Anarchy in the U.K.
Sex Pistols' debut single
"Anarchy in the U.K." is a song by the British punk rock band the Sex Pistols. It was released as the band's debut single on 26 November 1976 and was later featured on their album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols. "Anarchy in the U.K." was number 56 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.
Releases
Originally issued in a plain black sleeve, the single was the only Sex Pistols recording released by EMI, and it reached number 38 on the UK Singles Chart before EMI dropped the group on 6 January 1977, a month after members of the band used profanity during a live television broadcast. (The EMI version was recorded on 17 October 1976. An earlier demo version, titled "Nookie', was recorded between 10 and 12 October at Lansdowne/Wessex Studios, London. This version later surfaced on the Sex Pistols bootleg album Spunk).
In 2007, the surviving members (not including original Pistols bassist Glen Matlock) re-recorded "Anarchy in the U.K." for the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock because the multi-track master could not be found (it was rediscovered along with the rest of the Never Mind The Bollocks masters during a move in January 2012). The Guitar Hero version also appears in the film adaption of the A-Team. The song was also featured in the video game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 as part of the soundtrack.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anarchy in the U.K.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.