“Born Slippy (Nuxx)” by Underworld

"Born Slippy .NUXX" started life on a flip side, the B-side to a different Underworld track called "Born Slippy", until Trainspotting got hold of it in 1996 and sent it to number two in Britain. It's a monster built from simple parts: a relentless four-on-the-floor thump, great washes of synth chords that seem to open the sky, and Karl Hyde's warped, broken-up vocal, which tells its story from inside an alcoholic's head.

Hyde wrote the words after a night's drinking on Wardour Street in Soho, taking his cue from Lou Reed's New York and Sam Shepard's Motel Chronicles, and he started carrying a notebook and a camera to catch the world around him. Hyde, Rick Smith and Darren Emerson wrote it, and Underworld produced it themselves. Plenty of publications have since ranked it among the great dance tracks and the best songs of the decade, and the group reworked it with timestretched chords for T2 Trainspotting in 2017.

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