Sunday Jun 27, 2004

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This guy at the Charlotte Observer put together a list of the 5 greatest rock songs of all time. It's really not nearly as bad a list as I anticipated. Points for including Little Richard. He also invites people to send in their own lists.

It's a harder effort than you think. I could have just as easily sent in my five favorites, but I had to set out some criteria that included vision, impact, innovation, and mass appeal. Here's mine:

1. Little Richard - Ooh! My Soul
2. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son
3. Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop
4. Chuck Berry - Maybelline
5. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here

And now you can get to the fun part of telling me what an idiot I am. No seriously. Go ahead. The list is fucking waterproof. Bring it.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
krypto2:
Well, it is your list, so it shall be. For me a better example of protest rock was "I'd love to change the world" by Ten Years After.... AFA Southern Rock goes, for me the defining band was the Allman Bros.....on a good night, Duane was god, ( and even on a bad night), and the whole band cohesed into an organic whole that just could not be matched...

rickroyal:
Agreed, choosing a particular song for the Beatles would be rather difficult. While it's not really a rock song, I'd be tempted to go with "Yesterday." Heavily covered, popular when it was released, innovative for its time, and its influence is fairly easy to trace. But you're right, it's very difficult to isolate a single song from their collection as illustrative of what they contributed to music.

While I understand not wanting to include Elvis simply for impact, I would say that he probably gets points for mass appeal as well. In those to categories (impact and mass appeal), he blows Little Richard away. On the other hand, Little Richard certainly has the edge in innovation and, for you, in aesthetic appeal. "Vision" is kinda murky for a criteria, so I can't say who I'd say has the edge there.

The odd thing about Floyd is that they really had very little impact on rock. In some ways, they're like the most evolved form of a dead evolutionary bent in rock music. No one really followed in the tradition of their sound (those that sound similar usually owe a greater debt to the prog rockers).

I suppose one of the reasons why I shy away from making lists is that I never feel as though I have enough information. Like, if I were to make a "top 5 Rock Songs" list, I'd have to first hear every rock song and evaluate each before I could compile a list, else my list might overlook something important. I might be able to cull together a list of "Best Folk Songs Referencing Franz Kafka 68-71," but maybe not.

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