“A bit Nirvana-ish”: the song The Stone Roses struggled with the most
There are a handful of records in musical history that quite simply don’t have bad songs on them.
Maybe it’s The Strokes’ 2001 classic Is This It, which exemplifies the idea of garage rock with every single track. Or perhaps, T Rex’s Electric Warrior or maybe even Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which sounds like a compelling soap opera and as such, makes every single song on the record a completely crucial chapter in the story.
But one album I vehemently believe earns a place in that discourse is The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut album. It was the perfect album for the cultural cross-section that existed in the late 1980s, and specifically in Manchester. Alternative music was in flux, having waved goodbye to the raucous rock of the 1970s and instead embracing the futuristic worlds of new wave.
But then, acid house and electronic music began rippling into the waters of British music, and so there was an opportunity for genre fusion. Capturing that enthusiastic essence in a bottle, The Stone Roses delivered an album that transformed British alternative music and crystallised the idea that rock and roll convention and electronic innovation could coalesce.
Tracks like ‘I Wanna Be Adored’, ‘Waterfall’ and ‘She Bangs The Drums’ felt comforting and familiar. But they were seamlessly placed next to songs like ‘Don’t Stop’ and the hypnotic ‘Fools Gold’, which felt exciting and fresh, with the latter track in particular continuing to sound like an innovative masterpiece, even today in 2025.
It’s densely layered and features a drum loop from the James Brown song ‘Funky Drummer’. As natural as it sounds to the ear, it feels as though every track laid down was laboured over and undoubtedly the most problematic track on the record.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t. It was a track that sits just before it on the listing, feels as anthemic as any other on the record and has since become their biggest hit, which ultimately felt like the ugly duckling to the band in recording.
“‘This is the One’ caused the most problems,” producer John Leckie explained. It’s almost hard to imagine, given the fact that the chorus is perhaps the catchiest of all on the record. But on a closer listen, you can begin to understand why, as the arrangement is far from simple, constantly changing tempos and fluctuating from minimal to maximal at the click of a finger.
Leckie continued, “There was always a big question as to whether it should go on the record. It worked real well live, a bombastic thing that got faster and faster and was a bit Nirvana-ish. But we had to work hard on getting the dynamics right and making the speed changes work smoothly.”
The very nature of this record being one that simply doesn’t have a bad song anywhere on it means that the exclusion of just one song would have changed the outlook of the record completely. It’s hard to imagine The Stone Roses without ‘This Is The One’, and it begs the question, would it have been the album it was, had they left it out?
