This Is the One

36 Years with The Stone Roses

I first heard I Wanna Be Adored on a scratchy FM radio one spring afternoon in 1991, just a snatch of it, half-drowned in static, but enough to stop me in my tracks. I didn’t know who it was, only that it sounded like something I’d been waiting to hear all my life.

I asked my friend Millie if she knew this band who sang this amazing song about wanting to be adored. Millie knew all the cool indie bands and of course she knew this one. She handed me a battered cassette of The Stone Roses, and that was it, I was hooked, it was love at first listen.

I played The Stone Roses album obsessively that whole summer, whilst I studied for my final-year Arts exams, cycling to the campus library with my Walkman on, no helmet, just a prayer and a mixtape. The roads around Dublin rang with songs that felt like mine alone. I rode through apple blossom tree lined streets and car-cluttered laneways with She Bangs the Drums pounding in my ears. During stolen study breaks I’d stretch out in the grass by the lake in Belfield, the jangling guitars of Waterfall spilling into the sky.

I was also madly in love that summer, the kind of love that makes you feel like the world was created just for you, and that life was full of hope and shimmering promise. Happily, my boyfriend loved the album too, so it became our soundtrack, our background music and a shared obsession. We played it on a loop in his bedroom, on walks, on late-night drives around the city. The whole album became bound up with that season of youth and carefree days, that brief moment before adulthood when the world felt wide open, full of potential, and anything seemed possible. No album, before or since then, has felt so much like a portal into a feeling or moment in time for me.

This essay is a way for me to explore that feeling and to try to put into words why The Stone Roses has such a hold on me. Maybe writing this will enlighten me. And even if it doesn’t, at least I’ll have something to show for my absolute devotion to this album, a small tribute to the music that has never let me down.

I’m very aware that The Stone Roses are not the most technically brilliant band to have come from the British music scene. There are more technically skilled musicians, more adventurous bands, more polished frontmen than Ian Brown. But none of that really matters to me because this album holds a disproportionate sway over my heart, not because it’s perfect, (although to me it is) but because it arrived at precisely the right moment in my life. It sang me through a time that was raw, tender, and formative. Had I encountered it five years earlier or five years later, I doubt it would have settled so deeply into my soul. But music has a way of finding us, and The Stone Roses found me right when they were meant to.

I want to go through each song and say what it means to me and why I love it. If you’ve made it this far, well done. But be warned, I’m going full-on nerd here, so if you’ve had enough, best to drop out now.

1. I Wanna Be Adored

Before you even know it’s begun, this song has you under its spell.

It’s that incredible bass riff, rolling in like morning fog across a restless sea, followed by dreamy vocals and a strange, shimmering ambience. This masterpiece debut doesn’t demand adoration, it naturally expects it, simply because of its sublime perfection.

This isn’t just a song, it’s a manifesto of desire, of the hunger to be loved. The repetitive, psychedelic guitar puts you in a trance. It doesn’t scream or beg; it simply wants to be adored.

Sometimes, I wish I could hear this song for the first time again, to remember what that felt like. It is mesmerising, hypnotic, transcendent and even spiritual. It’s a masterpiece, on an album of masterpieces.

2. She Bangs the Drums

This is a flawless song, full of swagger, optimism, and joyful, youthful spirit.

“Kiss me where the sun don’t shine.

The past is yours, but the future’s mine.

You’re all out of time.”

This is perfect rock and roll poetry.

Someone once described this song to me in a way I’ve never forgotten: “if you had to capture what this song sounds like, it’s the soundtrack to the most gorgeous person walking into a room, your world turning to slow motion with tunnel vision and adoration at first sight.”

That’s exactly how it feels, and probably how I felt when I first heard it.

3. Waterfall

“Chimes sing Sunday morn

Today's the day she's sworn

To steal what she never could own

And race from this hole she calls home”

What can I say about this song that hasn’t already been said? If The Stone Roses had only ever produced this one track, they could have rested on their laurels. Every note seems to fall into its rightful place, proving that great art often appears effortless.

The harmonies in Waterfall are just beautiful. There are so many layers, weaving in and out, creating a hypnotic, circular guitar melody over the pulsing cadence of the drums and that mellifluous bass line.

The lyrics are poetic, and even though this song is over 36 years old, it still sounds fresh and new. It’s as resonant now as it was when I first heard it.

To me, Waterfall is emblematic of the album as a whole, a cascading torrent of sounds and emotions, sweeping you along with its intensity and beauty.

