Plastic Bag

At 4:54 it is the longest song on Germfree Adolescents, and it was the one number the band left out when they played the album in full at the Roundhouse in 2008. Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly says Styrene coupled an environmental critique with an incendiary indictment of advertising, and quotes the lines about a mind like a plastic bag that corresponds to all those ads, and eating Kleenex for breakfast.

Contemporary reviewers were divided. Tim Lott of Record Mirror felt it went beyond the bounds of good kitsch. Jon Savage called it the one track that was actively annoying, blaming a cumbersome arrangement. Charles Shaar Murray said it was by no means as excellently realised as on the band's early demo tapes.