“Lust For Life” by Iggy Pop

"Lust for Life" is the title song of Iggy Pop's 1977 album on RCA, and it comes charging out of the speakers like it's late for a riot. Iggy wrote the words and built the music with David Bowie, who also sits in at the piano; the production credit reads the Bewlay Bros., with Bowie named as producer.

The engine room belongs to Hunt Sales and Tony Sales. Hunt pounds the drums like he's trying to break them and rattles shakers and tambourine on top, Tony locks the bass into one relentless, rolling figure, and the pair of them bellow the backing vocals behind Iggy. Carlos Alomar and Ricky Gardiner saw away at the guitars, and Eduard Meyer and Colin Thurston caught it all on tape without sanding off the grit. It's garage rock with a stadium-sized stomp: primitive, pushy and grinning through its teeth, with Iggy barking every line like a man who has just found his own pulse again and means to make the most of it.

Rolling Stone ranked it No. 149 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, and when the list was rebuilt in 2021 it still made the cut at No. 325.

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