Listen to XTC’s ‘The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead’ from Nonsuch for your Repeat Rotation Video
I’ve been a bit obsessed with British alternative rock band XTC over the last couple of days, ever since I heard XTC’s ‘Dear God‘ featured in the new Stephen King movie ‘IT‘.
And they are a band I have not honestly listened to that much in the last 20 years. Not since I used to play them obsessively on my ‘British Exports‘ radio show back in the early 1990s.
XTX is, however, the best band to ever come out of the U.K. and one of the most underrated rock bands of all time. And, yes, I include The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Coldplay in that statement.
Active for from 1978 to 2006 when they sadly disbanded once and for all, XTC produced 14 studio albums, and a slew of compilations, instrumentals, demos and tribute albums. Yet they never managed to grab the attention of the general public like they should have.
Especially as every album they produced was pretty much perfect, and not one song out of their hundreds was even remotely bad.
So, today, I’m listening to XTC’s ‘The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead‘ from their 1992 album Nonsuch as my Repeat Rotation Video. Because, frankly, it is one of the best songs ever released.
The song was also one of the band’s few number 1 hit singles when it was released hitting the top spot on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks chart.
It is a track that has a gorgeous harmonica, a melody you will be instantly obsessed with and a feeling that, while it sounds like a would-be happy song, it really isn’t.
Instead, as you will see in the official video for the song below, it has more to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy than anything else and how, those people that point out the bad things about society those in charge want to hide from us often come to a sticky end.
Related: The Top 5 best alternative rock music bands of all time? All except one are British, of course
Watch the official video for XTC’s ‘The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead‘ below. I dare you not to be obsessed with that gorgeous song.
You can buy their album Nonsuch on most digital music platforms and, if you love classic alternative rock music and that album is not in your collection, you really should.
It is 17 tracks of absolute British New Wave perfection, and emblematic of the crying shame that XTC did not get the recognition they deserved.