“Sixty Eight Guns” by The Alarm

"Sixty Eight Guns" was the Alarm's calling card: the Welsh band put it out as a single in Britain in September 1983, then made it part of their debut album, Declaration, the following February. Mike Peters and Eddie MacDonald wrote it, and Peters drew the lyric from a book he'd read about the street gangs of 1960s Glasgow, turning that turf-war history into a rallying cry with a chorus built to be hollered back by the whole hall.

It was cut at Good Earth Studios and mixed at Abbey Road, and I.R.S. had big plans for it: executive Jay Boberg meant to take it straight to Top 40 radio. In Britain it reached number 17, the band's first top 40 hit and the highest they ever climbed there. Even the packaging couldn't settle on a name, with the title spelled out on the covers and printed as "68 Guns" on the discs.

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