“Like Clockwork” by Boomtown Rats

"Like Clockwork" ticks away on the Boomtown Rats' 1978 album A Tonic for the Troops, and it's the Ensign single that finally shoved the Dún Laoghaire mob into the UK Top Ten, where it stopped at No. 6. Bob Geldof wrote it with Pete Briquette and Simon Crowe, Mutt Lange produced, and the whole thing runs on a twitchy, staccato bassline that jerks along like a nervous tic. On the tour behind the album it usually opened the show.

The flip, "How Do You Do?", was a quick punk-flavored blast in the band's older style, but Irish copies on Mulligan Records swapped in "D.U.N L.A.O.G.H.A.I.R.E", a cheeky samba about how to spell the band's hometown. And when RTÉ Radio 2 went on the air in 1979, Larry Gogan made "Like Clockwork" the first song the new station played.

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