The 500 Greatest
Songs of All Time

Bob Dylan, 'Blowin' in the Wind'

1963

"Blowin' in the Wind" was Dylan's first important composition. It is also the most famous protest song ever written. The song's melody borrows from the slavery-era folk song "No More Auction Block for Me," and its language is rooted as much in Woody Guthrie's earthy vernacular as in biblical rhetoric. But in a decisive break with the current-events conventions of topical folk songs, Dylan framed the crises around him in a series of fierce, poetic questions that addressed what he believed was man's greatest inhumanity to man: indifference. "Some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their heads away when they see wrong," he declared in the Freewheelin' liner notes.

R.E.M., 'Losing My Religion'

1991

R.E.M. fully crossed over into the mainstream with this largely unplugged ballad, which had its origins in Peter Buck fiddling around with a mandolin while watching TV and idly practicing. "I probably wouldn't have written the chords for 'Losing My Religion' the way they were had I not played it on my mandolin," he told Rolling Stone. Yet the mandolin laced throughout the song was one of the most striking aspects of "Losing My Religion," which was named after a Southern expression for being at the end of one's rope. Never before had Michael Stipe sounded so vulnerable, yearning, and articulate.

The Beatles, 'In My Life'

1965

"'In My Life' was, I think, my first real, major piece of work," John Lennon said. "Up until then it had all been glib and throwaway." The ballad reflects the serious turn the Beatles took with Rubber Soul, but it specifically arose from a journalist's challenge: Why don't you write songs about your life? The original lyrics put Lennon on a bus in Liverpool, "and it was the most boring sort of 'What I Did on My Holidays Bus Trip' song," he said. So Lennon rewrote the lyrics, changing the song into a gorgeous reminiscence about his life before the Beatles. The distinctive "harpsichord" solo near the song's end is actually an electric piano played by George Martin and sped up on tape.

Patti Smith, 'Gloria'

1975

The legend-making first line of Smith's galvanic act of rock & roll vandalism — "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" — began as part of a poem called "Oath," which she performed around the East Village in the early Seventies. When she began practicing with guitarist Lenny Kaye and piano player Richard Sohl, they often jammed on Them's 1964 garage-rock song "Gloria," reveling in its cathartic simplicity, and Smith came up with the idea of fusing the two, creating something reverent and revolutionary that opened her landmark 1975 debut LP, Horses, the first album-length bow shot from the CBGBs punk scene.

Jay-Z, '99 Problems'

2003

The original "99 Problems" was a 1993 song by gangsta-rap great Ice-T. The idea of revisiting it came from Chris Rock. As producer Rick Rubin recalled, "[Chris] said, 'Ice-T has this song, and maybe there's a way to flip it around and do a new version of that.'" Jay-Z asked for a beat like the Eighties classics Rubin had produced for the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, and Run-DMC, and he came up with the ideal stark, slamming backdrop for Jay to lance into everything from critics to racist cops. "At no point in the song am I talking about a girl," he said.

Oasis, 'Wonderwall'

1995

Supposedly inspired by his girlfriend at the time, Noel Gallagher wrote this unabashedly earnest and heartfelt ballad, which has become one of the biggest rock standards of the past 20 years. It earns at least $1 million a year and passed 1 billion Spotify streams in 2020. Ironically, Liam Gallagher was iffy on it at first. "I said, 'I don't like this — it's a bit fonky,'" he told Rolling Stone last year. "I got Police vibes. It was a bit Sting. I like the heavier stuff. "But he ultimately decided to give it a go, and the whole song was finished in about two days, with Noel playing all the guitars, even bass, and Liam knocking out his vocal in a few hours. "I was always desperate to get to the pub," he said.

Whitney Houston, 'I Will Always Love You'

1992

Dolly Parton wrote "I Will Always Love You" about the difficult decision to move on from her mentor Porter Wagoner, and reached Number One on the country charts with two different recordings of it. Kevin Costner suggested the song to his Bodyguard co-star Houston, who with the aid of producer David Foster, revamped it as a mighty R&B ballad that became an even bigger hit. Houston and Costner insisted on keeping the song's a cappella intro against the label's wishes. "I didn't care if it was ever on the radio," Costner said later. "I said, 'We're also going to do this a cappella at the beginning. I need it to be a cappella because it shows a measure of how much she digs this guy — that she sings without music.'"

Kelly Clarkson, 'Since U Been Gone'

2004

Swedish pop scientists Max Martin and Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald wrote this indignant track with Pink in mind, but Clarkson's A&R rep snatched it up for the first-ever American Idol. The result was a career-making hit that gave teen pop a feisty new template. When she first heard a rough demo of the song, Clarkson wasn't sure it was right for her. "We amped up the track and made it a little more rockin'," she told Rolling Stone of the sessions in Sweden with Martin and Dr. Luke. "But they didn't know I was going to go an octave above on the chorus."

Little Richard, 'Good Golly, Miss Molly'

1958

Little Richard first heard the phrase "Good golly, Miss Molly" from a Southern DJ named Jimmy Pennick. He turned the words into perhaps his most blatant assault on American propriety: "Good golly, Miss Molly/You sure like to ball." He swiped the music from Ike Turner's piano intro to Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88," recorded by Sam Phillips in Memphis seven years earlier. "I always liked that record," Richard recalled, "and I used to use the riff in my act, so when we were looking for a lead-in to 'Good Golly, Miss Molly,' I did that and it fit." Richard had renounced rock & roll the previous year, but Specialty Records couldn't leave this classic in the vaults.

UGK feat. Outkast, 'Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)'

2007

The influence of Houston's UGK is felt all over hip-hop, from Jay-Z to Megan Thee Stallion, but it took 20 years for the group to record the song that truly solidified its place in the canon. Sampling Willie Hutch's "I Choose You," full of the trillest love stories ever told, and opened by André 3000's most iconic verse, the song is as much fun as its music video's wild wedding. "People always telling me they walk down the aisle to that song," Outkast's Big Boi told Rolling Stone. "When people get married to music, that's some powerful shit." The song helped shoot UGK's 2007 album, Underground Kingz, to Number One, a first for the duo. Sadly, just six months after the video's release, UGK's Pimp C died, leaving "Int'l Players Anthem" as a glorious epitaph.

Aretha Franklin, '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman'

1967

Carole King and her husband/songwriting partner Gerry Goffin wrote "Natural Woman" specifically for Aretha Franklin at the request of producer Jerry Wexler in 1967, shortly after "Respect" and "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" turned her into a superstar. It came together in their suburban New Jersey home over just a few hours, after their kids went to bed. "Hearing [Aretha sing it] for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment," King wrote in her 2012 memoir Natural Woman. "To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words.… It touched me more than any recording of any song I had ever written."

The Beatles, 'Hey Jude'

1968

The Beatles' biggest U.S. single — nine weeks at Number One — was also their longest, at seven minutes and 11 seconds. During the recording sessions, producer George Martin objected to the length, claiming DJs would not play the song. "They will if it's us," John Lennon shot back. Paul McCartney wrote "Hey Jude" in June 1968, singing to himself on his way to visit Lennon's soon-to-be-ex-wife, Cynthia, and their son, Julian. The opening lines were, McCartney once said, "a hopeful message for Julian: 'Come on, man, your parents got divorced. I know you're not happy, but you'll be OK.'" McCartney changed "Jules" to "Jude" — a name inspired by Jud from the musical Oklahoma!

Guns N' Roses, 'Sweet Child O' Mine'

1987

Rose wrote this love letter to his then-girlfriend Erin Everly (daughter of Don). Slash said he was just "fucking around with the intro riff, making a joke." The guitarist didn't think much of it, but Rose knew better. That steely-yet-sensitive guitar part would accompany a bit of inspired Southern-rock cosplay from Rose. "I went out and got some old Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes to make sure we'd got that down-home, heartfelt feeling," he said at the time. Though Rose and Everly's marriage didn't last long, the song went on to be a pivotal breakthrough for the band and remains its sole Number One hit in the U.S.

LCD Soundsystem, 'All My Friends'

2007

James Murphy and his crew of NYC punk-funk warriors whipped up a sardonic generational anthem in "All My Friends" — a celebration of hitting the dance floor until dawn, even when you're old enough to know better. Over the urgent electro pulse, Murphy looks back on his wasted nights and crushed dreams. "I was in my thirties," he admitted. "I'd been a completely failed teenager and twentysomething, deeply failed, deeply, deeply failed. Like 'live with your rich girlfriend so you don't have to pay rent' failed, 'be homeless in your office on an inflatable bed' failed." Yet the music surges with joy, capturing that late-night moment when you realize that all your years of stupid decisions have accidentally added up to a life.

The Rolling Stones, 'Tumbling Dice'

1972

In one of its first incarnations, then called "Good Time Women," this Exile on Main St. gem was friskier, faster, and bawdier. By the time it was transformed into "Tumbling Dice" during the infamous Exile sessions in the South of France, the song had been slowed down. "I remember writing the riff upstairs in the very elegant front room," said Keith Richards, "and we took it downstairs the same evening, and we cut it." Mick Jagger's lyrics fit the slowed-down groove, revealing a new sense of gritty weariness. Since Bill Wyman wasn't around, Mick Taylor played bass, as well as those slinky slide-guitar parts.

Prince, 'Kiss'

1986

When Mazarati, one of the bands in Prince's Paisley Park orbit, asked him for a song, Prince dashed off a bluesy acoustic demo for them. Mazarati added a funk groove, and Prince was smart enough to take the song back, maintaining some of producer David Z's arrangements and the band's background vocals but no bass line, to the disappointment of his label. "At that time, however, Prince had enough power to go, 'That's the single and you're not getting another one until you put it out.' The rest is history," Z recalled in an interview. "That song totally reignited his career, and a year later Warner Bros. was trying to sign people who sounded like that."

Al Green, 'Let's Stay Together'

1971

After producer Willie Mitchell gave Green a rough mix of a tune he and drummer Al Jackson had worked out, Green wrote the lyrics in five minutes. Still, Green didn't want to record the song and fought with Mitchell for two days before finally agreeing to cut it. The recording was finished late on a Friday night in the fall of 1971; Mitchell pressed the single on Monday, and by Thursday Green was told that "Let's Stay Together" would be entering the charts at Number Eight. Within two weeks, it had reached Number One on the R&B charts, and in February 1972, the warm, buoyant love song gave Green his only Number One pop hit.

Bob Dylan, 'Desolation Row'

1965

Dylan was in full poetic frenzy when he wrote this surreal pageant, the 11-minute tour de force that caps his 1965 classic Highway 61 Revisited. "I was in the back of a taxicab," Dylan told Rolling Stone in 1969, when asked where he wrote the song. "That period of 'Desolation Row,' that kind of New York-type period, when all the songs were 'city songs.'" (Considering how "Desolation Row" clocks in at 11 minutes, that's one long cab ride.) His cast of misfits includes Cinderella, Romeo, Ophelia, Casanova, Cain and Abel, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood. And Dylan himself, ever the outsider. "I don't consider myself outside of anything," he said at the time. "I just consider myself not around."

Adele, 'Rolling in the Deep'

2011

"The beat of the song was my heartbeat … it just built and built," Adele said of the surging soul rumble that backed her on what became her signature hit. Stung by a bad breakup and struggling to find the right artistic footing for her second album, the singer met with producer Paul Epworth, who encouraged her to tap into her rawest emotions. To get the appropriate booming effect, Epworth used a marching band kick drum to add muscle to the groove. But the song's power was all Adele, whose demo vocal made the finished track. As Epworth told Rolling Stone of the "Rolling in the Deep" session, "She was obviously quite fragile and very open about what had happened. But she had fire in her belly."

The Velvet Underground, 'I'm Waiting for the Man'

1967

The Velvets were ahead of their time with this blast of New York street life. In the Summer of Love, while hippie heads were full of crystal visions, Lou Reed was getting down and dirty about the details of scoring $26 worth of heroin in Harlem. "Everything about that song holds true," said Reed, "except the price." Reed and Sterling Morrison beat up on the evil riff, with jagged R&B guitars distorted into proto-punk menace. John Cale walks it home with that one-note piano barrage. Within a few years, the world was full of bands trying to sound this mean.

Ray Charles, 'What'd I Say'

1957

"The people just went crazy, and they loved that little 'ummmmh, unnnnh,'" Ray Charles told Rolling Stone in 1978, describing the instant genesis of "What'd I Say," his first Top 10 pop single. He literally wrote "What'd I Say" in front of an audience. He and his crack R&B orchestra, newly supplemented by a female vocal group, the Raelettes, were playing a marathon dance show in a small town near Pittsburgh. When Charles ran out of repertoire late in the second set, he kicked into an uphill bass-note arpeggio on the piano, told the band to follow along, and instructed the Raelettes, "Whatever I say, just repeat after me." Afterward, Charles said, dancers rushed up to him and asked, "Where can I buy that record?"

Amy Winehouse, 'Back to Black'

2006

"It's a constant thing for me to better myself," Winehouse said before she embarked on the making of "Back to Black." "I've got a clear ambition now, to make a record of what I hear in my head … and I don't want strings." The great, melodramatic girl-group records of the early Sixties became the perfect backdrop for her updated tales of on-again, off-again romance and treachery, while the song's knowingly retro arrangement gave it a cinematic gravitas (which she heightened by adopting a beehive do). Winehouse's vocal matches the mournful piano and tympani, stoic and pained, flinty and acute. "The thing that always drove me," she said, "[is] relationships and how fucked up they can get."

The Four Tops, 'Reach Out (I'll Be There)'

1967

Before writing "Reach Out (I'll Be There)," songwriting team Holland-Dozier-Holland had long discussions about what women want. "We all three agreed that they wanted someone to be there for them, through thick or thin, and be there at their beck and call," Lamont Dozier once said. The truly brilliant turn, though, was contrasting apocalyptically afflicted verses and an angelic chorus, belted by lead Top Levi Stubbs, sounding like he'd drag himself over broken glass for the one he loved. "Eddie [Holland] realized that when Levi hit the top of his vocal range, it sounded like someone hurting, so he made him sing right up there," the Tops' Duke Fakir once said. "You could hear the tears in his voice."

The Modern Lovers, 'Roadrunner'

1976

Jonathan Richman was an ordinary geek from suburban Boston, but he made "Roadrunner" the ultimate garage-rock road trip. It's an ecstatic two-chord tribute to cruising down the highway, just a lonely kid in a car with the radio on. "High school and I didn't understand each other," Richman said in 1976. "So I heard the Velvet Underground, got inspired, took up guitar, and terrorized audiences with my four-and-a-third-note vocal range." He became a key punk influence, even if he sang about health food, liking his parents, and not doing drugs. This 1972 demo (featuring future members of Talking Heads and the Cars) wasn't even released until four years later. But "Roadrunner" has been breaking speed limits ever since.

Johnny Cash, 'I Walk the Line'

1956

Cash began work on this track while he was in Germany with the Air Force, years before he would ever enter a studio. He returned to it after he hit with "Folsom Prison Blues," only to find that the original tape had gotten mangled. But Cash liked the strange sound and added a click-clack rhythm by winding a piece of wax paper through his guitar strings. Sam Phillips then had him speed up the song, originally a ballad, to a driving rumble. "It was different than anything else you had ever heard," Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone. "A voice from the middle of the Earth."

Leonard Cohen, 'Hallelujah'

1984

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" begins with scripture and ends with the confession of a broken man, holding onto the one word with any hope left in it for him. "I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion," he once said. The song itself struck some secret chord with listeners and got born again through the lips of John Cale, Jeff Buckley, and Bob Dylan. "The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say, 'Look, I don't understand a fucking thing at all — Hallelujah!'" Cohen said. "That's the only moment that we live here fully as human beings."

Beyoncé, 'Formation'

2016

When Beyoncé released "Formation" in 2016, the tremors were immediate, and undeniable. She debuted the song on the eve of her Super Bowl 50 performance, where she enthralled (and startled) audiences by employing dozens of dancers dressed like Black Panthers. That set the table for the video, which protested police brutality and drew the ire of police unions. And then came the song itself, in which Beyoncé nodded to her Southern roots, declaring "My daddy Alabama/My ma Louisiana/You mix that Negro with that Creole/Make a Texas bama" over hip-hop superproducer Mike WiLL Made-It's spring-loaded synth. It was a complete package of Black radical feminist self-assertion.

The Beatles, 'Yesterday'

1965

Paul McCartney's greatest ballad holds a Guinness World Record as the most recorded song of all time; seven years after its release, there were 1,186 versions by artists as varied as Frank Sinatra, Otis Redding, and Willie Nelson. McCartney auditioned the song for George Martin, with the working title "Scrambled Eggs," in a hotel room in Paris in January 1964 — before the Beatles had even landed in America — but would not record it for another year and a half. "We were a little embarrassed about it," McCartney confessed. "We were a rock & roll band." A Number One single in America, "Yesterday" was, in his own words, "the most complete song I have ever written."

Tracy Chapman, 'Fast Car'

1988

Chapman became an unlikely star with "Fast Car," a haunting rumination on poverty and escape that touched a nerve, putting her stark acoustic folk music on MTV. A veteran of Boston coffeehouse gigs (she once got a demo-tape rejection letter suggesting she tune her guitar), Chapman suddenly found herself in the Top 10 and with a Grammy. "I had so many people come up to me and say that they felt it was their song, and someone told me at one point that they thought I've been reading their mail," she once said. "They were saying, 'You seem to know my story.'"

Elvis Presley, 'Suspicious Minds'

1969

When producer Chips Moman presented this song to Presley in 1969, the singer was, as the lyrics put it, "caught in a trap" — a cash cow being milked dry by his label and hangers-on. That might be why Presley was convinced he could turn the song into a deep soul hit, even though it had flopped in 1968 for singer-songwriter Mark James. Recorded between four and seven in the morning, during the landmark Memphis session that helped return the King to his throne, "Suspicious Minds" — the final Number One single of his lifetime — is Presley's masterpiece: He sings so intensely through the fade-out that his band returns for another minute of the tear-stained chorus.

Taylor Swift, 'All Too Well'

2012

"It was a day when I was like a broken human walking to rehearsal, just feeling terrible about what was going on in my personal life," Swift told Rolling Stone, recalling the origins of "All Too Well." She ad-libbed lyrics over chords she had written, as her backing band fell in behind her. "They could tell I was really going through it." Originally 10 minutes long, "All Too Well" would be paired down by Swift and co-writer Liz Rose into a finely burnished reflection on past love, full of unforgettable imagery and detail. "I thought it was too dark, too sad, too intense, just too many things," Swift said. But it has become a songwriting peak and one of the greatest breakup songs of all time.

Chic, 'Good Times'

1979

For Chic, disco was more than a beat — it was a "new state of mind." Guitar master Nile Rodgers and bassman Bernard Edwards were inspired by the glam art rock of Roxy Music, as well as jazz and R&B. As Rodgers put it, "We shared Afrobromantic dreams of what it would be like to have real artistic freedom." "Good Times" turned those dreams into a utopian disco celebration. It's a hedonistic Seventies roller-boogie hit with an ironic edge, while Edwards plays one of history's most influential bass lines. It's the bass that kicked off the hip-hop era — the Sugarhill Gang rapped over it for "Rapper's Delight," while Grandmaster Flash turned it into "Wheels of Steel."

Bob Dylan, 'Tangled Up in Blue'

1975

When Dylan introduced "Tangled Up in Blue" onstage in 1978, he described it as a song that took him "10 years to live and two years to write." It's still one of his most frequently performed live staples. It was the six-minute opener from Blood on the Tracks, written as his first marriage was falling apart. Dylan takes inspiration from classic country singers like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, in a tale of a drifting heart on the road through the Sixties and Seventies. Dylan kept revising the song heavily through the years; on 1984's Real Live, he plays with the chords and lyrics to tell a whole new story.

Simon and Garfunkel, 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'

1970

When Simon wrote this tribute to friendship, he and Garfunkel were arguing over everything, even who should sing it. "He felt I should have done it," Simon said. "Many times I'm sorry I didn't." The "Sail on, silver girl" verse was Garfunkel's idea; Simon has never liked it. The melody came from the Bach chorale, and the title phrase came from a Sixties song by West Virginia gospel group the Swan Silvertones — "I guess I stole it, actually," Simon told Dick Cavett around the time "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was the Number One song in America, a position it held for six weeks. He later paid the Silvertone's singer, Claude Jeter, $1,000 as a way of saying thanks.

Earth٫ Wind٫ and Fire, 'September'

1978

Earth, Wind, and Fire were at their commercial peak when they went into the studio to cut "September" in the fall of 1978 as a bonus track for The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1. The nostalgic song about a perfect September romance was written by EWF guitarist Al McKay, bandleader Maurice White, and songwriter Allee Willis, who hated White's additions of "Ba-du-da" and "Ba-dee-ya" throughout the song. "It took me about a month to calm Allee down," White wrote in his memoir. "She perceived it as a slight to her lyric-writing abilities.… Try as I might, I couldn't get her to understand that good music is all about the vibe." She probably calmed down when the song hit Number One on the R&B chart and Number Eight on the Hot 100.

Ramones, 'Blitzkrieg Bop'

1976

In less than three minutes, this song threw down the blueprint for punk rock. It's all here on the opening track of the Ramones' debut: the buzz-saw chords, which Johnny played on his $50 Mosrite guitar; the snotty words, courtesy of drummer Tommy (with bassist Dee Dee adding the brilliant line "Shoot 'em in the back now"); and the hairball-in-the-throat vocals, sung by Joey in a faux British accent. Recorded on the cheap at New York's Radio City Music Hall, of all places, "Blitzkrieg Bop" never made the charts; instead, it almost single-handedly created a world beyond the charts. The kickoff chant — "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" — meanwhile, is now an anthem of its own at sporting events nationwide.

Dolly Parton, 'Jolene'

1974

When Parton recorded "Jolene" in 1974, she was chiefly known as Porter Wagoner's TV partner, although she had written the hit "Coat of Many Colors." "Jolene" showed how she could put her stamp on traditional country. The Jolene that inspired the song was actually a young autograph seeker; "I said, 'Well, you're the prettiest little thing I ever saw. So what is your name?' And she said, 'Jolene.'" Parton got the idea for the song's lyrics after too many run-ins with a flirty bank teller: "She got this terrible crush on my husband. And he just loved going to the bank because she paid him so much attention. It was kinda like a running joke between us."

U2, 'One'

1992

Achtung Baby was the album on which U2 traded in a decade of earnestness for irony, but the new approach resulted in their most moving single ever. "One" was spun off from another song, "Mysterious Ways," when the Edge came up with two ideas for the bridge, and Bono so liked one of them that he wrote a new set of lyrics. Though some hear it as a love song, the words are full of hurt and ambiguity. "People have told me they play it at their wedding," the Edge said. "And I think, 'Have you listened to the lyrics? It's not that kind of a song.'"

Led Zeppelin, 'Stairway to Heaven'

1971

All epic anthems must measure themselves against "Stairway to Heaven," the cornerstone of Led Zeppelin IV. The acoustic intro sounds positively Elizabethan, thanks to John Paul Jones' recorder solo and Robert Plant's fanciful lyrics, which were partly inspired by Lewis Spence's historical tome Magic Arts in Celtic Britain. Over eight minutes, the song morphs into a furious Jimmy Page solo that storms heaven's gate. Page said the song "crystallized the essence of the band. It had everything there and showed us at our best. It was a milestone. Every musician wants to do something of lasting quality, something which will hold up for a long time. We did it with 'Stairway.'"

Kate Bush, 'Running Up That Hill'

1985

The song was originally called "A Deal With God." Bush changed the title after he label got worried it would be controversial. The deal in question: "If the man could be the woman and the woman the man … they'd understand what it's like to be the other person and perhaps it would clear up misunderstandings," Bush once explained. Deploying her futuristic new Fairlight CMI synthesizer over a rumbling LinnDrum beat as her ecstatic voice bounced around a track that seems to stretch past the horizon, the song kicked off her massively ambitious 1985 album, Hounds of Love, one of the Eighties' most resonant records.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, 'The Message'

1982

"The Message" was a breakthrough in hip-hop, taking the music from party anthems to street-level ghetto blues. It began as a poem by schoolteacher Duke Bootee; Sugar Hill boss Sylvia Robinson decided to make it a rap record with Melle Mel of the Furious Five. Said Flash in 1997, "I hated the fact that it was advertised as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, because the only people on the record were Mel and Duke Bootee." But the song, driven by its signature future-shock synth riff and grim lyrics about urban decay, became an instant sensation on New York's hip-hop radio. "It played all day, every day," Flash said. "It put us on a whole new level."

