“Washington Bullets” by The Clash

"Washington Bullets" is the Clash at their most globe-trotting and furious, buried in the sprawl of Sandinista!, their 1980 fourth album. Joe Strummer half-speaks, half-sings a crash course in imperial meddling, running from the Cuban revolution of 1959 and the Bay of Pigs to Salvador Allende, the killing of Víctor Jara by the military dictatorship, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Most of the fire is aimed at American foreign policy, but the last verse swings round to hit the Communist side too, with China's treatment of Buddhist monks and the Soviet march into Afghanistan.

The music is a loose, reggae-style lope with a marimba plinking through it, produced by the band and credited to all four members. Plenty of listeners assumed the title was a crack at Washington's basketball team; Strummer said he'd never heard of it.

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