epic

Release Date: December 14, 1979

Vibe: 💯

I’ll admit I bought this album based only on the cover art.

I was fifteen (maybe sixteen) and how shall I put this … in the habit of overestimating my musical tastes. The hubris of youth, as it were. I had discovered AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles (though I was and still am not as high on their work as the vast majority of people)—essentially, rock radio’s greatest hits that got played during the peak hours of your morning and afternoon drive shows. I can’t prove this, but I’m positive there was some Pavlovian manipulation going on at the programming level. It got to the point where “Come Together” would play at almost the exact same time every weekday morning, and I’d wonder if anyone else noticed. Or, maybe more specifically, if some people tuned in because they knew they would get their Fab Four dopamine hit without rummaging through their CD wallets or iPod library for the song. I’d be curious to know the answer.

Anyway, back to the Clash record. I’m in this record store and thumbing through the sale section for an enticing prospect to complete my 2-for-25 deal. Of all the quality music that was marked down, my lizard teenage boy brain gravitated toward this one because of the photo on the cover. How badass was that? I knew nothing of the band or the reputation, nor had I heard any of the music on the album to that point. Maybe I’d caught the title track in passing once or twice before buying the CD, but if I did, it hadn’t left much of an impression on me. It was a totally blind buy. I remember getting home, clearing my schedule (read: refusing to finish whatever homework I had left to do), popping the headphones in, and being mesmerized from first second to last. I wasn’t sure I liked every song, but that reaction stemmed more from not having heard many songs that sounded like them. The styles and rhythms stayed with me long after the final track, the excellent “Train in Vain (Stand By Me)” ended. I didn’t know it then, but I’d just gotten the best crash course in what rock rebellion meant to the 1970s, in all its romanticized glory, ever created.

To say that London Calling was the first punk rock album I fell in music nerd love with is to do the group’s stylistic ambition a disservice. There’s so much more being thrown into this sonic gumbo than straight-ahead, Sex Pistols-era punk. Reggae, ska, soul, R&B, jazz, rockabilly, metal, and, most noticeably, new wave are all present and accounted for in the mix. This creative decision was likely born more out of necessity than anything else. By the time London Calling was being recorded during the last gasps of Summer 1979, the first iteration of the punk movement had already come and gone. Groups like the Buzzcocks and the Ramones saw their popularity fade, giving way to smaller, more regional movements like hardcore and post-punk. There’s nothing wrong with diversification, but the evolution threatened to swallow the Clash’s commercial potential whole.

Instead of succumbing to that fate, the band decided to push the limits of what their music was supposed to sound like. They’d already begun pushing those boundaries on their previous record, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, but most of it stayed in a traditional English punk lane. Here, it sounds like you’re dropping in on a rehearsal or jam session, where talented musicians focus on one thing: playing what they’re interested in. Not what would fit in best with the scene, not what they thought would sell well or be some big radio hit. “Brand New Cadillac,” a cover of the 1959 song by Vince Taylor, epitomizes that comfort and confidence. The band initially used the track as warm-up material that got so finely tuned that they decided to include it on the album. It was the first song committed to tape for London Calling and was knocked out in a single take. Hearing it now is to marvel at how crisp and clean the performances are. When it comes to hard-driving rock songs that are as charming as they are fiery, I don’t think you can do any better.

In building on emerging styles from the 70s, the Clash predicted countless movements and artist-specific palettes that would show up again and again in the 80s. The dueling guitar and saxophone on “Jimmy Jazz” would be right at home on a Huey Lewis & the News record. “Hateful,” “Spanish Bombs,” and “Koka Kola” set a new wave template for groups like Blondie, Violet Femmes, and Dexy’s Midnight Runners. “Wrong ‘Em Boyo” would’ve been a huge smash during ska’s commercial emergence towards the end of that decade. “Revolution Rock” is a sublime slice of straight reggae, with the band covering a song originally written by Kingston-born singer Danny Ray. “The Guns of Brixton,” my personal favorite off the tracklist, is a lithe bit of funk written and sung by bassist Paul Simonon, its lyrics describing a dystopian London in stark contrast to a groove that goes down incredibly smoothly.

The latter’s theme of disaffected youth grappling with a world that feels like it’s crumbling around them is never more vocal than it is on the acerbic title track, one of the most explosive album openers in rock history. It’s middle-fingers-in-the-air defiance of fearmongering over nuclear meltdowns (Three Mile Island had happened less than a year prior), the Thames flooding the city streets, and, perhaps worst of all for British pride, “phony Beatlemania” fading away. Musically, it’s also an excellent cross-section of what made the Clash so great. At its core, “London Calling” is a biting punk rock full of angst and concern about the future, but it’s also operating at a much higher level craft-wise than many of its contemporaries could manage. The simple, precise, endlessly catchy instrumental could’ve easily anchored a pop-rock group’s biggest song—just swap out politically conscious lyrics for talk of cruising down highways, late-night debauchery, or strawberry fields that go on forever.

Even that sells the Clash short, I think. They were their own thing, simultaneously assimilating and inventing rock history as they went. Throw in an iconic photo of a guitar about to meet its untimely demise, and you have an apex sensory experience.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