08. Phuture - Acid Trax

There are two ways in which this is a defining moment for people who love BASS. First is the most obvious: when the first tones of that bass pump in over those classic Chicago house drums, and everyone cheers in recognition, twerking to the beat juuuust right and waiting for the next level of bass experience. ACID. The sounds of the 303, a machine intended to create electronic basslines, mutated and warped into a psychedelic, squirming head-fuck swirling all around, belching otherworldy burbles bursting through your cerebral cortex. It is the sound of the unexpected, the simultaneously frightening and pulse-pumping adrenaline of the ripped-wide-open sounds of the new dancefloor. The question wasn’t “bass—how low can you go?” but “bass—where are you taking me?!”
[David Drake]

06. The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby

This brilliant slab of funky architecture adds (and deletes) layers of sound with teasing impunity throughout its 4.40 minutes, nowhere more notably that that shiver-inducing moment at 23 seconds in when George Porter Jr.’s rubbery, sparse bassline hits the wah guitar and stuttering drums for a six. What’s especially thrilling about “Just Kissed My Baby” is the way each part of the arrangement is at pains to break on through and really get crazy throughout the song (particularly those insistent horns), but it’s the bass that keeps on holding back. In the hands of any other bassist, the introduction would likely be little more than a porno-style “uh-beow,” but Porter Jr. makes it as irresistible as that elevator-drop whirl in your stomach upon first really kissing someone new.
[Justin Cober-Lake]

01. Queen – Under Pressure

Who would have thought that such an extravagant, ostentatious band could team up with such a ludicrously flamboyant solo artist and create something so possessed of understated cool, so minimal and precise? No one embodied 70s excess like Queen did, except perhaps David Bowie. They came together, once, for one song, and that bassline was the progeny. The song itself, of course, rose into a showy stomp, but oh my. John Deacon channelled Chic into that bassline. So magic that even Vanilla Ice couldn’t fuck it up. So magic that it made Vanilla Ice sound good. ANYONE could sound good with that riff underneath them. The least cool band ever, the least cool rapper ever, and the coolest bassline.
[Nick Southall]