Hats Off to the Buskers by The View

Hats Off to the Buskers, the debut from Dundee upstarts the View, came out on 22 January 2007, a band barely two years old going straight in at number 1 on the UK albums chart less than a week later. Owen Morris produced, and he keeps the whole thing loose, loud and cheerful, just the right side of chaos.

It's scrappy, sing-along indie rock with punk in its legs, pop in its heart and a little folk in its bones, a band of teenage-sounding chancers playing as if the pub is about to close. "Wasted Little DJ's" is the terrace-chant anthem, and "Wasteland" went on to soundtrack a Nike advert. The record had leaked online weeks before release and still shifted around 319,000 copies that year, went platinum and earned a 2007 Mercury Prize nomination. Their homeland never let go, and neither did T in the Park.

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