“Speedboat” by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions

"Speedboat" comes from Rattlesnakes, the debut album Lloyd Cole and the Commotions put out on Polydor on 12 October 1984, and Cole wrote it alone, words and music, with Paul Hardiman producing. That fits the pattern: the frontman, who formed the band during his student days at the University of Glasgow, wrote the bulk of the record, and its songs took shape at Glasgow Golf Club, where his father was club master and the family lived.

Cole named Bob Dylan and Booker T. & the M.G.'s as big influences, but his English and philosophy studies left their fingerprints too, on an album whose title tips its hat to Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays and whose lyrics drop the names of Renata Adler, Simone de Beauvoir and Norman Mailer. Pop for the bookish, and proud of it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.