My Top 1000 Songs #858: Take Me Out

[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.]

A guitar only has 6 strings; Western music is essentially limited to 12 notes. So it's not unreasonable to worry that, at some point, rock & roll is gonna run out of riffs. But then a song like "Take Me Out" comes along--off Scottish alt.rockers Franz Ferdinand's self-titled 2004 debut--and you're like, oh, ok, that's a new riff, thanks for sharing!

And what a cool song it is! There's a long introductory part, a decent enough song in its own right, but then it pivots into that riff, never to return to the original motif, but it's a riff that could go on forever, so that's alright. While other indie guitar revivalist acts of the early 00s were ripping off Joy Division, FF opted more for Gang of Four, and maybe Orange Juice, an angular post-punk sound but highly-stylized and almost dancefloor-friendly, and nothing captures that excitement quite like this song. Plus, perfect fucking video.

Live 2014:

Scissor Sisters' campy lounge jazz cover: