“21st Century Digital Boy” by Bad Religion

"21st Century (Digital Boy)" first turned up in 1990 on Against the Grain, Bad Religion's fifth album, on Epitaph, and it's the band's punk rock at its most tuneful: Brett Gurewitz wrote it, Greg Graffin sings it, Gurewitz and Greg Hetson saw away on guitars, and Jay Bentley and Pete Finestone keep the whole thing sprinting. That original was never put out as a single.

The song got a second life. In 1994 the band cut it again for Stranger Than Fiction, their eighth album, after Atlantic, their label by then, said it couldn't hear a single on the record and wanted this one redone. The remake became the hit. Bentley never saw it as a repair job: they'd been playing it every night since around 1989, and he loved it just as it was.

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