Buzzcocks

Since 1976 · United Kingdom

See them on the map

Singles Going Steady (1979)

Singles Going Steady collects the run of non-album singles and B-sides that made Buzzcocks the most melodically minded band to come out of Manchester's first punk wave. "Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)" is the clearest distillation of Pete Shelley's gift for turning romantic confusion into a hook that lodges instantly, its chiming guitar riff carrying real heartbreak at breakneck speed. The whole collection moves at a similar pace without repeating itself, each song finding a new angle on desire and disappointment. It set the template for pairing pure pop songwriting with punk's velocity that pop-punk would spend the next two decades reworking.

Sleeve notes

Buzzcocks

Singles Going Steady · 1979

Buzzcocks formed in Manchester in 1976 after Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley travelled to London on the strength of a single NME review and ended up organising the Sex Pistols' now-legendary Manchester Free Trade Hall show themselves. Devoto left within a year to form Magazine, leaving Shelley to take over as frontman and chief songwriter, steering the band toward something faster and stranger than most of their punk contemporaries: love songs, sung with real ambivalence, at hardcore tempo.

Singles Going Steady, a 1979 compilation of the band's early A- and B-sides, gathered that run of releases into what became their best-known statement outside the UK. Buzzcocks continued recording into the 1980s before splitting in 1981, reforming later that decade and touring on and off for years afterward. Shelley died in 2018, but the band's fusion of pop hooks and punk velocity outlasted nearly every act it directly inspired.