YMMV / Public Image Ltd.

• Awesome Music: "Anger is an energy, anger is an energy..."
  • Most of their early material qualifies, but "Public Image" is probably the band's personal Moment of Awesome.
  • How about their bizarre performance on American Bandstand"? Yup, someone at American Bandstand decided to book an intentionally uncommercial band with zero US pop hits.
• Broken Base: The band's shift to more commercially-accessible music from This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get to That What Is Not. One camp of fans see the move as a betrayal of Public Image Limited's ethos of rejecting rock as we know it, selling out and appealing to the masses they had spent their last three albums purposely alienating. Other fans saw the move as a breath of fresh air after the absolute mindfuckery that was The Flowers of Romance, and point out how despite the band becoming more commercial for a while, they were still rejecting conventional rock, albeit in a different way than before.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite only appearing on the first two albums, bassist Jah Wobble is easily the most famous member besides Lydon due to his distinctive playing and a fairly fruitful solo career.
• Epic Riff: Their first two albums, while graced with some brilliant guitar playing, have very few actual "riffs". Jah Wobble's bass lines, on the other hand...
  • The lead riff to "Religion II"...Angry as hell.
• Fridge Horror: "Poptones", once you get around to worrying about the metaphors.
  • And what is the realisation? That the song is from the perspective of someone who has been kidnapped, raped, shot in the head and left to die in the woods.
  • About half of Metal Box is like this, actually...
  • and the cumulative effect of the "We only wanted to be loved" chants in "Fodderstompf"? *shudder*
• Nightmare Fuel: Have their own page.
• Questionable Casting: While they were never officially inducted into the band, the lineup of session musicians included on Album raised more than a few eyebrows among punk fans. Being co-produced by Bill Laswell, the album features many other collaborators of his, including Ryuichi Sakamoto on synths, Bernard Fowler on backing vocals, Steve Vai on guitar, and Ginger Baker on drums. While Sakamoto and Vai have their share of experience making Avant-Garde Music, they and the album's other session musicians are far-removed from John Lydon's punk roots, resulting in their inclusion being met with skepticism from punk fans.

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