My Top 1000 Songs #437: I Wanna Destroy You

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

There are songs in the Soft Boys' (and Robyn Hitchcock's solo) catalog I enjoy more, songs whose off-kilter power pop run through with Hitchcock's askew sensibilities are thoroughly engaging. "I Wanna Destroy You" (from 1980's superb Underwater Moonlight), as the title suggests, is a more aggressive song, closer to the British punk ethos from which the band emerged, though the chiming guitars and harmonies give it the band's usual infectious pop touches. But it's also a song that, sadly, still resonates, Hitchcock moving from the whimsical Barrett-like oddness of many of his lyrical pursuits into more politically pointed territory, a song that always feels particularly relevant--now especially, but pretty much all the time

"The way you treat each other really makes me feel ill. Cause if you want to fight then you're just dying to get killed... A pox upon the media and everything you read. They tell you your opinions, and they're very good indeed."

Live, 2001 reunion gig:

Robyn solo:

Lots of great cover versions out there; here are a few:

Wilco, joined by Robyn himself:

Original hardcore iconoclasts the Circle Jerks:

Sharon Van Etten & Ted Leo:

Uncle Tupelo's killer studio b-side: