Every Song I Love is a series where I try to write about every song that I love, or die trying. Sometimes I’ll explain why I love them, sometimes I’ll tell the stories behind how I fell in love with them, sometimes I’ll do both. Most importantly, I hope you love them too.

I did many stupid things as a teenager. One of those stupid things was to buy into the idea, stoked by the weekly music press here in the UK, that music was all about rivalries. Nirvana didn’t like Pearl Jam, so I couldn’t like Pearl Jam apparently. Pavement had some kind of weird beef with Smashing Pumpkins. Oasis vs Blur was, briefly and strangely, the biggest news story in the country.

None of these supposed rivalries had much of a negative impact on my life, even if I paid way too much attention to them. I genuinely didn’t like Pearl Jam anyway, I managed to enjoy both Pavement and Smashing Pumpkins just fine, and I never did pick a side in the Oasis vs Blur debate (give me Pulp or Elastica if I have to choose a Britpop band, both now and then). However, my favourite band of the time was Hole, and Courtney Love fell out with quite a lot of people, and of those people was Kathleen Hanna. I’m not even going to get into what the dispute was about, because it doesn’t matter, except to the individuals involved, and maybe not even them. It did, however, make me decide that I therefore didn’t like Kathleen Hanna, and I never bothered to listen to Bikini Kill, her band of the time, even though they quite possibly would have been a band that I loved.

I maintained my ignorance of Hanna’s music for a good few years, until a song came on the radio that was unlike anything I’d heard before, incorporating elements of doo-wop, sixties girl groups and riot grrrl, celebrating feminist and queer icons. That song, despite the title of this article, was not Deceptacon, it was Hot Topic by Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna’s new band. Hot Topic made me realise how stupid I had been in eschewing her music. I rushed out and bought the self-titled Le Tigre album, wondering if it would be one of those records with just one great single and a bunch of filler, but I needn’t have worried.

Le Tigre is a great album all round, but it was the opening track Deceptacon that truly astonished me. Nowadays my music taste is generally quite chill, compared with the grunge and punk I mainly listened to when I was young. I still need something high energy from time to time though, and when I do it’s the truly relentless songs that I love. The ones that start at 100mph and never let up for a second. Fell In Love With a Girl by The White Stripes is a great example, Stutter by Elastica another, as well as plenty of Northern Soul records.

Deceptacon might just be the finest example of that type. It has a thrilling, insistent riff, and Hanna’s vocals are at their most powerful, with lyrics managing to be both full of righteous anger and genuinely funny. Deceptacon incorporates elements of an early Sixties novelty doowop song, and ironically enough originated from a feud with Fat Mike of NOFX. Despite my earlier comments about the ridiculousness of rock feuds, this one produced something wonderful, the epitome of anger is an energy.

It’s one of those rare songs that I’ve appreciated more and more as the years have passed. There aren’t all that many songs that I loved in 1999 that I still love now, that make me want to dance like I did as a teenager, that fill me with energy and joy. So of course, when Le Tigre played a reunion tour last year, even though it was a Monday night in a different city, I was there. Instead of being full of middle aged white guys, like many gigs I go to, it was full of all ages and genders. There were original Riot Grrrls who’d been waiting 20 years to see Le Tigre perform, and kids who weren’t even born when Deceptacon came out, and me in the middle, slightly befuddled but very happy.

The excitement was palpable, the merch queue was the longest I’ve ever been, and the gig was amazing, the crowd singing and chanting along to almost every word (side note — “What’s Yr Take On Cassavettes’ might the most niche song I’ve ever heard a thousand people singing along to). Of course, they saved Deceptacon for last. At that moment when the “Who took the bomp” kicked in and we all went wild, whatever our differences, we were all the same. The power, once again, of great music.