Credit: Far Out

Has a punk song ever got to number one?

Thu 3 July 2025 14:00, UK

Has there ever been a genre that seemed more allergic to success than punk rock? The whole point behind the concept involved anarchy and shunning the traditional means of big business, so there was hardly any reason to think that the same big businesses that they were criticising would have much time for them on the radio. Then again, that’s not to say that some punk bands couldn’t find a way to break into the mainstream when they could.

After all, when the genre first broke, people were interested in seeing what they were doing for the shock value alone. Sex Pistols’ first appearance on television is still among one of the greatest that any musician has been involved with, if only for the fact that they had all of England’s parents shaking with fear when Steve Jones started swearing on television at their interviewer.

But as much as the short-lived band defined what punk meant to a lot of people, they were simply too subversive for a certain definition of ‘successful’. If anyone wanted to get onto the pop charts, they were going to have to play the game, and the next wave of punks knew how to throw in bits and pieces of commercial material into their sound.

Then again, there will always be some people chastising the pop-punk stripe of fans who have always listened to the likes of Green Day. Despite Billie Joe Armstrong being one of the greatest examples of what a punk icon should be in the modern age, ‘Basket Case’ was pulling as much from Cheap Trick as it was from Ramones, and by the 2000s, the genre that had been built in 1977 looked a lot more teenybopper with the likes of Blink-182 coming to fruition. There was a pop flavour to the new kids in town, but The Clash were a classic example of how to get the old and new sounds pitch-perfect.

So, did The Clash make it to number one?

While Joe Strummer was never looking to be the most lavish rock star in the world, every single word that came out of his mouth felt important throughout the band’s career. If John Lydon was the punk rock equivalent of Elvis Presley, Strummer was the resident Bob Dylan for the mohawk crowd, constantly fighting against the oppressive parts of society, all while Mick Jones created the biggest hooks of their career.

London Calling might still be one of the foundational pieces of punk rock, but even that album couldn’t gain any major singles on the charts, apart from the title track reaching number 11. In the years after their breakup, though, their compilation album The Singles gave them their first-ever number one track when ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ shot back up the charts.

The song definitely deserved its place at the top thanks to its fantastic melody, but people often forget about how weird it is as well. It might seem like it could be played with a handful of chords, but there are a lot of complicated jazzy lines sprinkled in the mix, especially if you look at the entire stereo image, along with Strummer singing the backing vocals in a different language.

It’s a shame that the band had broken up long before they had a chance to see their song skyrocket to the top of the charts, but there’s something almost poetic knowing that they weren’t around to enjoy it. Punk rock was always about living in the moment, and even if the charts became a bit nostalgic for the group that set the world on fire, both Jones and Strummer were more concerned with where their muse was taking them afterwards.