Pick four songs from any band and you can tell a lot about their sound. This summer, I’m featuring #RockBlocks, four picks from bands across various genres. They might be wildly different from each other, but what binds them together is the fact that they’re all a part of my life soundtrack.

“The only band that matters”, The Clash were musical pioneers in every sense of the expression. They inspired. They led. They explored existing genres like ska and reggae, and paved the way for new ones like post-punk and new wave. They were fiercely political. And they simply rocked — whether they were penning originals or reinventing other people’s songs like “I Fought the Law”.

One of the marks of a great cover song is a band’s ability to reset a song as if it was their very own. That’s the one similarity among all the great ones, from Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” to Cash’s “Hurt”. “I Fought the Law” is the same. You think of it as a Clash song first and foremost, and it’s how most music fans will always remember the song. On it, they proved punk didn’t have to be basic, merging riffs from Strummer and Mick Jones to create something far more than just noise and rebellion.

“I fought the law and the law won.”