She Is Beyond Good and Evil

"She Is Beyond Good and Evil" was released on March 2, 1979 on Radar Records (ADA 29), 3:23, with the B-side "3'38"; Dennis Bovell produced it and George Peckham mastered it. The line-up was Mark Stewart on vocals, Gareth Sager on saxophone and guitar, John Waddington on guitar, Simon Underwood on bass, and Bruce Smith on drums and percussion. It was not on the original LP of Y; the 2007 Rhino/Radar CD adds it as track one, and the 2019 definitive edition puts it on disc two.

Stewart, in an interview Wikipedia summarizes, said the lyrics are about unconditional love as a revolutionary force, combining idealism, energy and poetic, existential and political yearning, passing through nihilism and emerging on the other side with something positive. Head Heritage called it a seething tense piece of aggressive funk, punk, dub and free jazz and one of the landmark recordings of the 1970s, and the B-side a pulverizing dose of mind-numbing dub.

It came 19th in the NME's singles of 1979, 69th in Sounds' hundred best singles of all time (1986), 71st in the NME's top 150 (1987), 27th in Q's 50 ultimate British songs (2011) and 49th in Treble's top 200 songs of the 1970s, and was included in The Pitchfork 500 (2008) and the Guardian's 1000 songs everyone must hear (2009). No chart positions were found.

A different original version, which the Agit Reader says was produced by Andy Mackay of Roxy Music, opens Cabinet of Curiosities (2014), and Bovell's dub version is on Y in Dub (2021). Live versions are on Idealists in Distress from Bristol (2007, 5:48) and on Y Live. St. Vincent covered it in October 2011 and on a late-night television show that November. We hold two uploads under this title and which version each is has not been determined.