Why it was so influential: Savages brought with them a dose of much-needed mythology, and raised valuable questions about why women in punk are so frequently branded as bolshy or intimidating. Fontaines DC, ‘Dogrel’ (2019) No one owned up to writing the graffiti either: “I think it’s because they can’t spell ‘cunts’ right,” says bassist Michael Bradley. “Who would own up to that?” The Clash articulated the frustrations of working class kids in a way that the chin-stroking protest pop of previous generations couldn’t hope to, in a way that was more inclusive than the fury of the Pistols or the Damned’s goth theatre. (And, yeah genius, we know the irony: Joe Strummer went to a private boarding school and his father was a top diplomat. Hate to break it to you but David Bowie wasn’t really a spaceman, Tom Waits wasn’t a hobo and Ice-T didn’t really kill cops.) John Lydon said Richard Hell had nothing to do with punk. He was wrong. Aside from The Ramones’ D-U-M-B exception to the rule, NYC’s CBGB-based version of punk was significantly more cerebral than its largely visceral McLaren encouraged UK counterpart, and Hell – poet, style icon, novelist, nihilist, perfectionist, arsonist – was its nearly man. He could (should) have been huge: broodingly handsome, literate, ambitious, it was Hell who pioneered the electrocuted crop punk hairstyle and first repurposed torn T-shirts with safety pins.

Alongside New Rose, there was the irrepressible Neat Neat Neat and sinister beauties like I Fall, Born To Kill and So Messed Up. Feel The Pain alluded to illicit bouts of S&M, while Fan Club examined the wobbly lines between band worship and manipulation. The Dead Boys could easily have been one of the bands of their generation. Frontman Stiv Bators should have been punk’s poster boy. But, somewhere along the line, it all went wrong. Traditionally dismissed by a derisory media, Sham 69 have been effectively excised from punk history. It’s not as if they didn’t sell records (a consecutive run of irresistibly hooked late-70s chart singles that left punk contemporaries such as The Clash, Damned and Jam choking on their dust) or become influential (the classic Sham template continues to define today’s street-punk). The truth is that Sham 69 were always just a little too uncomfortably authentic for an essentially middle-class, largely metropolitan music press. As Sham’s vocalist Jimmy Pursey so eloquently nailed it in his lyrics to their breakthrough Angels With Dirty Faces hit: ‘ We’re the people you don’t wanna know, we come from places you don’t wanna go.’ In spite of a co-frontman stint with the original line-up of The Heartbreakers, bass-toting, mannered vocalist Hell’s incarnation of the ‘punk’ sound had way more in common with Television – the band he’d formed with Tom Verlaine in ‘73 – than with the Dolls. Voidoids’ guitarist Robert Quine matched an edgy Verlaine precision with a brink-dwelling Velvets aggression.

Although most albums use the Album in the World...Ever! suffix, some towards the late 1990s change the suffix to Anthems...Ever!, with a plural on the theme (example the album The Best Celtic Anthems...Ever!). Some even just use ...Ever! as a suffix (such as The Best TV Ads...Ever!)

One of the greatest things about post-punk is the way that it makes intense bleakness danceable despite itself; and Leeds outfit Gang of Four were one of the earliest pioneers with their debut album ‘Entertainment!’. Sarcastic in title and biting by nature, it’s a record that sets out an urgent agenda with thumping drums: spanning from political violence in Northern Ireland to rampant consumerism. And Gang of Four’s politics often veer towards the personal: the likes of ‘5.45’ and ‘Contract’ nail the lingering sense of anxiety and dread that comes with a constant numbing bombardment of terrible news. “ Our bodies make us worry,” frontman Andy Gill sings cheerfully on the latter, atop spiking and uneasy dub-punk. Despair and disenfranchisement colliding with gold-standard pop writing – it doesn’t get much better than this. They didn’t know it at the time, but the Misfits would be the bridge between the US punk scene and its younger, gnarlier brother, hardcore. They muscled onto bills at CBGBs, the ground zero of New York punk; they’d take the stage at 3am to a roomful of strung-out scenesters. Why it was so influential: Gang of Four’s kid-in-a-sweet-shop approach to genre – snatching up elements of disco, funk and dub – didn’t just shape post-punk’s scattershot approach. ‘Entertainment! also influenced everything from rap to grunge: Kurt Cobain once said that Nirvana began as a partial rip-off of Gang of Four. Joy Division, ‘Unknown Pleasures’ (1979) If The Clash never really disavowed White Riot, they also never recorded anything like it again. It split the audience and ultimately split the band too. Why it was so influential: Just listen to virtually any ’80s pop record that came out after ‘Dare’ to hear its hallmarks. Elastica, ‘Elastica’ (1995)Despite the first volume only entering at #5, it achieved at least Gold status, whilst the second volume received Platinum status. Exploding out of Belfast and breathing new life into a flagging punk scene, Stiff Little Fingers – fronted by raw-throated firebrand Jake Burns – saw their debut album Inflammable Material album reach the UK Top 20 on its release in 1979. The raw, angst-ridden sound influenced largely by the Irish Troubles, Inflammable Material veered from spiky anthems like Suspect Device and White Noise to a remarkably mature take on Bob Marley’s Johnny Was that shone a light on the vibrant quartet’s burgeoning abilities. Another identical release has "Printed in the UK", "Made in Holland" and has SID Codes is here: The Best Punk Album In The World...Ever!.

This volume features repeats of songs featured in previous volumes from the series; The Stone Roses' "What The World Is Waiting For" featured on Volume 3, and Mansun's "Wide Open Space" featured on Volume 5, although the version of "Wide Open Space" here is a remix by Paul Oakenfold.Following the success of Volume 2, Volumes 1 and 2 were compiled into a box set, released in the same original CD boxes, but a slipcase had been placed over them displaying new artwork. The cover subtitles the set 4 CD Deluxe Limited Edition. In Los Angeles in 1980, the first wave of local punk bands, including incendiary art-punks X, had established a groundswell of allegiance among the disillusioned. “Punk in LA was reacting against the great success and dominance of bands like Van Halen,” explains Mark Vallen, an illustrator for Slash, the influential West Coast punk magazine. “Just the whole look and feel of it reeked of elitism.” At their peak, Elastica had to put up with a lot of sexist bullshit – namely accusations that they owed their success to vocalist Justine Frischmann’s past relationships (earlier in the ’90s she dated both her Suede bandmate Brett Anderson and Blur’s Damon Albarn). The band were also lumped in with various Britpop bands dominating music at the time, despite the fact that Elastica share far more in common with pop-leaning Talking Heads and Wire at their spiniest. And their self-titled classic album is post-punk revivalism at its finest – as well as a venomous middle finger slung in the direction of people too stupid to underestimate them.