London Calling (album) - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Tom Carson found the album vast and engaging in its celebration of "the romance of rock & roll rebellion", and remarked that, "for all its first-take scrappiness and guerrilla production, this two-LP set ... is music that means to endure. It's so rich and far-reaching that it leaves you not just exhilarated but exalted and triumphantly alive." Robert Christgau described London Calling as "warm, angry, and thoughtful, confident, melodic, and hard-rocking" and called it "the best double-LP since Exile on Main Street". The album topped the 1980 Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll. Christgau, the poll's creator, also named it the best album of 1980 in an accompanying piece for the Pazz & Jop and remarked that "it generated an urgency and vitality and ambition (that Elvis P. cover!) which overwhelmed the pessimism of its leftist world-view."

According to Dave Thompson, London Calling established The Clash as more than "a simple punk band" and, despite its amalgam of disparate and occasionally disjointed influences, was a "potent" record of neurotic post-punk. Don McLeese of the Chicago Sun-Times hailed it as The Clash's best album and "punk's finest hour", as it found the band broadening their artistry without compromising their original vigor and immediacy. Sal Ciolfi of PopMatters called it a "big, loud, beautiful collection of hurt, anger, restless thought, and above all hope" that still sounds "relevant and vibrant". In a review of its reissue, Uncut wrote that the songs and characters in the lyrics cross-reference each other because of the album's exceptional sequencing and remarked that "The Vanilla Tapes" bonus disc enhances what is already a "masterpiece".