Not a sales page. Just a list.
Songs about power.The electrical kind.
Thirteen songs whose titles, or band names, play on electricity, one after another. A bit of fun, nothing more. Nothing here is about your electricity bill and nobody is selling anything. We put it together because we like them, and we thought you might too.
It starts on mute. Tap for sound, then let it run.
Now playing: Thunderstruck
AC/DC, 1990
Thirteen tracks
The list, in order.
Ordered for listening rather than by date. It opens loud, wanders through Brixton, Detroit, Düsseldorf and the Wirral, and finishes on one any pub would pick. Tap a card to play it. Tap Nod along if it gets your foot going.
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Thunderstruck
The band name is an electrical term, alternating current and direct current, so they were always going to be on this list. Angus Young's opening riff is the loudest way to start anything.
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Electric Avenue
Named after a real street in Brixton, one of the first market streets in Britain to get electric lighting. Still fills a floor more than forty years on.
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Danger! High Voltage
Regularly credited to The Darkness. It is Electric Six, from Detroit, with a saxophone that refuses to behave.
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Electric Feel
A slow, warm groove from two lads who met at university in Connecticut. Good for the bit of the afternoon when the kettle is on.
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The Power
German producers, an American rapper and one of the biggest dance records of 1990. Turn it up.
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Electricity
Mark Ronson and Diplo behind the desk, Dua Lipa out front, and a proper piano house record. It won the Grammy for Best Dance Recording.
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Together in Electric Dreams
Phil Oakey from The Human League and Giorgio Moroder, written for a film hardly anyone remembers. The song outlived it by decades and gets the whole room singing.
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Radioactivity
The Düsseldorf pioneers, six minutes of it, a breather in the middle of the list. Audio only, this one, and the 1975 original rather than the later version that turned it into a protest record.
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Electricity
Wirral lads Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, first single, 1979, on Factory Records. Three and a half minutes of synth pop and it still sounds new.
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POWER
A drum stomp built on a King Crimson sample and a choir. Play it loud in the van.
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Higher Power
Coldplay in full colour, the first single from their 2021 album, launched with a live link to an astronaut on the International Space Station. Uplift by the bucketful.
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She's Electric
Manchester's finest having a knees up, from the second album in 1995. Never a single, still one everyone can sing.
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Don't Bring Me Down
The band name is the joke here, though the song is a belter too. Birmingham's ELO, 1979, and the closer any pub would pick.
A short break
Five words from our line of work.
Five words from our day job, each with a song to go with it. Scroll sideways.
Volt V
The push. How hard the electricity is being shoved along the wire. A UK socket sits at about 230 of them.
Fits: Danger! High Voltage, Electric Six
Amp A
The flow. How much charge is moving past one point each second. A kettle pulls about 13.
Fits: Electric Avenue, Eddy Grant
Watt W
The rate. Volts times amps. It is the number on the side of the kettle and the number on the back of a solar panel.
Fits: The Power, Snap!
Ohm
The resistance. What the wire puts up against the flow. Thin wire, more ohms, more heat.
Fits: Higher Power, Coldplay
Joule J
The amount. Energy, counted. One watt kept up for one second. Your bill counts them by the million and calls them kilowatt hours.
Fits: Together in Electric Dreams, Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder
Suggestions
What have we missed?
The rule is simple. The title, or the band name, has to play on power, electricity, energy, voltage, current or charge. Mainstream, please. If a 45 year old in Clitheroe would not know it, it is probably not one for this list.
Tell us
Recently suggested
Seeded to get us started- The Power of LoveHuey Lewis and the News
- Wired for SoundCliff Richard
- Electric BlueIcehouse
- Lightning BoltJake Bugg
- Turn It On AgainGenesis
- BatteryMetallica
And finally
That's the list.
If you came for the music, that is the lot. Leave it running. If you came for the other kind of power, we do have a day job. Start with our guide to solar panels in Lancashire, the piece on sizing a home battery properly, or, if you would rather stay on the fun side, the Premier League sustainability table.
Suggestions for the list can go in the form above, to hello@energygiants.co.uk, or to us on any of these. Our own videos live on the Energy Giants YouTube channel.