“Bastards of Young” by The Replacements

Paul Westerberg wrote "Bastards of Young" for Tim, the Replacements' fourth studio album, in 1985, and it plays like a letter to every kid who never figured out where they fit. It came partly from his sister Mary and partly from the band's own sense of being on the outside, and it opens with a guitar charge that tips its hat to the Who before the whole thing lurches into a ragged, fists-up anthem.

Thomas Erdelyi produced it and Steve Fjelstad engineered, and they leave the edges frayed: Westerberg sounds hoarse, furious and a little heartbroken, the band barely holding the wheel.

It was never a single, but it made trouble anyway. The video was nothing more than a camera trained on a speaker while the song played, a deadpan stunt that got people talking, and when the band played it on Saturday Night Live, Westerberg's cursing away from the microphone got under Lorne Michaels' skin. Time has been kind to it: writers routinely rank it among the band's greatest songs, and in 2021 Consequence of Sound counted it among the 50 best punk rock songs ever.

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