The Band, 'The Weight'

1968

The Band was chiefly known as Bob Dylan's touring group when they retreated to a pink house in Woodstock, New York, to record their debut, Music From Big Pink. The album was centered by "The Weight," an oddball fable of debt and burden driven by an indelible singalong chorus. Robbie Robertson said he was inspired to write the song after watching director Luis Buñuel's films about "the impossibility of sainthood," but characters such as Crazy Chester could have walked straight out of an old folk song. As for the biblical-sounding line "pulled into Nazareth," it refers to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the Martin Guitar factory.

Sly and the Family Stone, 'Family Affair'

1971

When There's a Riot Goin' On came out in 1971, a Rolling Stone reporter mentioned the rumor that Stone had played all the instruments himself, and he asked Sly just how much he played. "I've forgotten, man," Stone said. "Whatever was left." The leadoff single, the aquatic funk number "Family Affair," was widely considered to be about his relationships with his band, family, and the Black Panthers. "Well," Stone said, "they may be trying to tear me apart; I don't feel it. Song's not about that. Song's about a family affair, whether it's a result of genetic processes or a situation in the environment."

Missy Elliott, 'Work It'

2000

Elliott and Timbaland were on top of the world when they made "Work It," her biggest hit. Yet they stayed as hungry and experimental as ever. The first time they cut this song, Tim said something he'd never told her before: "That ain't it." So they went back to the studio. As he told Rolling Stone, "With 'Work It,' I made her go back four times. Because I'm like, 'That ain't it. That's not it. That's not it.'" But it paid off when Elliott came up with the backward-vocal hook. "When she got to that reverse part, I was like, 'Oh, we out here. We're done.' When you bake a great cake, you need the right icing on top."

Madonna, 'Like a Prayer'

1989

Only Madonna could combine love, religion, and oral sex into a six-minute gospel-pop powerhouse. To her, "Like a Prayer" is "the song of a passionate young girl so in love with God that it is almost as though He were the male figure in her life." The song debuted as part of a soft-drink ad campaign, which got yanked after the ostentatiously blasphemous video hit MTV. Right on schedule, the Vatican condemned it, as if intentionally playing its part in the song's marketing. "In Catholicism you are born a sinner and you are a sinner all of your life," Madonna said in 1989. "No matter how you try to get away from it, the sin is within you all the time."

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, 'The Tracks of My Tears'

1965

Legend had it that audiences would actually break into tears when Robinson and the Miracles sang "The Tracks of My Tears." "It tapped into their emotions," said Warren "Pete" Moore of the Miracles. Pete Townshend was obsessed with the way Robinson put across the word "substitute" ("Although she may be cute/She's just a substitute"). So obsessed, he said, "that I decided to celebrate the word with a song all its own" — which is how he came to write the Who's 1966 hit "Substitute." When Robinson cut "Tears," it was such a clear winner that even hard-to-please Motown founder Berry Gordy proclaimed it a masterpiece.

The Beach Boys, 'Good Vibrations'

1966

"This is a very spiritual song," Brian Wilson said after its release, "and I want it to give off good vibrations." Wilson was still working on his long-playing magnum opus, Pet Sounds, when he started "Good Vibrations" late on the night of February 17th, 1966, at Gold Star Recorders in Los Angeles. During the next seven months, in four studios, at a cost of more than $50,000 (at that point the greatest sum ever spent on a single), Wilson built "Good Vibrations" in sections, coloring the mood swings with locomotive cello, saloon piano, and the spectral wail of a theremin. "We didn't think about doing it in pieces at first," Wilson said years later, "but after the first few bars in the first verse, we realized that this was going to be a different kind of record."

Donna Summer, 'I Feel Love'

1977

Summer wasn't terribly impressed when co-writer Giorgio Moroder presented her with "I Feel Love." "Giorgio brought me these popcorn tracks he'd recorded, and I said, 'What the hell is this, Giorgio?' I finished it sort of as a joke," she told Rolling Stone in 1978. But the song's impact on dance music is incalculable. Moroder's decision to jettison disco's fluffy orchestrations for throbbing strobe-light-synth minimalism (augmented by his crack team of Munich session musicians) set the table for Euro disco, synth-pop, and wave upon wave of electronic music to come. When Brian Eno first listened to it, he told David Bowie, "I've heard the sound of the future."

Dionne Warwick, 'Walk on By'

1964

Early in her career, Warwick was a backup singer who also cut demos for Brill Building songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David. This forlorn classic solidified her stardom, capping a series of singles in which she played the pleading lover. A downcast ballad set to a bossa nova beat, it was originally relegated to the B side of "Any Old Time of the Day," until New York DJ Murray the K asked listeners to vote on the single's two sides. The winning cut scaled the charts during the heady exuberance of Beatlemania, which provided an unwitting foil for the understated perseverance of "Walk on By." "I didn't get the guy very often in those days," Warwick said.

Daddy Yankee, 'Gasolina'

2010

The Puerto Rican rapper was in San Juan when he heard a man shout, "Echa, mija, como te gusta la gasolina!" — a playful phrase lobbed at girls who would seek out the sleekest rides to get to parties. The line morphed into a ubiquitous chorus that ignited a global fervor for reggaeton. Veteran producer Luny Tunes drove up the intensity by adding the thrum of motors and the singer Glory's voltaic call for "mas gasolina," while Daddy Yankee delivered his breakneck verses with so much power that the song sounds like it could combust at any moment even decades later.

Lauryn Hill, 'Doo Wop (That Thing)'

1998

Hill's debut solo single following the success of the Fugees' The Score was a bit different from what fans had heard from the young star. "She wanted to bring some of that doo-wop swing essence to the song," backup singer Lenesha Randolph recalled. Hill and her singers recorded it after dinner one night, channeling a barbershop-quartet style as Hill warns both men and women of being too concerned with sex, power, and appearances. It was a killer entrance for the then-23-year-old rapper-singer: The release became the first Number One single in the U.S. that was written, produced, and performed by one sole woman since Debbie Gibson's "Foolish Beat" a decade earlier.

Radiohead, 'Idioteque'

2000

"Idioteque" is the foreboding, spellbinding centerpiece of Kid A, a squinting image of dystopia set to a glacially slamming beat. The song began as a 50-minute synth collage by Jonny Greenwood, which Thom Yorke digested, pulling out, as he later put it, "a section of about 40 seconds in the middle of it that was absolute genius." From there, the band built a quaking glitch-core opus, driven by some of the most genuinely freaked-out vocals Yorke ever delivered. And somehow it still became a monster stadium-rock moment live.

Elton John, 'Tiny Dancer'

1972

The "seamstress for the band" of the lyrics was a real person: Maxine Feibelman, then the wife of lyricist Bernie Taupin. "I had been into ballet as a little girl, and sewed patches on Elton's jackets and jeans," she said. When Taupin and John had arrived in L.A. in late 1970, Feibelman so beguiled Taupin that he wrote the rapturous "Tiny Dancer" for her. John's skyrocketing melody got a little help from Paul Buckmaster's strings and from Rick Wakeman, soon to join prog-rockers Yes, who played organ. Nearly 30 years later, Almost Famous revived the song, which at the time wasn't a hit, failing to reach the Top 40 in its truncated radio edit.

M.I.A., 'Paper Planes'

2008

"The other songs on the chart were Katy Perry and the Jonas Brothers," said M.I.A. "Then you saw 'Paper Planes,' and it's cool because there's hope: 'Thank God the future's here.'" With its gunshot and cash-register sound effects, producer Diplo's brilliantly flipped sample of the Clash's "Straight to Hell," and M.I.A.'s gleeful boasts about running drugs and taking your money, "Paper Planes" sure didn't sound like Katy Perry. "[I was] thinking that really the worst thing that anyone can say [to someone these days] is some shit like, 'What I wanna do is come and get your money,'" M.I.A. said. "America is so obsessed with money, I'm sure they'll get it." Sure enough, it became a surprise hit.

Kendrick Lamar, 'Alright'

2015

Kendrick Lamar dropped "Alright" in the spring of 2015 — a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was just starting to gather momentum. The song instantly became part of that movement — a jazzy political protest, but also a statement of rage and hope in the face of oppression. "Alright" was a standout on his epochal album To Pimp a Butterfly, but it has just gained resonance over the years. "It was a lot goin' on, and still to this day, there's a lot going on," Lamar said. "I wanted to approach it as more uplifting — but aggressive. Not playing the victim, but still having that 'We strong,' you know?" That "we strong" spirit is at the heart of "Alright."

