Help Us Make The Ultimate Angry Playlist
Find the most furious songs in our guide to angry music—and then contribute your own.
Musicians have long known that the best thing you can do with anger is let it out in screams, in public. Use our handy guide to find the best song for your particular shade of rage, download our Spotify playlist and get it all out.
Plus: Want to make this list even stronger? Tell us about your own favorites, and we’ll compile them for sharing with the Anxy community.
Sex Pistols, “God Save The Queen”
Cause: Disillusion with the establishment
Flavor: Snarling resentment
Listen to when: You just flipped off a cop with a tattooed middle finger.
Strikes, unemployment, energy crises: The 1970s were not good for the UK’s working class. The Sex Pistols’ best-known song, whose refrain of “no future” became emblematic of the nihilism of the punk movement, is an attack on the treatment of the working class and a cutting rewrite of Britain’s national anthem. Its cult status for the angry and disenfranchised is only increased by rumors that it was falsely denied the number one spot in the British charts—the music industry’s own faked moon landing.
Heart, “Barracuda”
Cause: False friends
Flavor: Accusatory annoyance
Listen to when: Deleting contacts from your phone address book.
It’s difficult to know how to deal with rumors. When a radio promoter insinuated a relationship between Heart frontwoman Ann Wilson and her bandmate sister Nancy, she decided she’d had enough of the recording industry bullshit. She wrote this engine-pumping heavy bass riff, and from then on she would stare into the crowd at concerts, take her hand off the heavy metal strings for a second’s silence, and narrow her eyes at all those potential snakes: “Oooooh, Barracuda!”
Rage Against The Machine, “Killing In The Name”
Cause: The military-industrial complex
Flavor: Unadulterated, righteous rage
Listen to when: Your hair finally grew out long enough to swoosh in a circle.
It has been deemed scientifically impossible not to headbang to this song’s bell-toll guitar vrooms. However, its true strength lies in the lyrics, which calmly whisper the truth about the brutality and racism that have marked America’s police force for decades. The band’s name says it all: If you believe in something, stand up and mosh for it. Plus, its authority-questioning expletives have provided a release valve against countless bad bosses.
Kelis, “Caught Out There”
Cause: Cheating ex
Flavor: Destructive, fiery wrath
Listen to when: You need to shout.
At the beginning of one of her early hits, Kelis explicitly calls out in solidarity to Jojo, Alanis, Pink, and all the other women who aren’t on this list but still need to scream: “I hate you / so much right now!” The stripped-down production by the Neptunes is a low-key canvas for the rainbow-haired vocalist’s angry scribbles. Because sometimes anger is so simple that digging up a teeth-baring, bubble-bursting scream from those emotional depths expresses all there is to say.
Kanye West, “Stronger”
Cause: His own mistakes
Flavor: Kanye own-brand frustration
Listen to when: You’re ready to channel your anger into effort.
In some ways, it’s easy to be angry at other people, situations, and systems. But when you know your anger is entirely your own fault, the hot rage can push inwards and intersect with other emotions, like guilt and shame. When you’re as much of a perfectionist as Kanye — the Guardian reported that he recorded over 50 versions of the song — inadequacy takes on a new meaning.
Josie Thaddeus-Johns is a British writer who lives in Berlin. This is an excerpt taken from Issue №1 of Anxy. Take a look now, or sign up to receive our weekly newsletter with exclusive new stories.
