London Calling

The title alludes to the BBC World Service station identification, this is London calling, used in the Second World War. The lyric mentions a nuclear error, a reference to the Three Mile Island accident of March 1979, and the line about London drowning comes from concern that a Thames flood would drown central London. Strummer said the band felt they were struggling and about to slip down a slope, grasping with their fingernails. The song fades out on a Morse code signal spelling S-O-S.

It was recorded at Wessex Sound Studios, produced by Guy Stevens and engineered by Bill Price. Price recalled that Strummer wanted it to sound like London, with fog swirling off the Thames and seagulls overhead. For the instrumental break he put a slow, multiple repeat on Strummer's seagull imitations, using a Studer A80 tape machine on varispeed. Pitchfork called it horrifyingly apocalyptic.

Single

Released on 7 December 1979, it reached number 11 in the UK and was the band's highest-charting single there until Should I Stay or Should I Go reached number one in 1991. Don Letts directed the video, which shows the band playing the song on a boat at Festival Pier in Battersea Park, on the Thames, on a cold and rainy night in early December 1979. The DJ Annie Nightingale bet Strummer a Cadillac that the single would reach the top 10 without the band appearing on Top of the Pops. It peaked at 11, and a listener donated a Cadillac, which was auctioned to raise funds for the steel town of Corby.

The Guardian's Dave Simpson ranked it fifth among the Clash's 40 greatest songs. Rolling Stone placed it number 15 on its 2004 list of the 500 greatest songs, and the 1979 recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2007. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band opened their June 2009 Hyde Park concert with it. In March 2022 the surviving members of the band gave Ukrainian punk band Beton permission to rewrite the lyrics as Kyiv Calling.