Essex boys Blur butted up against the all-pervading US grunge scene of the day with a snotty brass-filled slice of British art-school pop. Despite being overlooked at the time, this milestone 45 is now regarded as one of Britpop’s very first singles, along with Suede’s The Drowners, released two months later.
Millie Small became Jamaica’s f rst global recording star when her infectious proto-reggae version of a little-known doo-wop number hit No. 2 on both sides of the pond. It opened the f oodgates for a ska invasion of the UK.
After borrowing cash from friends and family, the Buzzcocks were the first punk band to release a self-f nanced 45 on their own independent imprint. It was a statement of punk’s DIY spirit and inspired a f urry of small labels to follow suit.
This landmark cut-and-paste collaboration between Colourbox and A.R. Kane, two groups both signed to indie label 4AD, is a milestone in the development of UK dance music. It was the f rst time a hardcore DJ record aimed at the dancef oor, without the faintest trace of traditional song structure, became a chart hit.
Black Sabbath had near-enough invented the heavy-metal genre with their first album and, just four months later, they were back in the studio working on the follow-up. The album’s lead single, Paranoid, was written at the last minute in the studio and was the heaviest 45 to reach the upper echelons of the UK charts, peaking at No. 4.
AMC’s thrilling debut 45 Upside Down on Creation was a game-changer in the world of indie, fusing waves of cochlear-crushing feedback with Phil Spectorish girl-group melody. It paved the way for pop and noise to coexist and was a pivotal inf uence on celebrated shoegaze bands such as My Bloody Valentine.
While the band’s punk credentials were unimpeachable – they sat on the sofa during the Grundy show – the music they created quickly outstripped the genre. Released in August 1978, Hong Kong Garden was a sublime slice of 7" vinyl.
It may say Jackie Brenston on the record label, but it was actually by Ike Turner and his band. In 1991, after a great deal of debate, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame recognised it as the f rst rock ’n’ roll song ever recorded. Turner was in jail at the time for cocaine possession, so his daughter accepted the award.
1975 was the year the UK mainstream was finally ready for reggae, and its global ambassador was Bob Marley. This breakthrough 45 was taken from that year’s Live! At The Lyceum. Marley gave the songwriting credits to Vincent Ford, a friend who ran a soup kitchen in Trench Town.
Manchester’s Morrissey and Marr reclaimed guitar pop in the 80s and, with its chiming guitar and witty wordsmithery, their second single set the stylistic template for a new generation of indie bands. Tales of jumped-up pantry boys on hillsides desolate had rarely sounded so appealing.
The 22-minute repetitive synthscape of Kraftwerk’s fourth album was edited down to a radio-friendly three minutes or so. The Dusseldorf ans’ paean to Germany’s motorways unexpectedly became not only a hit on both sides of the Atlantic, but also a highly inf uential touchstone in the way electronic music was to develop.
The pioneering Chuck Berry started playing his own idiosyncratic brand of country music for black audiences and ended up inventing rock ’n’ roll. Obviously, it’s not quite as simple as that, but his debut single for Chess – a song, f ttingly enough, about cars and girls – was a portentous slice of everything to come.
The Damned may have been the jokers in punk’s pack, but they got their ragged arses in gear to release the genre’s first 45. Hitting the shops in October 1976, New Rose is a gobsmacking ball of manic energy thrust forward by Rat Scabies’ banging drums and Brian James’ scratchy guitar.
At the behest of his record-label bosses, Bowie’s Starman was a last-minute addition to the Ziggy Stardust album. An androgynously provocative performance on Top Of The Pops to promote the 45 not only led to Bowie’s commercial breakthrough, but went a long way towards blurring the lines between what was weird and what was normal.
One of soul’s earliest milestone 45s, the wildly inf uential What’d I Say was improvised live onstage by Charles and his backing singers, The Raelettes. The call-and-response style was inspired by the church music that Brother Ray was brought up on, but the “sweet sounds of love”, as he put it, certainly were not.
The early hip-hop 45s were nothing more than party tunes full of self-congratulatory boasting, but The Message’s blossoming brand of social commentary opened up fresh vistas.
The Second World War was not long over when New Orleans native Antoine ‘Fats’ Domino was committing his own embryonic version of rock ’n’ roll to vinyl. Years before the phrase had even been coined, his stripped-down boogie-woogie piano and smutty lyrics blazed a trail for others to follow. The Fat Man was released the same year the 45 format appeared.