Playlist: Debut Singles

A debut single can be a tricky thing. You are a young artist ready to set the world of culture on fire and share your talent, so hitting the ground running is important to set you on your way to fame and fortune. Of course, many bands that have become huge, started off somewhat slowly, often both commercially and critically, while a few are off with a bang!

So, there are all sorts of musical beginnings; some go downhill from a good start; some get better and better over years; and some choose to distance themselves from their early work, feeling it to be naive and unrepresentative of their true artistic ability.

But here is a playlist of ten debut songs that I think are great (regardless of how big the act went on to be) - and some have the added weight of being (in my view at least) significant in the grand musical timeline.

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1. U2: Out Of Control

We start with a sparkling track by one of the world's longest serving bands, and at the time, purveyors of some fantastic post-punk guitar songs. This was the lead track on the Three EP, U2's first release back in September 1979. This version, produced by Chas de Whalley, suffered from Larry Mullen struggling to keep his time during a long section two-thirds in, causing the others to keep not coming back in at the right place. But with some airplay by rock steady Irish DJ Dave Fanning, it made its way to 19 on the Irish charts. A re-recorded take with Steve Lillywhite was used for debut album, Boy, the following year.

(audio only - a bit more raw and ragged than the album version, but full of promise)

2. The Small Faces: Whatcha Gonna Do About It

Steve Marriott and Ronnie Laine took their inspiration for the melody of this one from Solomon Burke's Everybody Needs Somebody To Love. But they struggled for the right words, so their manager Don Arden brought in Ian Samwell (who wrote Cliff's first hit, Move It) and Brian Potter to assist. It had that great R&B feel to it which really suits Marriott's incredible voice, one of the gems of that decade.

(live on Beat Club, 1966, and bear in mind Marriott is 19 at this point!)

3. Big Country: Harvest Home

This one is special for me, as Big Country remain one of the most powerful bands I ever saw live, and Stuart Adamson (even 25 years after his death) my musical hero. He had formed Big Country having recently departed successful punk band The Skids. Harvest Home came from some mostly unsuccessful sessions with Chris Thomas at the helm. They salvaged this and released it as their debut, but would re-record it with Steve Lillywhite for debut LP The Crossing. Like many of their songs, it came alive on stage, full of stirring passion and rousing guitar hooks.

(live at the Barrowlands, NYE 1983 - live is always the best way to see this)

4. Radiohead: Creep

Oxfordshire's Radiohead would become one of the most celebrated indie bands of the last forty years, but it all started with this single - one that they hadn't even planned to release apparently. Producers Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie really liked the song as the band played around with and persuaded them to record it. It borrowed enough elements of The Air That I Breathe, a 1974 hit for The Hollies, which was written by Albert Hammond (father of Albert Jr in The Strokes) and Mike Hazelwood, that the pair sued and were eventually credited as co-writers. The first attempt at releasing the song, in 1992, largely fell on deaf ears, until it got picked up by US alternative rock radio and got a reissue the following year. While their later albums have gone on to be bigger and more acclaimed, Creep remains their most successful single.

(official music video - in many ways, this song shouldn't work, but it is glorious)

5. The Ramones: Blitzkrieg Bop

Photo: Ian Dickson / Redferns

If we are talking about important debuts by important bands, then there aren't many more so than Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones. These New York legends were the key lynchpin in American (and global) punk, between the garage rock of The Stooges and the MC5, and the heavier punk sounds that would permeate the late 70s. It is basically high-speed rock and roll, with the idea of adding the "Hey ho, let's go" chant being grabbed from Saturday Night by those notorious Scottish punks, the Bay City Rollers.

(live in Germany, 1978 - 1,2,3,4 hey ho let's go!)

6. Bikini Kill: Rebel Girl

It was one of Bikini Kill's earliest songs, and was played live as far back as 1991, two years before it got released as their first single. It is an ode to feminism, with Kathleen Hanna's lyrics nodding to noted feminist author Juliana Luecking. They also recorded three different versions - one for a split LP with fellow riot grrrl band Huggy Bear, the single version, produced by Joan Jett (and featuring her on guitar too), and the third version the one that appears on their proper debut album, Pussy Whipped. It is the bands signature song, but also is known as the one most associated with the whole underground feminist punk movement

(audio only - play it very loud...)

7. The Sundays: Can't Be Sure

At the other extreme of female fronted bands, we have this somewhat calmer tune. This was both The Sundays debut single, and the only one to come from critically acclaimed first record, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. It is the perfect foil for Harriet Wheeler's delightful voice, which Pitchfork said was like "she's trying to get the librarian's attention without disturbing others."

(official music video - a thing of beauty; they haven't been seen in 30 years - please come back)

8. New Order: Ceremony

This was actually going to be a Joy Division song, with lyrics written by Ian Curtis shortly before his untimely death in May 1980. Even at that stage they thought it was going to be a hit, with some (by Curtis's standards) fairly uplifting lyrics. When the three surviving members of Joy Division regrouped as New Order, Ceremony would be their first song to record and release. The lyrics on this new version ended up probably being slightly different to the original, because Curtis had never written them down, and his voice on the few studio and live recordings they had was very muted. The band recorded it once in March 1981 to release on Factory Records, and then again that September, so that new member Gillian Gilbert could play on it; this latter version only released as a 12" single. It is the perfect bridge between the heavy post-punk of Joy Division, and the brighter synth pop that would be synonymous with New Order as the 80s progressed.

(live in NYC, 1981 - possibly not their greatest live performance, but the emotion - barely a year from Curtis's death)

9. Elvis Presley: That's All Right

Photo: Getty

This tune had been written way back in 1946 by delta bluesman Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, with some of the lyrics in turn harking back to songs written by Blind Lemon Jefferson in the 1920s. Crudup's version was considered by a few historians to be the first rock and roll song, but it is Elvis Presley who brought it to wider attention almost a decade later. His recording of the song with the Blue Moon Boys, in 1954, caught the attention of studio exec Sam Phillips, and the rest as you may well know, became history. Elvis changed some of the lyrics and made his version much faster than Crudup's. The result got lots of attention on local Memphis radio stations, and it did sell around 20,000 copies - not enough to hit the national chart, but enough to set the wheels in motion for what was to come...

(audio over old film footage - gosh, he was rather good back then, with that raw, bluesy voice and a bit of edge)

10. The Sugarhill Gang: Rapper's Delight

Arguably the most important song released in the last fifty years, Rapper's Delight is the song that took rap out of the American cities and put it in front of a global audience, hitting the US Top 40, the UK Top 3 and Canada's top spot. They took a good dose of Chic's Good Times (which led to Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards getting credits) and a bit of Love De-Luxe's Here Comes That Sound Again. It was culturally important enough to be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.

(official music video - yes, it is a bit disco meets rap, rather than gangland, but that vocal dexterity...)