The song designed to be the greatest seven inch single ever, had to be a song about songs.
Simple, exciting, catchy, unique and exactly as it should be. Panic by The Smiths is one of the best pop songs that was ever recorded.
It’s about emotions, it’s about a feeling felt in every town by every youngster heading out to the disco’s and the clubs. Panic stands up for the young of 1980’s England, it looks the 60’s and 70’s straight in the eye and says ‘It’s our time now. Get out of our way’.
It disses the mainstream and it calls for drastic action
“Burn down the disco and hang the blessed DJ, Because the music they constantly play, says nothing to me about my life”
In the era of grey skies, grey politics and grey prospects this was an Anthem. It still feels like one to this day.
The Smiths came without glitz, glamour or Auntie Beebs approval. They were left of the middle. Doing their own thing, they were the realest band because they weren’t chest beating or aspiring to do anything other than talk about how it felt to be on the outside an overlooked.
Panic was the moment their amassed army of fans were given direct (yet metaphorical) instructions.
Steve For The Deaf 
Hang the DJ Hang the DJ Hang the DJ
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One of the few songs in The Smiths catalogue that I like an awfy lot (I know, I know… tsk, tsk, etc.)
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Panic on the streets of London… and New York and L.A. and Paris and Toronto… and perhaps even, Ottawa. SO much music that says so little about my life. But there is also a lot that I can appreciate and this track is one fabulous example.
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What a track. I remember the first time I heard it when I was 13…what a time to be alive!
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