“Playground Twist” by Siouxsie and the Banshees

"Playground Twist" was the only single Siouxsie and the Banshees pulled from Join Hands, their second album, out on Polydor in 1979. The band's manager Nils Stevenson produced it with Mike Stavrou, one of the engineers on Dandy in the Underworld, the last T. Rex album. Siouxsie wrote the words; the music is credited to her with John McKay, Kenny Morris and Steven Severin.

It's a playground turned nightmare. The NME's Roy Carr hailed it as what records would sound like if Ingmar Bergman made them: a whirlpool shot through with tolling church bells, phased guitars and thunderous drums, an alto sax gone strange and Siouxsie's wail riding on top, best played loud enough to hurt. The video put the band on an indoor climbing frame among running, scrambling kids, a few miming the sax solo on plastic toy instruments.

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