Song · The Waterboys
“Don't Bang The Drum” by The Waterboys
From the album This Is the Sea (1985)
“Don't Bang The Drum” by The Waterboys appears on 1 radio countdown from 1 station in 1999. It was first released in 1985 on the album This Is the Sea. Its best result is #1981 on the CD101 Top 2000 Songs of All-Time (December 1999). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #7,682 alternative song of all time.
The Waterboys open This Is the Sea, their third album, with "Don't Bang the Drum", and it took some wrestling to get it there. Mike Scott usually wrote alone, but as an experiment he handed some of his lyrics to bandmates, and Karl Wallinger set these to music with a sassy, old-school Detroit swing. Scott liked the melody and the chords but not the groove, so he pulled it apart, slowing it into a ballad before cranking it back up into the full-tilt rocker that kicks off the album. Wallinger demoed it at Seaview, his home studio.
Scott produced it and sings, playing guitar and piano, with Wallinger on bass synthesizer, Anthony Thistlethwaite on sax, Roddy Lorimer on trumpet, Chris Whitten on drums and Delahaye on percussion; Mick Glossop mixed. It went out as a single in Germany and as a 12-inch promo in the States.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 1981 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2000 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 2000 |
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