Can't Hardly Wait

The Sonics

Have Love Will Travel1965

The missing link between The Smiths' polished mid-80s guitar rock and the raw Pacific Northwest sound that Modest Mouse would inherit a decade later, this track lands like a wrecking ball. The Sonics cut it at Audio Recording Studio in Seattle on March 1, 1965 — a cover of Richard Berry's 1959 original, but transformed into something almost violent. Gerry Roslie's screamed vocals and the band's overdriven attack made it proto-punk before anyone had that word. Formed in Tacoma in 1960 and recording for the Etiquette label alongside The Kingsmen, The Sonics built a sound loud enough to reach Nirvana, the White Stripes, and The Hives — all of whom have cited the band as a direct influence. Modest Mouse grew up in this same Pacific Northwest pressure cooker, and you can hear why.

Ramones

Blitzkrieg Bop1976

The track that would ignite The Clash and inspire a generation of bands like The Replacements sits right here. Released in April 1976 as the Ramones' debut single on Sire Records, "Blitzkrieg Bop" opened their first album like a door kicked off its hinges — two minutes of pure momentum that reset what a rock song needed to be. Drummer Tommy Ramone wrote most of it, though Dee Dee came up with the title after it started life as the far less threatening "Animal Hop." Recorded with producer Craig Leon, the whole thing sounds like it was finished before anyone could second-guess it. That was the point. Bands forming in London that same year heard this and immediately understood the assignment.

Elvis Costello

Alison1977

Where The Clash's "Brand New Cadillac" kept punk's rough edges front and center, "Alison" showed the other road available in 1977 — melody and lyrical precision over aggression. Produced by Nick Lowe, it came out of Costello's roots in the London pub rock scene, where he'd been sharpening his songwriting since the early 1970s before the new wave wave hit. Rolling Stone later credited him with reinvigorating "the literate, lyrical traditions of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with the raw energy and sass" of punk — and "Alison" is exactly where those two things meet. That balance of smart writing with punchy delivery fed directly into the commercial instincts The Knack would weaponize on "My Sharona" two years later.

Talking Heads

Psycho Killer1977

Where The Knack leaned into pure pop instinct, Talking Heads were already doing something stranger and harder to categorize. "Psycho Killer" was literally the first song David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, and Chris Frantz ever wrote together — conceived as a joke, with Byrne imagining Alice Cooper performing a Randy Newman-style ballad. Weymouth supplied the French lyrics, the idea being that the killer switches languages as he switches personalities. Released on Sire Records in December 1977, it planted the art-punk seeds that bands like The Smiths would eventually harvest — that same instinct to make something literary and slightly unsettling feel completely irresistible. The bass line alone rewired what pop music thought it was allowed to do.

The Clash

Brand New Cadillac1979

Where the Ramones stripped rock down to pure speed and aggression, The Clash picked up that raw energy and immediately started stretching it. "Brand New Cadillac" — a cover of Vince Taylor's 1959 original — landed on *London Calling*, released in the UK in December 1979, and it showed exactly how far punk could reach without losing its teeth. The track pulls rockabilly swagger into Clash territory, with Joe Strummer's vocals riding a groove that owes as much to early rock and roll as to the London punk scene that formed the band in 1976. It bridges the pure-punk lineage toward where Elvis Costello was already heading — music with roots in older American forms, recut for a post-punk world. CBS even billed them as "The Only Band That Matters," and moments like this made that hard to argue.

The Knack

My Sharona1979

Where Elvis Costello's "Alison" showed power pop could be tender and literary, The Knack cranked the same guitar-forward formula into something rawer and far more commercial. Recorded at MCA Whitney Studios in Glendale, California with producer Mike Chapman, "My Sharona" hit number one in 1979 and was named song of the year — proof that power pop could dominate the mainstream, not just impress the critics. The song's energy came from a real place: Doug Fieger wrote it after meeting a 17-year-old named Sharona Alperin at a clothing store. That riff — simple, locked-in, impossible to shake — connects directly to the anxious propulsion Talking Heads were already building into "Psycho Killer," where a single repeating groove carries the whole emotional weight of the track.

