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“Damaged Goods” was the 1978 debut single from Leeds-based post-punk innovators Gang Of Four.
The song offers a critique of everyday life— characterizing the “Damaged Goods” of a breakup in the terms of a financial transaction.
This song featured the original Gang—Jon King on lead vocals, Andy Gill on guitar and vocals, Hugo Burnham on drums, and Dave Allen on bass.
Jon King told Clash Magazine:
“Saturday afternoons, we wandered, walleyed, through the sun-bright aisles of Morrison’s supermarket in Leeds, looking for a 2-4-1 bargains and generic baked beans. The hopeless in-store slogan at the point of sale was: “The change will do you good” meaning “change” as in money and “change” as in switch store. Someone got paid for this rubbish!. I found this good starter for words about a doomed relationship where legover had become, maybe, too much of a good thing. Or at any rate, a thing. Andy (Gill, guitarist) punctuates the main lyric with a call and response thing and sings the iconic mid section “Damaged goods, send them back” words. The music’s cute: alternate the guitar and bass duh duh dink! Duh duh dink! & build the song around this R&B clatter among dynamic drop outs where everyone got to feature. We didn’t want a pop structure. We’d had it with dominant, subdominant, tonic chord progressions. So we had none, instead.“
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