The socially conscious post-punk group generated what the members referred to as "the perfect existential squall." "No assemblage, pro-tools confection, just the strings being hit and screaming in pain as they're bashed and cajoled into a beautiful anti-solo that is all about the now and not about the maybe," the band's singer Jon King said in 2009. "We thought this song was a mutant disco thing, at a time when it was not down to like dance music, when funk and rock had to be kept in separate rooms for fear of miscegenation." In the decades to follow, the Gang of Four influenced countless bands with their prescient political dance-rock sound.