I don’t see myself ever outgrowing this song.

4. Don’t Stop

Only The Stone Roses could play one of their own songs backwards and create something even more beautiful from it. This weird and wonderful continuation of Waterfall always reminded me of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in its playful boldness, doing something different just because they could. My favourite part is that magic, sublime moment toward the end, the exploding crescendo of harmony that took my breath away the first time I heard it. Don’t Stop? I wish they hadn’t.

5. Bye Bye Badman

This is such a mellow, languid song, like a kind of hymn to indolence that gently pulls you under.

I believe it’s about a stone-throwing, street-fighting rebellion, an anthem for the disaffected kids every city has, the ones alienated and abandoned by the world around them.

The lyrics are beautiful:

“Every backbone and heart you break

Will still come back for more…”

And:

“Choke me, smoke the air

In this citrus-sucking sunshine…”

Who writes lyrics like that anymore? Pure gold.

The chemistry, the atmosphere, the playing, the vocals, the soul, it’s all here. Genius guitar, bass, and drums, matched by Ian Brown’s disconnected yet heartfelt lyrics. It’s sublime in every sense.

6. Elizabeth My Dear

This is a quiet, short track, and I love it. It’s a simple take on Scarborough Fair but with a protest twist about the monarchy, which makes me smile. It’s like a soft pause before the album bursts back into that soaring Stone Roses sound. I don’t overthink it, I just let it be a quiet moment before the next wave hits.

7. (Song for my) Sugar Spun Sister

“Until the sky turns green

The grass is several shades of blue

Every member of Parliament trips on glue…”

I believe the technical term for this song is “banger.” The bass line is incredible, actually, the drum and bass together are one of the most blissful combinations the Roses ever captured. Some say this is the quintessential Stone Roses song, and I can’t disagree. It represents them at their very best.

8. Made of Stone

I just love this song.

The opening is amazing, that guitar line pulling me in before I even know it. Then those lines:

“Sometimes I fantasize

Where the streets are cold and lonely

And the cars, they burn below me

Don’t these times, fill your eyes…”

The music and the words hit somewhere deep in my heart and soul, like they’re connecting to something in me I can’t quite explain. It’s intuitive, alive, and I feel it every time I listen.

9. Shoot you down

I love the drum shuffle in this one. It’s hypnotic, with silky guitar notes floating over it, pulling you into a soft groove.

There’s a bluesy influence in the guitar pieces, giving it a laid-back, soulful feel, and there’s even a touch of the Velvet Underground in there too, cool, understated, slightly dreamy.

Then it transitions so beautifully into:

“I never wanted the love that you showed me…”

It’s like the whole song opens up into this gentle, dreamy harmony. I don’t really have words for it, I just feel it. It’s one of those tracks you can get lost in, letting it wash over you, and it feels right every time.

10. This is the one

In an album where I love every single song, if I had to pick a favourite (gun to the head), it has to be this one.

From the opening riff, it has me. Then the way Ian Brown almost whispers “this is the one,” letting it build, slowly, until it explodes into that crescendo, repeating “this is the one” over and over, each time more powerful, more beautiful.

There is that build-up of tension that bursts into ecstatic, soaring sound, the band completely in their element.

And those lyrics:

“Immerse me in your splendour…”

There’s a raw, restless power in lines like these, a wild urge to torch it all and start again.

“I’d like to leave the country

For a month of Sundays

Burn the town where I was born…”

When I listen to this one, my goosebumps get goosebumps. Every time.

For me, this song really is “the one.”

11. I am the resurrection

This is just a perfect song. There’s nothing I can criticise about it.

It kicks off with that drum solo for the first few seconds, then the bass guitar comes in, and you know you’re in for something special. It’s a fantastically tight melody and tune with incredible lyrics that bristle with anger, but not a single word is wasted.

The guitar playing is out of this world, as it is across the whole album, but it really shines here. Mani and Reni build an impeccable, funky, tight rhythm section, and John and Ian float above it with those vocals and guitar, making something that feels effortless and huge at the same time.

The first part of the song is excellent, but when it speeds up, it becomes magnificent, pure energy and beauty. And the ending is just incredible, closing the album with a massive, joyful wall of sound that leaves me amazed every time.

It’s perfect.

So that is my love letter to The Stone Roses. Back in the spring of 1991, I didn’t know that this album would become a lifelong companion, a place I could return to whenever I needed to remember who I was and who I still am. I’m pretty sure I will always come home to this one.