By the time the Clash limped into 1985, they’d all but pissed away their goodwill from the punk faithful, and allowed suspicion, paranoia, and rampant egotism to turn the band into a farce. With Topper Headon’s drug-fueled departure from the drum stool in the wake of the commercial success of 1982’s Combat Rock, already cooling their momentum, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon then convinced themselves that whatever diva pretense was keeping Mick Jones afloat, it was too much to bear any further. Having jettisoned the undervalued rock swagger from the fold, the pair recruited a trio of bad haircuts to bow out with the oft-maligned Cut the Crap, a bloated album that handily arrived with its own review in the title.
In truth, Cut the Crap wasn’t a complete disaster. Sure, it was mostly… well… crap. Alongside the disappointingly subpar numbers, drenched in the standard 1980s production, were one or two songs that weren’t total duds, most notably the anthemic single “This Is England,” which, when you look past the clap track and the rudimentary synthesizer, isn’t really so bad after all.