“Glycerine” by Bush

"Glycerine" was the fourth single Bush pulled from their 1994 debut, Sixteen Stone, and it's the moment the English band stopped slamming and slowed right down. Gavin Rossdale wrote the words and the music himself, and it's a ballad in the post-grunge sense: no candlelight, no soft focus, just a slow, heavy sway and Rossdale's voice going hoarse and raw as it climbs.

Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley mixed it with the band, and they leave room around the vocal so every crack and catch lands. Sitting in the singles run between the crunch of "Comedown" and "Machinehead", it sounds almost naked, and that's what makes it cut through.

It went to radio first and reached the shops later, and it became a hit across Europe, Australia and North America. More than that, it stuck: it's still the song people mean when they say the band's name.

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