K-K-K-Katy
Billy Murray
The ur-stammer · 2:51
WWI parlour song, ragtime, teasing, the ur-text
Sh-Boom
The Chords
Doo-wop’s native tongue · 2:24
doo-wop, vocal group, 1954, the original not the Crew-Cuts
Baby, Let’s Play House
Elvis Presley
The cover that invented the stutter · 2:16
Sun rockabilly, slapback, hiccup, b-b-b-baby
Tongue-Tied Jill
Charlie Feathers
Too cruel for Sun · 1:59
Meteor rockabilly, hillbilly, wild, unkind
Rave On
Sonny West
The original behind Buddy Holly · 2:16
fifties rock and roll, hiccup, elastic, we-e-ell
Barbara Ann
The Regents
Ba-ba-ba, four years early · 2:17
doo-wop, 1961, handclaps, the original not the Beach Boys
Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow
The Rivingtons
Source code · 2:15
nonsense R&B, vocal group, primal, source code
Surfin’ Bird
The Trashmen
Two songs mashed into a seizure · 2:25
garage, surf, frantic, the fork
My Generation
The Who
Live at Leeds, amphetamine velocity · 15:26
live, mod, feedback, founding document
Lola
The Kinks
The stutter as cliffhanger · 4:01
glam-tinged rock, singalong, reveal, lo-lo-lo
Changes
David Bowie
The word enacts what it names · 3:37
glam, piano, self-reinvention, ch-ch-ch
Bennie and the Jets
Elton John
Fake live, real stutter · 5:23
glam pop, piano, faux crowd, b-b-b-bennie
You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
Bachman-Turner Overdrive
A private joke, kept · 3:55
seventies hard rock, riff, in-joke, b-b-baby
Cherry Bomb
The Runaways
The stutter as fuse · 2:19
proto-punk, teenage, snarl, ch-ch-cherry
Ça plane pour moi
Plastic Bertrand
A stutter of identity · 3:02
punk, francophone, borrowed voice, wam-bam
My Sharona
The Knack
The most metronomic stutter in pop · 4:55
power pop, locked drum, hook, m-m-m-my
Da Da Da
Trio
The lyric sheet reduced to disfluency · 3:26
Neue Deutsche Welle, minimal, deadpan, Casio
Bad to the Bone
George Thorogood & The Destroyers
Bo Diddley in a borrowed jacket · 4:50
blues rock, swagger, riff, b-b-b-bad
Stutter
Elastica
The stutter as subject, not device · 2:22
Britpop, wiry, wry, can’t perform
Stutterin’ Cindy
Charlie Feathers
Answered by the slapped string · 2:31
rockabilly, slap bass, revival, late period
Scatman
Scatman John
The wound made the instrument · 3:36
eurodance, scat, triumphant, authority without announcement