Poptones

One of the first songs recorded for Metal Box, it has Keith Levene on drums, since the band was between drummers. Levene said he accidentally played Yes's Starship Trooper in it. Lydon said the lyric came from a newspaper story he remembered, about a girl who was abducted and later helped the police identify the men through a tune on a cassette they played over and over. Wobble remembered it differently, as a journey in a roadie's Japanese car with a dodgy cassette playing. He called it the jewel in the PiL crown and said the bass line is as symmetrical as a snowflake.

Reynolds wrote in Pitchfork that the title drips with acrid irony and that the music is surprisingly pretty, in an eerie, insidious sort of way. Rolling Stone's 2006 review said Lydon was practically a post-punk Marty Feldman here, cackling at his own psychic horrors. The book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die names it among Metal Box's key tracks.