I think I heard "Orgasm Addict" from some friends in 10th grade & sought out this CD immediately. I'm surprised it still plays because of how often I spun it in the 2nd half of high school. There are some exceptions to my (elitist? probably) policy against greatest hits compilations, & Singles Going Steady is probably the pinnacle. It was the only Buzzcocks record released in the US at the time, despite the band having 2 LPs out already in Britain, & it's still remembered as their calling card. In fact, it's more properly thought of as a collection of singles (duh, the clue's right there in the title, with a cheeky play on words referencing the band's propensity for puppy-love lyrics), since the custom in the UK at the time was to treat singles as their own releases, not teasers for LPs, so as to make the 7"s more special & to avoid asking consumers to pay twice for the same songs. So for a long time, short of owning the singles, this record was the only way to get iconic songs like "Orgasm Addict" & "What Do I Get?" making it an essential artifact & bypassing the redundancy that mars a lot of compilations.
The album is also sequenced in a unique way, mirroring the structure of a 7" single itself. Rather than following an A-side with its B-side, the album features all the A-sides on side 1, & corresponding B-sides on side 2. Admittedly, when you play this through on a CD you don't get the experience of flipping the record over to hear all the B-sides, but it's still a neat idea. You might think this would make the album feel frontloaded, but it doesn't. The 'Cocks were such strong songwriters that the B-sides aren't less interesting, just less poppy. Especially toward the end, they were experimenting with post-punk territory with midtempo reverbed bass-led songs like "Something's Gone Wrong Again" & "Why Can't I Touch It?" the latter of which sounds like The Fall meets XTC! Then there are the dissonant skronkings of "Just Lust" & the aptly titled "Noise Annoys," which manages to be just a bit more than a novelty track.
But as intriguing as they are, most listeners aren't here for the experimental inklings of side 2--they're here for the hits, & nobody (with the possible exception of my pet favorites The Undertones) was writing pop-punk songs this consistently good. I dare you not to dance around the room to "What Do I Get" like Thora Birch in Ghost World, or back Pete up on "ohh-ohh" vocals when "Love You More" or "Promises" comes on. "Ever Fallen In Love?" with its minor/major tension is probably the best song they ever wrote. (If you haven't heard Le Butcherettes cover it, do yourself a favor.)
I could go track by track & talk about the Beatlesque bridge on "Promises," the Clash-isms of "Harmony In My Head," the deceptively complex bass playing (by Garth Smith) on "Whatever Happened To?," or the band's weird habit of ending song titles with question marks, but fuck it. If you know this album, you know how infectious its energy is. If you don't, seek it out & then read this again.
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