“TNT” by AC/DC

"TNT" is AC/DC at their most basic and most lethal, cut in 1975 for the Australian album T.N.T. and later tucked onto the international High Voltage. Bon Scott wrote it with Angus and Malcolm Young, and the title means exactly what it says: this is rock and roll as high explosive.

Angus and Malcolm lock their guitars into one brute riff, Mark Evans and Phil Rudd keep the rhythm dead simple, and Scott struts over the top like a street tough with a grin, while the band's gang-shouted chants make the whole thing sound like a mob on the march. Vanda & Young produced it with no frills at all. It came out as a single in 1976, the year the band moved from Melbourne to London, and one of its lines gave their first headlining tour of Britain its name. In 2018 Triple M ranked it 81st on its list of the most Australian songs ever.

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