You Suffer
| "You Suffer" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| A-side | "You Suffer" |
| B-side | "Mega-Armageddon Death Pt. 3" by Electro Hippies |
"You Suffer" is a song by the British grindcore band Napalm Death, from their debut album, Scum. The song has earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest recorded song ever.[1] It is precisely 1.316 seconds long.[1]
The song was written by band members Nicholas Bullen and Justin Broadrick during the sessions for the From Enslavement to Obliteration demo recording in March 1986, and is featured on the album Scum, released in 1987.
According to Broadrick:
"You Suffer" was largely a comedy thing, one-second song. Utterly retarded. It's ridiculous, but it was hilarious. We played that song in front of 30 local kids, like, every weekend. We played that song 30 times. It was a laugh.[2]
Nic Bullen said that the brevity of the song was inspired by Wehrmacht's 1985 song "E!"[3]
Zak Smith quotes the lyrics to the song, which he describes as the "shortest punk song on the subject of suffering (or any subject)" at the conclusion of his memoir We Did Porn.[4]
Single release
In 1989 the song appeared on one side of a 7" single given away free with copies of a compilation album entitled Grindcrusher. The song on the other side, "Mega-Armageddon Death Part 3" by the Electro Hippies, also lasts approximately one second, making the disc the shortest single ever released. Each side features one groove at the outer edge of the disc containing the music (with the rest of the surface containing etched writing and cartoons).[5]
Video
To coincide with the release of the Scum dualdisc in March 2007, a music video produced by Earache records was released for the song.[6]
References
- ^ a b Orange County Weekly article
- ^ Kory Grow, "Slaves to the Grind," Precious Metal: Decibel Presents the Stories Behind 25 Extreme Metal Masterpieces, Albert Mudrian, ed., Da Capo Press, p. 61.
- ^ Grow, p. 62.
- ^ Zak Smith, We Did Porn: Memoir and Drawings, Tin House Books, p. 475.
- ^ Grindcrusher page on the Earache Records website
- ^ Roadrunner Records news story