3 Raucous Tracks To Celebrate 40 Years of ‘Let It Be’ by The Replacements

Let It Be crossed the threshold between working-class misfit musicians and a band to be taken seriously.

Examining his band The Replacements, Paul Westerberg said the noisy, “fake hardcore rock was getting us nowhere.” Steadily, he was evolving into one of his generation’s leading songwriters, fronting what became one of the decade’s best bands. But they had to survive themselves first. “This was the first time I had songs that we arranged, rather than just banging out riffs and giving them titles,” he said to Rolling Stone.

Though they always stood on unsteady ground, Let It Be signals The Replacements getting (mostly) serious about their craft. However, “Gary’s Got a Boner” does the good work of keeping things from being too earnest.

Vulnerability hides in plain sight behind the Minneapolis group’s irreverent swagger. (Proving nothing is sacred, they plucked the title from The Beatles’ final album.)

To celebrate 40 years of Let It Be, here are three raucous tracks from America’s most endearing and chaotic underground rock bands.

“Androgynous”

David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust was an androgynous rock star. But Stardust was an alien, from outer space. Paul Westerberg crafted a song about a non-gender conforming romance, humanizing a non-binary couple. Remember, this is 1984 and Westerberg writes with the hope of someday laughing at Kewpie dolls and urine stalls the way you’re laughed at now. Miley Cyrus, Joan Jett, and Laura Jane Grace covered “Androgynous” in 2015 for Cyrus’ Backyard Sessions in support of her Happy Hippy Foundation, which centers on LGBTQ youth homelessness.

“I Will Dare”

The Replacements come from the same Big Star power pop tradition as R.E.M. You can hear the shared DNA between bands on the album opener, which features Peter Buck. However, Buck isn’t the one playing mandolin. That’s Westerberg. Bob Stinson had struggled to think of a guitar solo so Westerberg told Buck to do it. “I Will Dare” could be a love song, solidarity between friends, or The Replacements’ audacious mantra. Also, the swinging groove in “I Will Dare” showcases the importance of the quartet’s rhythm section—drummer Chris Mars and bassist Tommy Stinson.

“Unsatisfied”

This song influenced generations of college rockers blending melodic acoustic music and punk rock. During the Goo Goo Dolls’ pre-“Iris” days, Westerberg’s songwriting and singing style weren’t hard to trace in the work of John Rzeznik. “Unsatisfied” was still unfinished when Westerberg brought it to the studio. You can hear the musicians trying to figure things out as the tape rolls. A singer searches for answers to his discontent, and loose improvisation echoes the disappointment.

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