Sandinista! by The Clash

Sandinista!, the Clash's fourth album, came out on 12 December 1980 as a sprawling triple album: 36 tracks, six to a side, from a band that plainly refused to be told what punk was allowed to sound like. For the first time the songs were credited to the whole group instead of to Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, and the Clash produced it themselves. To keep a 3-LP set cheap for the fans, they even took a cut in their own royalties.

What's inside is a glorious, maddening grab bag. Funk, reggae, dub, jazz, gospel, rockabilly, folk, calypso, disco and rap all get a turn, and the band dives into each like a kid let loose in a record shop. "The Magnificent Seven" struts on a rubbery, talky groove, "Police on My Back" charges like a punk sprint, "Hitsville U.K." goes giddy and bubblegum, "Washington Bullets" and "Charlie Don't Surf" drift somewhere warmer and stranger, and dubby experiments leak out between the songs like smoke from under a door.

It was too much for some people. Reviews were mostly kind but grumbled about the sheer size of the thing, and in Britain it became the lowest-charting Clash album. Elsewhere it won the argument: it topped the Pazz & Jop critics poll as the best album of its year, its experimental streak left a mark on punk, and a 2020 rundown of the 500 greatest albums of all time slotted it in at number 323.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.