Michael Jackson, 'Billie Jean'

1982

Sinuous, paranoid, and omnipresent: The single that made Jackson the biggest star since Elvis Presley was a denial of a paternity suit, and it spent seven weeks at Number One on the pop charts. Jackson came up with the irresistible rhythm track on his home drum machine, and he nailed the vocals in one take. "I knew the song was going to be big," Jackson said. "I was really absorbed in writing it." How absorbed? Jackson said he was thinking about "Billie Jean" while riding in his Rolls-Royce down the Ventura Freeway in California — and didn't notice the car was on fire.

The Temptations, 'My Girl'

1965

The Temptations were sharing a bill with Smokey Robinson and his group the Miracles at Harlem's Apollo Theater when Robinson took time out to cut the rhythm track for a new song. After they heard it, the Tempts begged him to let them record the song rather than the Miracles, as he had been planning. Robinson relented and chose the throaty tenor David Ruffin to sing lead, the first time he had done so with the group. The Tempts rehearsed the song that week at the Apollo, then recorded it back home in Detroit on December 21st, 1964.

Bob Marley and the Wailers, 'Redemption Song'

1980

Marley had already recorded a version of this freedom hymn with his band when Island Records chief Chris Blackwell suggested he try it as an acoustic-style folk tune. Inspired by the writings of Marcus Garvey, Marley's lyrics offer up music as an antidote to slavery, both mental and physical. "I would love to do more like that," Marley said a few months before his death from cancer in 1981, at age 36. As the final track on his final album, "Redemption Song" stands as his epitaph.

Joy Division, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'

1980

The pinnacle of Joy Division's gloom-ridden Mancunian post-punk vision still hits like an ice pick aimed at your soul. Depressed over his collapsing marriage, singer Ian Curtis actually came up with the title as a sardonic response to Captain and Tenille's 1975 pop hit "Love Will Keep Us Together," and, in a fittingly creepy gesture, even cut it in the same studio where "Love Will Keep Us Together" had been recorded. "Ian's influence seemed to be madness and insanity," said guitarist Bernard Sumner. The song would be Joy Division's last single, released weeks after Curtis' death by suicide, a fact that makes the haunting chorus even more affecting.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 'All Along the Watchtower'

1968

"All Along the Watchtower" had just been released on Dylan's John Wesley Harding when Hendrix began tinkering with the song at Electric Lady Studios in New York on January 21st, 1968. Using the line "And the wind began to howl" as a springboard, Hendrix constructed a tumultuous four-part solo that transformed Dylan's concise foreboding into an electric hurricane. Dylan acknowledged Hendrix's masterstroke: Dylan's subsequent versions of "All Along the Watchtower," including the treatment on his 1974 reunion tour with the Band and the live LP Before the Flood, emulated Hendrix's cover.

Outkast, 'B.O.B.'

2000

The ATLien hip-hop visionaries dropped "B.O.B." when the world was still reeling from the innovations of Aquemini. But André 3000 and Big Boi were not standing still. "Everybody's been doing music like they all have the same formula: E = MC2," Big Boi said at the time. So Outkast made sure nobody could fit "B.O.B." into any formula — manic drums, headbanging rock guitar, DJ scratches, a gospel chorus. "It was an idea before it was a song," said André, who was inspired by the frenetic beats of U.K. drum-and-bass, which he and Big Boi heard at a party in London. "It was the tempo I was looking for, so I thought about how to Americanize it."

Otis Redding, '(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay'

1967

A few days after his star-making set at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, Redding stayed on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, while he played the Fillmore in San Francisco. He wrote the first verse to "Dock of the Bay" on that boat, then completed the song with guitarist Steve Cropper in Memphis. Just a few days later, Redding was on tour with the Bar-Kays when his private plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin. While divers searched for Redding's body, Cropper kept his mind busy by mixing "Dock of the Bay." On December 11th, 1967, the plane was pulled out of the lake, with Redding's body still strapped into the co-pilot's seat.

Prince and the Revolution, 'When Doves Cry'

1984

The Purple Rain soundtrack album was completed, and so was the movie. But Prince just couldn't stop making music. And at the very last minute, he added a brand-new song: "When Doves Cry." Even by Prince standards, it's eccentric; after single-handedly recording the stark, brokenhearted song in the studio, he decided to erase the bass track from the final mix. According to the engineer, Prince said, "Nobody would have the balls to do this. You just wait — they'll be freaking." He was right. Prince made it the soundtrack's first single — and 1984's most avant-garde pop record became his first American Number One hit, keeping Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" out of the top spot.

The White Stripes, 'Seven Nation Army'

2003

Jack White was futzing about on his guitar during soundcheck on one of the White Stripes' Australian tours when he stumbled upon the weightiest hard-rock riff this side of Jimmy Page. "I didn't have lyrics for it until later on, and I was just calling it 'Seven Nation Army' — that's what I called the Salvation Army when I was a kid," White once said. "So that was just a way for me to remember which [riff] I was talking about." By the time he finished the lyrics, which addressed people gossiping about who he and his ex-wife, White Stripes drummer Meg White, were dating, he gave the term new life: "I'm gonna fight 'em all/A seven nation army couldn't hold me back." Same goes for the riff.

Little Richard, 'Tutti-Frutti'

1955

"I'd been singing 'Tutti-Frutti' for years," said Richard, "but it never struck me as a song you'd record." Producer Robert Blackwell asked Dorothy LaBostrie, a young songwriter who had been pestering him for work, to clean up the filthy original lyrics ("Tutti-Frutti, good booty/If it don't fit, don't force it/You can grease it, make it easy"). "Fifteen minutes before the session was to end, the chick comes in and puts these little trite lyrics in front of me," said Blackwell. Richard cleaned up his own "Awop-bop-a-loo-mop a-good-goddamn" and loaded LaBostrie's doggerel with sexual dynamite.

James Brown, 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag'

1966

In mid-1965, Brown was locked in a contract struggle with King Records, but when he learned King was nearly bankrupt, he threw the label a bone: a song he'd recorded a few months earlier, yelling "This is a hit!" as the tape rolled. Arguably the first funk record, it's driven by the empty space between beats as much as by Brown's bellow and guitarist Jimmy Nolen's ice-chipper scratch. In a stroke of postproduction genius (you can hear the original recording on the Grammy-winning Star Time box set), Brown sliced off the intro to have the song start with a face-smashing horn blast, and sped it up just enough so it sounded like an urgent bulletin from the future.

Chuck Berry, 'Johnny B. Goode'

1958

"Johnny B. Goode" was the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom. The title character is Chuck Berry — "more or less," as he told Rolling Stone in 1972. "The original words [were], of course, 'That little colored boy could play.' I changed it to 'country boy' — or else it wouldn't get on the radio." "Johnny B. Goode" is the supreme example of Berry's poetry in motion. The rhythm section rolls with freight-train momentum, while Berry's stabbing, single-note lick in the chorus sounds, as he put it, "like a-ringin' a bell" — a perfect description of how rock & roll guitar can make you feel on top of the world.

Notorious B.I.G., 'Juicy'

1994

"If you don't know, now you know," Biggie announces in "Juicy" — and this was the hit that guaranteed everyone around the world would know. The Notorious B.I.G. made "Juicy" his first pop shot, from his 1994 debut, Ready to Die, repping Brooklyn over a sample of Mtume's lush Eighties oral-sex jam "Juicy Fruit." At a time when East Coast hip-hop was too busy playing D against the West, Biggie's lyrical confidence was a game-changer, revitalizing New York rap. He boasts about going from dreaming of stardom to rocking sold-out shows, and dressing his mom up in mink — the first rush of "mo' money" before the "mo' problems" kicked in. "I told him, 'No landlord dissed us!'" said Voletta Wallace. "He said, 'Mom, I was just writing a rags-to-riches kinda story.'"

The Rolling Stones, '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'

1965

The riff came to Keith Richards in a dream one night in May 1965, in his motel room in Clearwater, Florida, on the Rolling Stones' third U.S. tour. He woke up and grabbed a guitar and a cassette machine. Richards played the run of notes once, then fell back to sleep. "On the tape," he said later, "you can hear me drop the pick, and the rest is snoring." Jagger later said that "Satisfaction" was "my view of the world, my frustration with everything." Inspired by that riff and the title line, also Richards' idea, Jagger wrote the words — a litany of disgust with "America, its advertising syndrome, the constant barrage" — in 10 minutes, by the motel pool the day after Richards' dream.

