“God Save the Queen” by The Sex Pistols

The Sex Pistols fired off "God Save the Queen" as their second single, straight after "Anarchy in the U.K.", and it landed in 1977 smack in the middle of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. Later it turned up on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, the only studio album the band ever made.

It began life under the title "No Future", and the words take aim at the monarchy and at any institution that expects the rest of us to bow and scrape. Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon and Glen Matlock share the writing credit. Chris Thomas and Bill Price produced it at Wessex Sound Studios, and they had the sense to leave the snarl alone: the guitars roar like rush-hour traffic, the drums bash straight ahead without a flicker of doubt, and the vocal curdles every syllable it touches. Pomp and circumstance, meet the gutter.

The establishment hit back. The BBC and the Independent Broadcasting Authority both kept it off the air, the BBC with a flat ban, and the sleeve stirred up trouble right along with the lyrics. It topped the NME chart anyway and climbed to No. 2 on the official UK Singles Chart, which left some people grumbling that the count had been rigged to keep the Pistols out of the top spot.

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