"Won't Get Fooled Again" (The Who)

I first heard “Won’t Get Fooled Again” on a hot summer day in the early 80s.  We had our windows open (we didn't get air conditioning until I was a senior in high school), and my mother was tired of hearing our neighbors down the valley blasting Styx or Boston or whatever crap it was.  So she grabbed Who’s Next (1971) and played it at full volume.
“That should shut ‘em up,” I remember her saying.
It was a helluva ride for me: Keith Moon’s drums and John Entwistle’s bass sounding like they were going to blow our front door off, Roger Daltrey’s screams shaking the plates in the kitchen cupboards, and Pete Townshend’s windmill power chords erupting like molten lava out of the speakers.  
When its 43 minutes of classic rock perfection had wrapped, it had shut the neighbors up, alright, and it had made a fan out of me.
The album, which started out as an ambitious followup to the rock opera Tommy (1969), was originally intended to be a new opera called Lifehouse.  Its story centered around a dystopian future where environmental pollution makes it impossible for anyone to travel or do anything for themselves.  Therefore, everyone gets their sustenance, entertainment, rest, etc. through their “Lifesuits,” which are plugged into The Grid—which is creepily like the Internet.  (All of this coming from the mind of Townshend in 1970.)
Townshend envisioned Lifehouse as a totally immersive, completely interactive musical experience when performed live.  Audience members would be invited onstage, hook themselves up to a computer that would gather their vitals, and then listen back as their biorhythms were used to generate unique music via synthesizers, creating a kind of musical nirvana.  Or so Townshend had hoped.
Suffice to say, things didn’t quite work the way he’d envisioned.  Test audiences and his bandmates didn’t really get the concept, and the project nearly drove Townshend to a breakdown.  Only a few elements were retained for Who’s Next, with “Won’t Get Fooled Again” being a key track.
The centerpiece of the song is that pulsing organ line, which builds and retreats throughout.  As Townshend explains in the 1999 documentary Classic Albums: Who’s Next, he discovered the sound by taking the output of a Lowrey organ and feeding it through a primitive EMS VCS3 synthesizer using a “sample and hold” filter, which created a pulsing, oscillating effect, turning his simple block chords into something almost Baroque.  If you watch the linked clip, you'll hear producer Glyn Johns state that, whereas most other rock musicians had only used synths as window dressing up to that point, here the synth line becomes the basis of the rhythm track itself, driving the rhythm at a frenetic pace. 
(As a side note: On Townshend’s own demo of the song, the organ has a more syncopated—almost ska-like—feel because he’s playing the tune at half the tempo.  In fact, the demo almost sounds like a distant cousin of The Band's "Up On Cripple Creek."  Take a listen, and see if you hear the Levon Helm and Garth Hudson influence, too.) 
Often, people assume that “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is about picking a fight with the establishment.  It’s not hard to interpret Daltrey’s scream in the song’s final minute as a piece of burning rag, sticking out of a Mason jar of gasoline.
However, according to Townshend, it’s a call for everyone to stop and think.
“‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ wasn’t a defiant statement; it was a plea,” states Townshend in the aforementioned documentary.  “Please don’t feel that, because you’ve come to this concert, because you’ve come to this place, that you’ve got an answer.  Please don’t make me on the stage the ‘new boss.’  Cause I’m just the same as the guy who was up here before.  You’re in charge.”
To put it another way, revolution has consequences, and they might be consequences that you didn’t foresee when you were pumping your fist in the air, ten minutes or ten years ago.
A powerful, powerful song from a true genius.

"Seven Nation Army" (The White Stripes)

I had mixed feelings about John Anthony Gillis (aka Jack White) the moment I heard “Fell in Love with a Girl” years ago.  (Not Meg, though.  She was drumming her heart out like a kid beating on garbage can lids, and I immediately loved her.)  But that Jack character.  Was he a genius with a gimmick?  Or was the gimmick his genius?
In time, I’ve realized that he’s no genius, but he's also no One Note Johnny who needed a candy-striped guitar to make a name for himself, either.  Truth is, he’s a music nerd with a hefty amount of respect for everything from Son House to Jimmy Page and a shit ton of creativity and talent, which have been honed in a very blue collar, workman-like way.  Which I respect.  So even when he rubs me the wrong way or seems to take himself too seriously, I still keep going back to check out what he’s up to.
On that note, “Seven Nation Army” may not be the best song he’s ever written, but it certainly is his most electrifying.  
In Davis Guggenheim’s 2008 documentary film It Might Get Loud, White discusses how the song got its start.  
Says White, “We were at a soundcheck in Australia, and I started playing that riff, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is really cool’.”  
But when White asked his friend Ben Swank, the co-founder of Third Man Records with White, what he thought of the riff, Swank's reaction was, “Eh.”
So, White filed it away, thinking that, if he ever had the opportunity to score a James Bond or spy film, the riff would be a perfect fit.  
Luckily, we got treated to it on the band's most consistent album, Elephant (2003).
When that ominous-sounding riff (which is played on guitar through a Whammy pedal, down one octave) rumbles through your speakers in the intro, it introduces a layer of complexity that isn’t on their preceding records.   Don’t get me wrong.  Working in their (purposely) constricted structure of drums + guitar with no/limited overdubs, they were able to create some pretty impressive shifting dynamics on other tracks, going from soft to loud and back again at the click of an effects pedal.  But on “Seven Nation Army,” the key is nuance, not just dynamics.  Whereas their earlier songs either flat-out scream for 3 minutes, or maybe have a quiet bit before bursting into a loud bit, “Seven Nation Army” simmers, like a hot pot on a stove that’s slowly building up steam, where you know the lid is going to blow clean off eventually.  
It’s that palpable tension and drama that keep me coming back to the song, again and again.

