42: Breeders, “Cannonball EP” (no.40, 1993)

If not the greatest one-hit wonder of all time, then quite possibly the hippest - and such is the visceral impact of the title track that it almost doesn’t matter that the rest of the EP (a cover of Aerosmith’s “King of the Thighs”, for heaven’s sake!) was mere filler. It arrives bearing guitar riffs like engine revs: a few verses to get us up through the gears, and then it’s off, and practically unstoppable - well, at least until those naughty Soulwax chappies mashed it up with Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” a decade later. Yet, even as it dropped off the production line, “Cannonball” always was something of a cut-and-shut: one half Noo Yawk noise experiment, one half calculated pop hit, fusing those melodic girl-group “hey now”s and a seriously catchy bass riff to crashing guitars and wails of feedback. Entirely apt it should have only reached no.40 - too vital (too essential, damn it) to remain underground, this was a song both of the hit parade, and not quite of the charts.