“Ace Of Spades” — Motorhead

As you’ll know by now if you’ve read any of my other articles on Medium, I like song lyrics. Perhaps a little more than most people would consider healthy.

A great metaphor, an interesting turn of phrase, a juxtaposition that gives a fresh perspective to an old story…for those reasons and more, although a set of lyrics wouldn’t be a song without the music, a tune by itself is unlikely to change the world without lyrics.

And because I like good lyrics, there are sections of the music industry where I spend comparatively little time. Opera, for example, largely screeched in foreign languages I don’t understand, is something I can admire for its technical merits, but don’t particularly enjoy.

Similarly, misogynistic hip-hop is something I gladly stay clear of. And by the same token, speed metal isn’t somewhere I’d usually go to find clever lyrics. But that’s exactly where you’ll find today’s song.

“Ace Of Spades” was released by iconic British band Motorhead in 1980, and opened a door into the guitar-driven post-punk music scene.

It has to be said, this was a door you walked through wearing an old leather jacket and tatty jeans, rather than the gold lame jumpsuits, dodgy perms and sequins which were such a fixture of music during much of the 1980s.

Today, Motorhead is celebrated as, if perhaps not the actual inventors of the genre, at least one of the early pioneers of the 1980’s heavy metal movement.