"Good Times" (Chic)

"Good Times."
This single song from 1979, with its breathy vocal and famous bassline, spawned a ton of homages/imitations (“Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugar Hill Gang, “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, “Rapture” by Blondie, “The Magnificent Seven” by The Clash…) and justifiably can be credited for helping launch a whole new genre of music in the 20th century.  
A little history: Chic was the brainchild of guitarist/producer Nile Rodgers and bassist/producer Bernard Edwards.  The two originally started out in a backing band for a short-lived R&B vocal group called New York City before founding their own funk-rock band, The Boys, which also fell apart after countless record companies told them they had no idea how to market a "black rock" album.
Soon after the breakup of New York City in the middle of the band’s tour of England, Rodgers was taken to a Roxy Music show in London by his girlfriend.  Although he didn’t know much about Brian Ferry or the band, he was impressed by the total, cohesive experience of the show: the band members were dressed in high-fashion clothes, the concertgoers were dressed to match the band, and it was all taking place in a venue called The Roxy, to boot.
Then, after the duo's failed attempt at funk-rock, Rodgers and Edwards began looking to a new kind of dance music that they were hearing in lower Manhattan clubs in the mid-70s.  It was completely rhythm-driven and seemed to celebrate a kind of escapism that fit well with the high-fashion vibe Rodgers had witnessed at the Roxy Music show.  
The name “Chic” was chosen because it encompassed that high-class aesthetic (and because they felt it sounded French and, therefore, cool).
As Rodgers recounted during a talk at the International Music Summit in Ibiza, 2012, neither he nor Edwards wanted to be stars; they simply wanted their music to be heard.  After all, they'd been backing musicians their entire careers.
“We knew we didn’t have the charisma to be front people,” said Rodgers.  “So when we put Chic together, we did this faceless thing.  It was a concept.  [Chic was] the vessel for our compositions.”
Rodgers got confirmation that the concept might actually be successful after attending a KISS show where he met the band’s former lead guitarist, Ace Frehley.  In the 2013 BBC documentary The Hitmaker, Rodgers recounts meeting Frehley for a drink just after the show.  Frehley had already removed his elaborate kabuki stage makeup, which rendered him completely unrecognizable to fans.
“Nobody knew that I was talking to Ace Frehley,” said Rodgers. “We’re standing there, we’re just talking.  Meanwhile, the crowd was going crazy for him, 20 minutes ago.”
After that experience, he and Edwards knew that they could kind of disappear into the “Chic mystique” that they had created, even when they were racking up hit after hit, and still lead fairly anonymous lives.  Which suited them fine.
It's kind of interesting that, although Rodgers and Edwards took creative cues from what came to be labeled disco music, they never saw Chic as a "disco band," per se, but as an R&B band whose music got heavy rotation in discos.  
However you want to classify Chic, though, Edwards's singular, supple bass sound and Rodgers's wrist-snapping guitar licks, which are as influenced by gut bucket Southern boogie as they are by sophisticated urban jazz, created a whole new thing in music in the late 70s.  In fact, it was almost like a new musical language that set the stage for everyone from graffiti artists to b-boys and b-girls to burst into the mainstream, circa 1980-1984.

"Rapture" (Blondie)

