or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

The very philosophy behind the Buzzcocks is a not-so-intense bitch-slap that will probably never truly be appreciated, and it really doesn’t help that this band wasn’t the most original of the class of ‘77 punkers. The group emerged only after founders Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto saw a Sex Pistols gig themselves. Their third single is a complete chord-for-chord lift of the Ramones’ "Judy is a Punk."

But the Buzzcocks were different. They were the approachable punks. While Ray Davies sang about English businessmen entering midlife crises, Shelley sang of his insatiable thirst for the big O. Paul Weller was maddeningly cool as he sneered and wore sunglasses; this group didn’t comb their bangs out of the way. They were like you and me; all their songs were about the girls they just couldn’t have, but at the same time, they wore suits, and grew up playing Stooges and Brian Eno covers. Shelley and Steve Diggle couldn’t help that they were common little punks who just wanted to be cool—that’s what they were best at. Shelley, who changed his name from Peter McNeish, wrote three-minute pop songs that weren’t about bringing down the queen or of being bored with the USA. The Buzzcocks didn’t want to hurt anyone; they just wanted attention for their adolescent miseries—no sir, Shelley and Diggle couldn’t escape the trappings of girls.

And really, for every smart-ass who always thought that they were better than everyone else in high school, isn’t that all they wanted? To show everyone how smart they were—but to be adored as well? Oh god, just to be adored! To wear those nice clothes, to get the girls, and to write music that kept everyone in check—with how fucking awesome they are.But the truth is, everyone knows that those kids are the coolest kids in the class. They know that those kids are totally deplorable, wailing away in pain for every second of their adolescent life. But that they are okay with that—I’m gonna be this way for a while; might as well make the most of it. Those kids are in control of their problems, and because of that, they’ve got that edge over everyone else who’s got those same feelings but doesn’t know what to do.

The Buzzcocks were the smartest (in their minds) punk band to come out Manchester and their efficient three-minute pop symphonies don’t suggest otherwise. Shelley knew to trim the fat on "I Don’t Mind," but unlike his stooped contemporary Joey Ramone, he throws on more. Harmonies across the board. Steady bass galloping weaving in and out of tightly-knit five-step back-and-forth chord progression are pushed up front, with guitar fills throughout the song. "I Don’t Mind" features the same exact chords as "Judy Is A Punk," and in retrospect, is a fairly packed song—but clocking in at two minutes and eighteen seconds, it just isn’t long enough. It’s an anthem for the boys who can’t get the girl, voice cracking and all, and over-the-top falsetto wailings are seemingly unreal themselves, spiraling in the climax to the highest reaches of punk energy. Everything is as crafted as closely as a Krautrock number; there’s a reason the Buzzcocks stole Can beats on "Why Can’t I Touch It?" and why The Clash stole from Sly & Robbie.

Singles Going Steady, simply put, is the essential Buzzcocks record, a 45-minute, sixteen-song document of not only the best singles of the punk era, but of the rock song canon. Nothing shown here is brazenly inventive or different from everyone else—it’s the execution that makes it so crucial. The uptight arrangements with secure drum slaps and vocals pushed up front, sidling next to falsetto harmonies and guitar riffs were never this well put together; making a very interesting comparison to the sloppy and complete balls-out Never Mind The Bollocks- two records of punk rock at complete different ends of the spectrum. While the Pistols gave us The Circle Jerks and angry rock, the Buzzcocks gave us Supergrass and efficient mod-rockers.

Even at their most angry, the Diggle-penned "Harmony In My Head," the furious "fuck you girl"-type roars are always kept in check by well-placed guitar fills and bass clanging. "Whenever I am down about things I do" are the only recognizable lyrics in the song, and, symbolically, the rest of the song dissolves into a mumbling rage. Why kids discovering punk rock today think they need to bring anarchy in the UK, I don’t know. This is what they should be listening to—a song that perfectly mirrors the frustrations with what’s important at age fifteen, girls. The intense howl is what I know I feel, and what most people reading this have read at that age felt. But never was it so brilliantly expressed—clean, cropped, and pissed as hell.And when he finally gets the girl, Shelley doesn’t know what to do with himself. Yeah, this sounds fairly simple, but what one has to understand is that this had never happened before. Up until the Buzzcocks’ creation, the despair of loneliness had never been thrown directly in your face with this passionate punk energy. Not taking down the man or being a jackass—just the girls! It’s appropriate that the Buzzcocks’ first single, "Orgasm Addict," took that "hardy har, masturbating is great" mentality, and the B-side questioned authority ("whatever happened to Chairman Mao?"). By their second-last-single on Singles Going Steady, "Everybody’s Happy Nowadays," in just two years, Shelley had "matured" to talking about how much he didn’t love, but hate, girls. "Love is an illusion / love is a dream / but I don’t know what it is."

"I just want a lover like any other / what do I get? / I only want a friend who will stay to the end / what do I get?" I couldn’t really grasp how great this lyric was when I first heard it; the straightforward bluntness of the question on everybody’s mind — including mine at the time, and in 1977, Shelley’s — truly shocked me. For once, love was not beautiful. It sucked. Of course, the minute-and-half clip "Oh Shit!", the B-side to "What Do I Get?" just continues the, er, eloquence. Under a machine-gun-like keyboard drone, Shelley just lets loose. "You’re shit / you’re shit / admit / admit / admit / admit / you’re shit!" This, closing a rant that includes the progression from "oh shit / I thought we were friends" to "oh shit / I wish you weren’t a fucking cow."

"Noise Annoys." "Autonomy." "Something’s Gone Wrong Again." As the B-sides show, the world’s a giant fucking mess, the same thing all the time, to the nasally punks Shelley and Diggle. But that’s all right to them. As long as the Buzzcocks had their girls to sing about (and "fucking yourself to death") under their direct pop-punk odes, everything’s all right. Singles Going Steady should be a mandatory listen to young punks waking up to the world of rock and roll.