“Peek-A-Boo” by Siouxsie and the Banshees

"Peek-A-Boo" was the first single from Peepshow, Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1988 album, and it's the sound of a band gleefully tearing up its own rulebook. Siouxsie Sioux wrote the words, she, Budgie and Steven Severin wrote the music, and they produced it together with Mike Hedges, who also engineered.

What they came up with is a strange, lurching, cabaret-from-the-crypt pop song, all clatter and swagger, with Siouxsie's voice slinking and taunting over the top like a ringmaster who knows exactly where the trapdoor is. It's playful and sinister in the same breath, and it still sounds nothing like anything else on the radio of its day.

It reached number 16 on the UK Singles chart, and in America it became the band's first single ever to make the Billboard Hot 100, where it got as high as number 53. Critics have been singing its praises since, and PopMatters later put it at number 18 on its list of the greatest alternative singles of the decade.

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