“Pressure Drop” by Toots and the Maytals

"Pressure Drop" is Toots Hibbert's sermon on getting what's coming to you, cut by the Maytals for producer Leslie Kong, and it moves with the loose, rolling authority of a band that never has to raise its voice to make the point. Hibbert wrote it and later explained it as a song about karma rather than a fistfight: hurt the innocent and trouble will find you. The title was his own saying, the thing he'd tell anyone who crossed him.

The rest of the world caught on when it landed on the soundtrack of The Harder They Come in 1972, the film that carried reggae to ears that had never heard it, and it pulled the Maytals beyond Jamaica along with it. Rolling Stone later put it at 453 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

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