Back in the late 70s/early 80s, Bronx-based graffiti artist Fred Brathwaite (aka Fab 5 Freddy) was making a name for himself among the SoHo/lower Manhattan gallery crowd, where he also was rubbing elbows with New Wavers and punks.  During one of his early exhibitions, he met Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, who ended up buying and commissioning pieces of his art.  The three became fast friends and started hanging out, which is when Harry and Stein began learning about the city's fledgling hip-hop scene and its most prominent figures, like DJ Joseph Saddler (aka Grandmaster Flash). 
Blondie’s 1981 single “Rapture” from the album Autoamerican was inspired in part by Brathwaite taking Harry, Stein, and a number of other New Wavers/punks on a field trip to a 1980 show at the Police Athletic League in The Bronx, where Harry was floored by Saddler's turntable skills.
The other spark that ignited the track was Brathwaite telling Harry that he wanted to make it big, as he recounted in the 1999 documentary The Hip Hop Years by Great Britain’s Channel 4.
“I said, ‘You know, Debbie, I want you to make a record about me.  Or, just mention me on a record.  Because I want to be like a star’.”
He figured she’d never actually drop his name in a song, until he heard the finished single at Harry and Stein’s apartment.  Even then, he was skeptical that they weren’t just playing a joke on him.  After all, Harry wasn't a rapper.  And what New Wave band was going to put out a single with a rap in the middle of it?
It wasn’t until a few months later while hanging out in Paris with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz of Talking Heads that Brathwaite heard “Rapture” on the radio (with Harry's rap intact), and he realized Harry and Stein weren’t pulling his leg after all.
As he listened, he also realized that Harry’s odd little rap was chock-full of references to graffiti culture (paint a train), hip-hop (Flash is fast, Flash is cool), and Brathwaite himself--in particular, the lines about the man from Mars, which were a direct reference to him and a rap that he often performed at parties in the early 80s:
I was born and raised on the planet Mars
I used to chill and rock with the stars
Till one day I got bored and decided to split
And I came to earth on a rocket ship
Some sources erroneously cite “Rapture” as the first charting rap song; in actuality, “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) by the Sugar Hill Gang was the first charting rap song (#36 on the Billboard chart).  “Rapture” was, however, the first song containing a rap to go to #1 on the Billboard chart.
(As a side note: Harry had asked Joseph "Grandmaster Flash" Saddler to appear in the video for "Rapture."  When he didn't show for the shoot, she quickly hired rising-star graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat to play the DJ.  You can see Basquiat in the video below, looking kind of lost behind the turntables.)

"The Message" (Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, feat. Melle Mel & Duke Bootee)

The development of rap can pretty much be divided into two periods: before “The Message” and after “The Message.”  Before the song hit the airwaves in 1982, 99% of rap was about having a good time and getting the party started  (Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks,” The Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper's Delight,” and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s own “Freedom.”)  But “The Message” broke the mold as the first mainstream rap record that actually included social commentary.  There was no posturing; it was simply a truthful slice of life from the inner city.
When session musician and songwriter Ed “Duke Bootee” Fletcher demoed the instrumental track and lyric to Sylvia Robinson, CEO of Sugar Hill Records, she decided that it was a perfect vehicle for Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five.  But the group didn’t agree.  They argued that the laid back groove, which was heavily influenced by Zapp and Tom Tom Club, and the lyrical content weren’t right for their style.
“We [were] used to doing party raps and, like, boasting how good we are and all that,” Melvin “Melle Mel” Glover told NPR in 1992 (rebroadcast 2012). “When the record company brought the record to us to do, we didn’t actually want to do it, and I was the only one that, like, caved in…I didn’t think it would be pivotal either way.”
Little did Glover know that the track would go on to be one of the most influential songs of the 20th Century.
And despite the song being credited to Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, only Glover and Fletcher actually appear on the track.  The rest of the group only shows up for a few seconds in a skit at the end of the song, where they get busted by overzealous cops who think they’re gang members.

"White Horse" (Laid Back)

Another US one-hit wonder of the 80s who actually had a number of charting songs overseas is the Danish band Laid Back.  They’re best known for their 1983 electro-funk track “White Horse”—a song that initially appears to be an anti-drug PSA, warning listeners not to “ride the white horse” (aka heroin).  Although, in later verses, they endorse cocaine (“white pony”) as a better alternative and give out unsolicited financial advice, à la Leona Helmsley. 
(Hey, it was the 80s, after all.)
In truth, the lyrics are forgettable and inconsequential.  (I'd bet cash money that they had little or no clue what they were singing, anyway.)  It’s the groove that drives this song.  In it’s own quirky way, it’s an homage to James Brown’s concept of “The One,” where the downbeat always falls on the “1” of the measure.  It’s what makes the beat hit you the second you press "play."
It’s also that relentless bassline with that digitized, repeating synth pattern and those strategically placed pitch-bending “whistles” every few measures that make it impossible not to move to this song.
Little factoid: Prince wrote “Erotic City,” the B-side of the 1984 single “Let’s Go Crazy,” after hearing “White Horse.”  If you can find “Erotic City” anywhere on the web (Prince is notorious for blocking his music from online consumption), you’ll notice similarities in the beat and ambient synth sounds.

"I Can't Wait" (Nu Shooz)

Although the Nu Shooz song “I Can’t Wait” (1986) has nothing to do with Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love,” somehow, they always felt like fraternal twins to me.  I think it’s the D.I.Y., New Wave-meets-dance vibe that both have. 
Coincidentally, both songs also were created by husband-and-wife teams: Tom Tom Club being Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, and Nu Shooz being Portland, OR-based musicians Valerie Day (vocals/percussion) and John Smith (guitars/keyboards/vocals).
Long story short, Day and Smith recorded and released an early version of “I Can’t Wait” in 1984 that became a hit in the Portland area only.  It wasn’t until a Dutch DJ, Pieder “Hithouse” Slaghuis, remixed the song—pushing the bass and percussion way up in the mix and adding those 80s Freestyle vocal effects—that it became a worldwide hit in 1986.
Anyway, the lyrics are pretty mundane—lots of “eye”/“goodbye” kind of end rhymes and not a lot of substance, despite Day’s sincere delivery. 
But with a groove this deep, who cares if the sentiment isn’t?