Lorde, 'Royals'

2011

"I've always been fascinated with aristocracy," Lorde told Rolling Stone around the time "Royals" came out of nowhere to take the Number One spot on the U.S. charts. Written "in like half an hour" by a 15-year-old New Zealander taking influence from the diamond-encrusted swagger of Kanye West and Jay-Z's Watch the Throne as well as the muted electronic work of artists like James Blake, "Royals" was maximal minimalism, a mumbled thunderbolt of playful resistance against rap and pop's obsession with wealth and status. As Lorde said later, "I was definitely poking fun at a lot of things people take to be normal."

Dr. Dre feat. Snoop Doggy Dogg, 'Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang'

1992

At the intersection of past and future West Coast hip-hop sits Dre's debut solo single, a smooth and inimitable kickback classic that would help define his career following the demise of N.W.A. In a radio interview, the producer and rapper revealed that the song originally sampled a track by Boz Scaggs before he settled on the bass line from Leon Haywood's 1975 hit "I Want'a Do Something Freaky to You." Snoop was in jail while Dre was recording, so he had to originally record his parts over the phone. "I really wanted this demo done, so he called in and I taped the receiver of the phone to the mic," Dre recalled. "You can hear jail sounds in the back."

Talking Heads, 'Once in a Lifetime'

1980

Talking Heads had a difficult time bringing "Once in a Lifetime" to life. The song began during jams at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas as the band worked on its groundbreaking Afro-funk influenced album Remain in Light. Producer and co-writer Brian Eno wanted to ditch the tune altogether until David Byrne started performing his "Same as it ever was" monologue like an evangelical preacher, which somehow sharpened his message about questioning identity and reality. "We're largely unconscious," the singer once said. "You know, we operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?'"

Bruce Springsteen, 'Born to Run'

1975

This song's four and a half minutes took three and a half months to cut. Aiming for the impact of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, Springsteen included strings, glockenspiel, multiple keyboards — and more than a dozen guitar tracks. "I had enormous ambitions for it," said Springsteen. "I wanted to make the greatest rock record I'd ever heard." Springsteen's lyrics told a story of young lovers on the highways of New Jersey. "I don't know how important the settings are," Springsteen said. "It's the idea behind the settings. It could be New Jersey, it could be California, it could be Alaska."

Joni Mitchell, 'A Case of You'

1971

One of the many searing moments on Mitchell's landmark Blue, "A Case of You" unsparingly grapples with conflicted feelings and entangled identities. The male character in the song is apparently a composite of several men in her life during that time, notably Leonard Cohen, and her partner at the time of its recording, James Taylor, who joins in on guitar, with Mitchell herself on dulcimer. She later dismissed "A Case of You" as "a doormat song," yet it remains one of her most beloved. Prince, who once said that "Joni's music should be taught in school, if just from a literature standpoint," covered it several times during his career.

Kanye West feat. Pusha T, 'Runaway'

2010

West had always generated controversy and criticism, but after he interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs, his public image was at an all-time low. So he took off for a self-imposed exile in Hawaii and recorded his nine-minute masterpiece — a toast to the "douchebags" and an unguarded reflection on his image and intimacy issues. "The song sounds like it's talking about a girl — could also be talking about my relationship with society or my relationship with the fans or anyone who I let down or people who had to defend me that really love me," West said. He was so impressed with Pusha T's guest verse that he signed him to his GOOD Music label and eventually made the Clipse member president of the label.

The Beatles, 'A Day in the Life'

1967

"A Day in the Life" was one of the last true Lennon-McCartney collaborations: John Lennon wrote the opening and closing sections, and Paul McCartney contributed the "Woke up/Fell out of bed" middle. For the climax, they hired 40 musicians, dressed them in tuxedos and funny hats, and told them they had 15 bars to ascend from the lowest note on their instruments to the highest. "Listen to those trumpets — they're freaking out," McCartney said. The final piano chord concluded Sgt. Pepper and made rock's possibilities seem infinite.

David Bowie, 'Heroes'

1977

After a coke-fried spell in Los Angeles, Bowie was detoxing in Berlin when he spied two lovers having a rendezvous by the Berlin Wall. Said Bowie, "I thought, of all the places to meet in Berlin, why pick a bench underneath a guard turret on the wall?" Imagining the story behind their affair, Bowie wrote his most compassionate song ever. The song builds for six minutes, with Bowie setting his ragged, impassioned croon over a throbbing groove consisting of Eno's humming synths, Robert Fripp's guitar, and producer Tony Visconti banging on a metal ashtray that was lying around the studio. Bowie wails with crazed soul about two doomed lovers finding a moment of redemption together — just for one day.

The Ronettes, 'Be My Baby'

1963

Phil Spector rehearsed this song with Ronnie Bennett (the only Ronette to sing on it) for weeks, but that didn't stop him from doing 42 takes before he was satisfied. Aided by a full orchestra (as well as a young Cher, who sang backup vocals), Spector created a lush, echo-laden sound that was the Rosetta Stone for studio pioneers such as the Beatles and Brian Wilson, who calls this his favorite song. "The things Phil was doing were crazy and exhausting," said Larry Levine, Spector's engineer. "But that's not the sign of a nut. That's genius."

Billie Holiday, 'Strange Fruit'

1939

One of pop's first protest songs is also one of its most profoundly disturbing. Written by a Jewish schoolteacher in the Bronx, its lyrics evoke the horrors of a lynching ("Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze/Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees"), and its languid melody conjures the unsettling quiet of a Southern backwoods night. The song was so controversial in the late Thirties that Holiday, a Columbia Records artist, had to find another label to release it (an indie owned by Billy Crystal's uncle). "'Strange Fruit' is still relevant, because Black people are still being lynched," Andra Day, who sang it in The United States vs. Billie Holiday, told Rolling Stone last year. "It's not just a Southern breeze. We're seeing that everywhere."

Robyn, 'Dancing on My Own'

2010

Swedish disco queen Robyn captured all the agony and ecstasy of twirling alone in a corner of the dance floor, spinning around in circles, and losing yourself in the beat for a moment of solitary triumph. "I think 'Dancing on My Own' is totally from me just being in clubs and going out and dancing a lot, and seeing people and thinking, 'What are they doing here?'" she said later. Written with Stockholm producer Patrik Berger, the song made Robyn an iconic cult hero. But it also became the template for a whole generation of young songwriters, from Taylor Swift to Lorde, looking for the ideal glitter-and-sobs cocktail. "This song, to me, is perfect," Lorde wrote. "Joyous even when a heart is breaking."

John Lennon, 'Imagine'

1971

"It's not like he thought, 'Oh, this can be an anthem,'" Yoko Ono recalled years later of this song's creation in March of 1971. "Imagine" was "just what John believed: that we are all one country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out." Lennon admitted that "Imagine" was "virtually the Communist Manifesto." But the elementary beauty of his melody, the warm composure in his voice, and the poetic touch of co-producer Phil Spector — who bathed Lennon's performance in gentle strings and summer-breeze echo — emphasized the song's fundamental humanity. Lennon knew he had written something special. In one of his last interviews, he declared "Imagine" to be as good as anything he had written with the Beatles.

Prince and the Revolution, 'Purple Rain'

1984

On the 1999 tour in 1983, Prince found himself sharing arenas with Bob Seger, and he challenged himself to write a Seger-like ballad, but instead of "Night Moves," he channeled a heartrending meditation on love, trust, God, and purple rain. "It was so different," the Revolution's Bobby Z. said. "It was almost country. It was almost rock. It was almost gospel." The version of the song on the Purple Rain soundtrack is actually a live recording from 1983 that Prince later polished into a transcendent anthem worthy of a movie title. After the film came out, the song and its jaw-dropping guitar solo got only bigger: The performance on the 1985 home video Prince and the Revolution: Live stretches to almost 19 minutes — and it is stunning.

