The Smiths - Frankly Mr. Shankley

Paul McClean - ATL Producer

"Frankly Mr Shankly since you ask, you are a flatulent pain in the arse". The Smiths frontman has made a natty sideline in quotable bitchy lines. Practically every song that has been produced by the pen of Morrissey contains a degree of poison but on Frankly Mr Shankly, he comes straight to the point with zero faff and little of the flair with which we associate the erudite manc. As well as utterly dissing (allegedly Geoff Travis, label boss at Rough Trade) Mr Shankly's poetic efforts, the almost childlike, expasperated tone is so at odds with most of the Smiths lyrics that it’s a real jaw dropper of a line, especially on a song with such a jaunty disposition. Morrissey has written a million better lines, but in abject, sod this I think you're a walt of the cuff mean-ness, this wins hands down.

Fight Like Apes - Jake Summers

Amy McGarrigle - ATL Content Assistant

MayKay from Fight Like Apes is not a girl you'd want to cross. She aint the most subtle of lyricists and you really dont have to venture too far to find a good insult and a revengful lyric. But there's something about the line in 'Jake Summers' that always has me shouting along:

"Hey you what's your face, I've got a pocket full of fist, you've got stupid face.

Hey you, know your place, you're like Kentucky Fried Chicken but without the taste"

There's more lines to that song, but they're not quite as suitable for a BBC blog. But comparing somebody to a piece of deep fried chicken is somewhat childish, and in many parts genius!

Sebadoh - Gimmie Indie Rock (1991)

Steven rainey - ATL Buddy

After his inglorious exit from the legendary Dinosaur Jr, Lou Barlow began crafting slacker anthems under the Sebadoh banner, inadvertently crowning himself the king of the burgeoning lo-fi scene in America. However, in 1991 he decided to issue a broadside against the entire American indie scene, full of hilarious, mean-spirited statements about all of his contemporaries.

'Gimmie Indie Rock' takes pot-shots at Sonic Youth ("They got what they wanted, maybe I can get what I want to?"), Husker Du ("It's a new generation of electric white-boy blues!"), and Dinosaur Jr themselves ("Pedal hopping like a Dinosaur, J…"). Satirising how the indie rock world had now become big business in the post-Nirvana world, Barlow howls, "Soon it's further than you ever thought it'd go, 4 stars in the Rolling Stone," before the song collapses in a hail of drone and pure indie-rock sludge.

Perversely, the song made Sebadoh even bigger than they had been before, and set Barlow up as a sardonic observer of the indie-rock scene, pushing him further ahead than his former bandmates in Dinosaur Jr. I'm sure J Mascis was really, really happy for him.