Song · Public Image Ltd.
“Death Disco” by Public Image Ltd.
Released 1979
“Death Disco” by Public Image Ltd. appears on 2 radio countdowns from 2 stations between 1979 and 2003. It was first released in 1979. Its best result is #28 on the John Peel's All-Time Festive Fifty (1979). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #5,047 alternative song of all time.
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"Death Disco" was Public Image Ltd.'s 1979 single on Virgin, and it comes from somewhere raw: in his autobiography, Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, John Lydon explained that he wrote it for his mother, who had died of cancer shortly before and had asked him for a disco song for her funeral. Lydon wrote the words, and the music is credited to him, Jah Wobble, Keith Levene and Jim Walker.
What came out is a thick groove pulled between dub and disco, with Levene's guitar dragging in a quote from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which is why a shorter take turned up on Metal Box, the band's second album, retitled "Swan Lake". Issued as both a 7" and a 12", it went to number 20 in the UK, and NME ranked it 11th among 1979's tracks of the year.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 28 | John Peel (BBC Radio 1) | John Peel's All-Time Festive Fifty (1979) | 50 |
| 2003 | 1765 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
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