Picking One Song from Millions
4/6/26
How do I pick the very first single that I ever write about on this blog? It had to be a song that does something better than any other song. “She Bangs the Drums” immediately came to mind.
The Stone Roses released their eponymous debut album when I was a mere infant. In 1989, in addition to a certain unnamed pop star being born, the Madchester wave rocked the northern English city. The musical movement was associated with MDMA and dance music, with electronic-fronting bands such as Happy Mondays and 808 State, but the Stone Roses were purely a rock band. They were a precursor to all 00s-and-forward indie rock.
The Stone Roses have an unusual staying power. Listening to the album with no context, it’s difficult to name what place or time period the album is from. Manchester, England in 1989 is merely an incidental. The song could be mistaken for a Pet Sounds B-Side, an early R.E.M. song, or an unrecorded single by MGMT.
The lyrics are fun and quirky. The song is essentially a frivolous tribute to a female drummer who makes the band feel some type of way. There are multiple key changes. Every transition feels like something fresh.
Each individual music track in this song is remarkable and memorable. The drums by Reni are entirely on backbeat, on beats 2 and 4, a quality common in dance music, not rock. But this unmistakably is a rock song. The bass line by Mani (who sadly passed away in November 2025) is the primary driver of melody through much of the song, while John Squire’s guitar plays a less important role in coloratura harmony but switches to lead. Ian Brown’s voice is remarkably consistent in its various qualities throughout the song, while hitting some memorable higher notes.
At the 1:54 mark, the Stone Roses embark on the most memorable bridge in any song in all of rock music. It entirely changes the vibe of the entire song. It sounds closer to Guns N’ Roses than the Stone Roses. It has the wild freeness of any song on Raw Power. If you listen only to this bridge, you could easily mistake the song it is taken from for being by any number of different artists across wildly divergent genres. It will remind you of many different songs. But it is only here. At the 2:20 mark, the bridge ends and the song returns to the main part of the song. There is no further reference to the bridge. The bridge stands alone, and remains my favorite bridge of all time.
I listened to “She Bangs the Drums” dozens of times while writing this, on repeat. Rather than tiring of it, I found myself getting more and more into it. Get into it!
#thestoneroses #singles #goat #80s #rock #shebangsthedrums #rawpower #petsounds #mgmt #rem #happymondays #808state