Song · Boomtown Rats
“Rat Trap” by Boomtown Rats
From the album A Tonic for the Troops (1978)
“Rat Trap” by Boomtown Rats appears on 6 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 2001 and 2006. It was first released in 1978 on the album A Tonic for the Troops. Its best result is #320 on the Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2004). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #3,267 alternative song of all time.
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Video from YouTube (The Boomtown Rats). Pressing play loads YouTube's player. Watch on YouTube
"Rat Trap" was the third and last single from A Tonic for the Troops, the Boomtown Rats' second album, and in November 1978 it sat on top of the UK Singles Chart for two weeks, the first time a punk or new wave act had got there. Bob Geldof wrote it and Mutt Lange produced it, and it's a big, restless rock song about a kid named Billy who is going nowhere in a dead-end town and knows it.
It knocked "Summer Nights", John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John's Grease smash, off the top after a run of seven weeks. When the Rats played Top of the Pops as the new number one, a show the song itself name-checks, they opened by ripping up photos of the deposed duo. Punk had finally stormed the pop charts, and it wanted the cameras rolling.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 492 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 500 |
| 2002 | 681 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (July 2002) | 2002 |
| 2003 | 731 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
| 2004 | 320 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2004) | 500 |
| 2005 | 470 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2005) | 500 |
| 2006 | 472 | Virgin Radio | Virgin Radio Top 500 Songs of All-Time (December 2006) | 500 |
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