Queen, 'Bohemian Rhapsody'

1975

The 1970s, rock's most grandiose decade, never got more grandiose than here. "Bohemian Rhapsody" contains a reported 180 vocal parts and spans rock, opera, heavy metal, and pop — all in six minutes. But for as elegant as it sounds, recording it was a literal mess. Freddie Mercury taped scraps of paper containing his own bizarre musical notations to his piano and simply started pounding out chords for his bandmates to follow. Somehow he pieced it all together beautifully, singing about killing a man (possibly a metaphor for obliterating the heterosexual image of himself) and commedia dell'arte characters like Scaramouche. Recording technology was so taxed by the song that some tapes became virtually transparent from so many overdubs, but Queen had created something that embodied the absurd tragedy and humor of human existence.

Beyonce feat. Jay-Z, 'Crazy in Love'

2003

Producer Rich Harrison had trouble convincing friends and peers that the beat to "Crazy in Love" had much potential. So he added a five-alarm horn blast taken from Seventies soulsters the Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So)," as well as his own instrumental flourishes, and kept it at the ready for the right moment and the right artist — "Until I got the call from B," he later said. As the single that inaugurated Beyoncé's solo career, the song emphatically announced her arrival as the era's dominant pop power. Jay-Z's killer verse was added at the last minute. Bey and Jay had just started dating at the time, and the song's lyrics and head-over-heels delivery reflected what she described as "the first step of a relationship right before you let go."

The Beatles, 'I Want to Hold Your Hand'

1963

In 1963, the Beatles gave themselves an ultimatum: "We're not going to America till we've got a Number One record," Paul McCartney declared. So he and John Lennon went to the home of the parents of Jane Asher, McCartney's girlfriend, where — "one on one, eyeball to eyeball," as Lennon later put it — they wrote "I Want to Hold Your Hand," an irresistibly erotic come-on framed as a chaste, bashful request. The lightning-bolt energy of their collaboration ran through the band's performance. Rush-released in America the day after Christmas, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" hit Number One in the states on February 1st, 1964. When the bandmates got the news in Paris, during a three-week stand there, they partied all night.

The Kinks, 'Waterloo Sunset'

1967

After the Kinks' first burst of British Invasion pop success fizzled, Ray Davies really needed to write another hit. But instead, he wrote "Waterloo Sunset." It's a delicate guitar ballad about a solitary man who watches the world from his window, gazing on a couple of lovers who meet at a dismal London train station. For Davies, it was so personal he didn't even dare show the lyrics to the other Kinks until he recorded his vocal. As he said, "It was like an extract from a diary nobody was allowed to read." Yet it became his most beloved creation. You'd never know from the song what a dump Waterloo Station is — a tribute to Davies' power to find beauty in the mundane.

The Rolling Stones, 'Gimme Shelter'

1969

The Stones channeled the emotional wreckage of the late Sixties on a song that Keith Richards wrote in 20 minutes. The intro, strummed on an electric-acoustic guitar modeled on a Chuck Berry favorite, conjures an unparalleled aura of dread. Singer Merry Clayton brings down Armageddon with a soul-wracked wail: "Rape, murder, it's just a shot away." The song surfaced days after Meredith Hunter's murder at the Altamont music festival. "That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really," Mick Jagger said in 1995. "It's apocalypse." Richards later said that his guitar fell apart on the last take, "as if by design."

Stevie Wonder, 'Superstition'

1972

Stevie Wonder debuted this hard blast of funk live while opening for the Rolling Stones in the summer of 1972, intent on expanding his audience. The 22-year-old former child star had written it at a drum set, humming the other parts to himself. Wonder had initially intended for Jeff Beck to record the song, but Berry Gordy wouldn't let him give it away. It became the first single from Talking Book — and Wonder's first Number One hit in nearly a decade. "A lot of people, especially Black folks, let superstition rule their lives," Wonder said. "This is crazy. The worst thing is, the more you believe in it, the more bad things happen to you."

The Beach Boys, 'God Only Knows'

1966

"It's very emotional, always a bit of a choker with me," said Paul McCartney of this Pet Sounds ballad. The night McCartney and John Lennon first heard Pet Sounds, at a London party, they wrote "Here, There and Everywhere," which is influenced by "God Only Knows." Carl Wilson's understated lead vocal is note-perfect, but it's the arrangement of horns, sleigh bells, strings, and accordion that gives "God" its heavenly feel. Brian Wilson was fascinated by spirituality and said this song came out of prayer sessions in the studio. "We made it a religious ceremony," he said of recording Pet Sounds. The only problem: The use of the word "God" in the title scared off some radio programmers.

Outkast, 'Hey Ya!'

2003

About as radical as fun can get, "Hey Ya!" is funk, pop, rap, and rock spun into something otherworldly yet immediately lovable via Outkast's one of a kind Stankonian vision. André 3000 began writing the song on acoustic guitar, bashing out some chords that he wanted to sound like the Smiths and the Buzzcocks. "He had the bulk of it already conceptualized in his head," said recording engineer John Frye. "It all happened quite fast. We recorded the skeleton part, with the intro and the first verse and hook, all in one night."

The song would end up going through numerous permutations; one key assist came from former Cameo member Kevin Kendricks, who laid down the synth part and bass. At one point it was called "Thank God for Mom and Dad," a title that makes plain its complicated lyrics about the challenges of keeping a romantic relationship afloat.
On Twitter, in 2021, Outkast even called it "the saddest song ever written." In 2003, however, most of that was lost on a world that simply wanted to dance, party, and shake it like a Polaroid picture. "Hey Ya!" was the most universal pop smash of the early 2000s, the first song to be downloaded 1 million times on iTunes.

Fleetwood Mac, 'Dreams'

1977

In the face of a lover telling her to go her own way, Stevie Nicks penned the ethereal "Dreams." During the Rumours sessions in Sausalito, California, Nicks spent an off day in another room of the Record Plant that was supposedly used by Sly and the Family Stone. "It was a black-and-red room, with a sunken pit in the middle where there was a piano, and a big black-velvet bed with Victorian drapes," she told Blender.

There she reflected on the thunder and rain of her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, whose guitar parts slice through the song's mystical beat. "I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me, found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on, and wrote 'Dreams' in about 10 minutes," she continued. "Right away I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat, because that made it a little unusual for me."
The second single on Fleetwood Mac's blockbuster album Rumours, "Dreams" would become the band's only U.S. chart topper, and it would continue to enchant new generations — and even return to the charts — for decades to come.

Missy Elliott, 'Get Ur Freak On'

2001

"Oh yeah, man, we was on some futuristic stuff for sure," Missy Elliott told Rolling Stone in 2020, on her musical chemistry with Timbaland. "It was something hypnotic about those records." Missy and Tim took over the radio in the late Nineties, just two kids out of Portsmouth, Virginia, blowing minds with their own unique space-funk sound.

She didn't obey any of the rules for female stars at the time. And her music didn't obey rules either — nobody could duplicate the Missy-Tim mojo. "Get Ur Freak On" is the peak of their long-running collaboration — a massively weird avant-garde experiment that also blew up into a global pop hit. Even by their standards, "Get Ur Freak On" was a crazed challenge to the audience, with Missy yelling "Hollaaaa!" over a warped bhangra loop. As she once recalled, "I was like, 'Tim, you sure this isn't too far left that people won't get it? It sounds like some Japanese stuff mixed with a hip-hop beat.'"

But everybody who heard it was hooked — the whole world wanted to holla along with Miss E. "Get Ur Freak On" remains an anthem for freaks everywhere. And even after 20 years, it still sounds like the future.

The Beatles, 'Strawberry Fields Forever'

1967

John Lennon was one of the world's most visible people in 1966 — but he wrote his most exquisitely lonely song with "Strawberry Fields Forever." It opened up a whole new psychedelic era for the Beatles, changing the way pop music was heard and made.

But it began with Lennon alone on a Spanish beach, with an acoustic guitar, writing a song about his painful childhood memories. Strawberry Field was the name of a Liverpool orphanage where he used to play — and hide from the world — as a boy. "I have visions of Strawberry Fields," he told Rolling Stone in 1968. "Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go." Lennon bared himself so vulnerably in this song that he was nervous about playing it for the other Beatles. There was a moment of silence — until Paul McCartney said, "That is absolutely brilliant." They turned it into a groundbreaking sonic collage, thanks to George Martin's studio wizardry.

It was the first song cut at the Sgt. Pepper sessions, though it got left off the album so it could come out as a February 1967 single, with McCartney's "Penny Lane" on the flip side. "Strawberry Fields" is a song full of raw pain — yet the Beatles made it feel like an irresistible invitation.

