With their crisp melodies, Pete Shelley’s biting lyrics, and Shelley’s and Steve Diggle’s driving guitars, Buzzcocks were one of the most influential bands to emerge in the initial wave of British punk rock. Largely eschewing politics, they instead brought an intense, brilliant vigor to the three-minute pop song, powered by Shelley’s alternately funny and anguished lyrics about adolescence and love, backed by melodies and hooks that were concise and memorable. They released two albums in 1978 (Another Music in a Different Kitchen and Love Bites) that tightened up and refined their sound, then delivered the more experimental A Different Kind of Tension in 1979 before the fast pace of their career and problems with their record label led them to break up in 1981. When Buzzcocks re-formed in 1989, they launched a long string of tours and albums that exhibited the same spirit the group had shown from the start, starting with 1993’s Trade Test Transmissions and continuing to The Way in 2014, which was Shelley’s last album with the band before his 2018 death. After a short break, Diggle rallied the troops and went on, touring and releasing an LP titled Sonics in the Soul in 2022. The group’s powerful punk-pop proved to be enormously influential and timeless, with echoes of their sound resonating in bands like Hüsker Dü, Nirvana, and the Exploding Hearts, along with almost every band who ever blended the hooks of pop with the energy of punk.

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