“Hitsville U.K.” by The Clash

"Hitsville U.K." came off the Clash's 1980 album Sandinista! as its second single, and it's the last thing anyone expected from a punk band: a bouncy, bubblegum-bright duet, with Mick Jones trading lines with Ellen Foley, his girlfriend at the time. The title winks at Motown, which billed itself and its first Detroit headquarters as "Hitsville U.S.A."

The joke has a point, though. The song is a valentine to the small British independent labels springing up at the turn of the decade, name-checking Rough Trade, Factory, Small Wonder, Fast Product and Lightning, and a raspberry blown at the major-label fat cats with their padded budgets and hyped-up charts. All four members share the writing credit, and the band produced it themselves. In Britain it came backed with Mikey Dread's "Radio One"; the later American pressing swapped in "Police on My Back".

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