Marvin Gaye, 'What's Going On'

1971

"What's Going On" is an exquisite plea for peace on Earth, sung by a man at the height of crisis. In 1970, Marvin Gaye was Motown's top male vocal star, yet he was frustrated by the assembly-line role he played on his own hits. Devastated by the loss of duet partner Tammi Terrell, who died that March after a three-year battle with a brain tumor, Gaye was also trapped in a turbulent marriage to Anna Gordy, Motown boss Berry Gordy's sister. Gaye was tormented, too, by his relationship with his puritanical father, Marvin Sr.

"If I was arguing for peace," Gaye told biographer David Ritz, "I knew I'd have to find peace in my heart." Not long after Terrell's passing, Renaldo Benson of the Four Tops presented Gaye with a song he had written with Motown staffer Al Cleveland. But Gaye made the song his own, overseeing the arrangement and investing the topical references to war and racial strife with private anguish. Motown session crew the Funk Brothers cut the stunning, jazz-inflected rhythm track (Gaye joined in with cardboard-box percussion). Then Gaye invoked his own family in moving prayer: singing to his younger brother Frankie, a Vietnam veteran ("Brother, brother, brother/There's far too many of you dying"), and appealing for calm closer to home ("Father, father, father/We don't need to escalate").

Initially rejected as uncommercial, "What's Going On" (with background vocals by two players from the Detroit Lions) was Gaye's finest studio achievement, a timeless gift of healing.

Nirvana, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'

1991

Producer Butch Vig first heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in early 1991, on a boombox cassette recorded by bassist Krist Novoselic, drummer Dave Grohl, and singer-guitarist-songwriter Kurt Cobain in a barn in Tacoma, Washington. The fidelity was abysmal. Vig — about to work with Nirvana on their major-label debut, Nevermind — could not tell that the song would soon make underground Seattle rock the new mainstream and catapult Cobain, a troubled young man with strict indie-culture ethics, into mega-celebrity.

"I could sort of hear the 'Hello, hello' part and the chords," Vig said years later. "But it was so indecipherable that I had no idea what to expect." "Teen Spirit" was Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. The insidious hooks also showed his admiration for John Lennon. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," Vig said, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice."

Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late 1993, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed. But few songs by any artist have reshaped rock and roll so immediately, and permanently.

Bob Dylan, 'Like a Rolling Stone'

1965

"I wrote it. I didn't fail. It was straight," Bob Dylan said of his greatest song shortly after he recorded it in June 1965. There is no better description of "Like a Rolling Stone" — of its revolutionary design and execution — or of the young man, just turned 24, who created it.

Dylan began writing an extended piece of verse — 20 pages long by one account, six in another — that was, he said, "just a rhythm thing on paper all about my steady hatred, directed at some point that was honest." Back home in Woodstock, New York, over three days in early June, Dylan sharpened the sprawl down to that confrontational chorus and four taut verses bursting with piercing metaphor and concise truth.

Before going into Columbia Records' New York studios to cut it, Dylan summoned Mike Bloomfield, the guitarist in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, to Woodstock to learn the song. "He said, 'I don't want you to play any of that B.B. King shit, none of that fucking blues,'" recalled Bloomfield (who died in 1981). "'I want you to play something else.'"

Just as Dylan bent folk music's roots and forms to his own will, he transformed popular song with the content and ambition of "Like a Rolling Stone." And in his electrifying vocal performance, his best on record, Dylan proved that everything he did was, first and always, rock & roll. "'Rolling Stone' is the best song I wrote," he said flatly at the end of 1965. It still is.

Sam Cooke, 'A Change Is Gonna Come'

1964

In 1963, Sam Cooke — America's first great soul singer and one of the most successful pop acts in the nation, with 18 Top 30 hits since 1957 — heard a song that profoundly inspired and disturbed him: Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." What struck Cooke was the challenge implicit in Dylan's anthem. "Jeez," Cooke mused, "a white boy writing a song like that?"

Cooke's response, "A Change Is Gonna Come," recorded on January 30th, 1964, with a sumptuous orchestral arrangement by Rene Hall, was more personal — in its first-person language and the experiences that preceded its creation. On October 8th, 1963, while on tour, Cooke and members of his entourage were arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, for disturbing the peace after they tried to register at a white motel — an incident reflected in the song's third verse. And Cooke's mourning for his 18-month-old son, Vincent, who drowned that June, resonates in the last verse: "There have been times that I thought/I couldn't last for long."
On December 11th, 1964, almost a year after he recorded it, Cooke was fatally shot at an L.A. motel. Two weeks later, "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released, becoming Cooke's farewell address and an anthem of the civil rights movement.

Public Enemy, 'Fight the Power'

1989

Chuck D once likened "Fight the Power" to Pete Seeger singing "We Shall Overcome." "'Fight the Power,'" he said, "points to the legacy of the strengths of standing up in music." Filmmaker Spike Lee had originally asked Public Enemy to write an anthem for Do the Right Thing — a movie about confronting white supremacy — so Chuck and the group's producers, the Bomb Squad, took inspiration from the Isley Brothers' funky "Fight the Power" and used the title as a blueprint for a whole new war cry.

In just under five minutes of scuzzy breakbeats and clarion-call horn samples, Chuck D and his foil, Flavor Flav, present a manifesto for racial revolution and Black pride with koans like "Our freedom of speech is freedom of death," and rallying cries to rethink the basics of American life itself in lines like "Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps." The song was exactly what Lee's movie needed, so it was played over and over again, anytime the character Radio Raheem showed up with his boombox, making it an instant classic.

"I think it was Public Enemy's and Spike Lee's defining moment because it had awoken the Black community to a revolution that was akin to the Sixties revolution, where you had Martin Luther King or Malcolm X," the Bomb Squad's Hank Shocklee once said. "It made the entire hip-hop community recognize its power. Then the real revolution began."

Aretha Franklin, 'Respect'

1967

When Aretha Franklin left Columbia Records for Atlantic in 1966, the label's vice president, Jerry Wexler, came to the singer with some suggestions for songs she might cover, like Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and Ray Charles' "Drown in My Own Tears." She liked those ideas, but she had one of her own: "Respect," a song she'd been performing live. "Long as she changes it up," Wexler told Franklin's manager Ted White in an exchange recounted by Franklin's biographer David Ritz. "You don't gotta worry about that," White responded. "She changes it up all right."

Otis Redding wrote "Respect" and recorded it for the Stax/Volt label in 1965. But Franklin took possession of the song for all time with her definitive cover, cut at Atlantic's New York studio on Valentine's Day 1967. "Respect" was her first Number One hit and the single that established her as the Queen of Soul.

In Redding's reading, a brawny march, he called for equal favor with volcanic force. Franklin wasn't asking for anything. She sang from higher ground: a woman calling for an end to the exhaustion and sacrifice of a raw deal with scorching sexual authority. In short: If you want some, you will earn it. "For Otis, 'respect' had the traditional connotation, the more abstract meaning of esteem," Wexler said in his autobiography, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in American Music. "The fervor in Aretha's magnificent voice demanded that respect and more: Respect also involved sexual attention of the highest order. What else could 'Sock it to me' mean?"

He was referring to the knockout sound of Franklin's backup singers — her sisters, Carolyn and Erma — chanting "Sock it to me" at high speed, which Aretha and Carolyn cooked up for the session. The late Tom Dowd, who engineered the date, credited Carolyn with the saucy breakdown in which Aretha spelled out the title: "I fell off my chair when I heard that!" And since Redding's version had no bridge, Wexler had the band — the legendary studio crew from Muscle Shoals, Alabama — play the chord changes from Sam and Dave's "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" under King Curtis' tenor-sax solo.

There is no mistaking the passion inside the discipline of Franklin's delivery; she was surely drawing on her own tumultuous marriage at the time for inspiration. "If she didn't live it," Wexler said, "she couldn't give it." But, he added, "Aretha would never play the part of the scorned woman.… Her middle name was Respect."

Leading off her Atlantic debut, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, "Respect" catalyzed rock & roll, gospel, and blues to create the model for soul music that artists still look to today (Mariah Carey called Franklin "my mentor"). Just as important, the song's unapologetic demands resonated powerfully with the civil rights movement and emergent feminist revolution, fitting for an artist who donated to the Black Panther Party and sang at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. In her 1999 memoir, Franklin wrote that the song reflected "the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect." We still do.