The Smiths

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out1986

Where Talking Heads used alienation as something cold and cerebral, The Smiths made it feel devastatingly romantic. "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" bridges that emotional gap, turning the detached new wave mood of 1977 into something that teenagers in 1986 could cry to on the bus. Johnny Marr wrote the music and produced the track alongside Morrissey on Rough Trade Records — the independent label that gave the band full creative control from their 1982 formation through to their 1987 split. That jangle-pop guitar line pulls directly from the post-punk lineage, while the track's dramatic longing sets the emotional temperature for what The Sonics were doing in rawer, rougher form a generation earlier. The Smiths didn't invent this ache — they just made it impossible to ignore.

★ The Replacements

Can't Hardly Wait1987

This is where the lineage begins. "Can't Hardly Wait" sits at the root of the chain, pointing forward to the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop" as a direct ancestor worth tracing — because Westerberg's gift was taking punk's urgency and wrapping it in something that actually wanted to be loved. Released on *Pleased to Meet Me* in 1987, the track is stacked with unlikely collaborators. Alex Chilton, the Big Star songwriter the Replacements had literally written a song about, plays guitar fills here. Producer Jim Dickinson brought in Memphis soul veterans Andrew Love on tenor sax and Ben Cauley on trumpet, giving a punk band's best pop song a horn section with genuine R&B history behind it. The result is a record that bridges two worlds without apologizing to either one.

Modest Mouse

Edit the Sad Parts1996

The raw, scraped sound of The Sonics' Pacific Northwest garage rock finds a spiritual successor here — though Isaac Brock swapped adrenaline for isolation. Released April 16, 1996 on *This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About*, "Edit the Sad Parts" stretches past seven minutes of lo-fi drift, anchored by Brock's fractured guitar and Jeremiah Green's restless drumming. Produced by Seasick Steve, it captures the band right out of Issaquah, Washington, before they relocated to Portland and before mainstream success ever entered the conversation. That slow-burning patience with bleakness is exactly what Pinegrove's "11th Hour" picks up decades later — the idea that sitting inside a sad feeling without rushing it out is its own kind of craft.

Foo Fighters

Everlong1997

Where Animal Collective's "College" leaned into fractured lo-fi experiments, "Everlong" shows the rawer end of the alternative rock branch — the sound that came directly out of Nirvana's wreckage. Dave Grohl founded Foo Fighters in 1994 as a one-man project after Kurt Cobain's death, and by 1997 he was rebuilding grunge's emotional urgency into something more radio-ready without fully letting go of its bite. The recording of the parent album, *The Colour and the Shape*, was chaotic — drummer William Goldsmith quit mid-session and Grohl ended up re-recording most of the drum parts himself. That restless, take-control energy is all over "Everlong." Director Michel Gondry shot the now-iconic music video, adding a surreal visual identity that helped lock the song into the cultural memory of late-'90s alternative rock.

Animal Collective

College2004

Sitting between Pinegrove's emotionally direct indie rock and Foo Fighters' arena-ready alternative, "College" shows just how wide the college-rock umbrella really stretches. Released May 3, 2004, on *Sung Tongs*, it clocks in at just 53 seconds — barely a sketch — yet it landed on Rough Trade's Counter Culture 2004 Best of year-end compilation anyway. That kind of critical recognition for something so brief and strange says a lot about where indie rock's ambitions were heading in the mid-2000s. AllMusic credited Animal Collective with having "defined the face of independent experimental rock during the 2000s and 2010s," and "College" is the raw material behind that reputation — freak folk and psychedelia pushed into a form that barely resembles a song at all.

Pinegrove

11th Hour2022

Coming out of the same Midwestern emotional rawness that Modest Mouse tapped on "Edit the Sad Parts," "11th Hour" lands as the closing track on Pinegrove's *11:11*, released January 28, 2022 — an album literally structured around its own ending, with 11 songs culminating here. Pinegrove's alt-country and emo blend, built on banjo and pedal steel guitar alongside standard rock instrumentation, picks up where sparse indie confessionalism left off and points directly toward the kind of atmospheric folk-rock Animal Collective would stretch into abstraction on "College." Mixed by Chris Walla, former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist, the track carries a production sensibility that bridges confessional songwriting and indie experimentation. At just 2 minutes and 18 seconds, it says what it needs to and stops — which is its own kind of argument about what this branch of rock values most.