Before he was curating an Instagram account for his majestic cockatoo, Iggy Pop was making punk music with The Stooges. And before she was demanding trophies over SOPHIE beats, Charli XCX was flirting with her own brand of (pop)-punk on 2014’s superb Sucker . Now, these two punk-rockers have come together (kind of) to inject some punk into the mainstream once again.
Vinyl, HBO’s new drama about the drug-fueled world of the 1970s music industry, took a cue from musical shows like Glee and Empire and has been steadily releasing new music from the show. Ranging from classics, like the late David Bowie’s “Suffragette City,” to more out-of-the-box, like Trey Songz’s cover of Bowie’s “Life on Mars?,” the music emerging from Vinyl has been unpredictable, if nothing else.
For its latest installment, the producers had all-around bad girl Charli XCX take on The Stooges’ “No Fun.” The end-product is a fun snarky song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Charli’s Sucker. Equally biting and exciting, “No Fun” finds Charli at her most carefree, offering up chants in one of her lower registers over a simple guitar line.
The cover is taken from Vinyl: The Essentials (Best of Season 1), which is out today. Listen to the new tune below.