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Since some seem to be struggling with the Greatest Songs of All Time thread (including me), I thought I'd throw another option out there. I'd like to see it narrowed down to five songs, because for me, when the lists get longer than that they just seem diluted and I tend to gloss over them.
So, have a go at it. I'm going to think about it before I post mine.
I can't restrict it to five.
Yes you can. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Freypower
Yes, it's hard to limit it to five, but really think about it and narrow it down. It makes those five songs all the more special.
Here's mine:
She Loves You - The Beatles, 1964
I was 6 years old, but I knew this was something like I had never heard before! In the next few years I would be amazed at the musical experimentation this band would put out.
Peace Train - Cat Stevens, 1971
It would take years to discover how much I enjoyed some of Cat Stevens work, but the message in this song was not lost on me, even at the young age of 13.
Take It Easy - Eagles, 1972
I easily fell into the Southern California rock sound of the early 70's, and when I heard this song on the radio at 14 years old, it was love at first listen.
Monday Morning - Fleetwood Mac, 1975
I remember listening to the Fleetwood Mac album when I was 17 and hearing the abrupt beginning of the first track on side one and thinking, "This is my kind of music." The entire album was superb, as was Rumours.
Magic Man - Heart, 1976
I was 18 years old, walked into my friend's bedroom and saw the Dreamboat Annie album lying on the floor next to a turntable. When I heard the first track I knew that I was hearing something great. It expanded my musical tastes even further.
ETA: Oops, I forgot I was going to include
Rocky Mountain High, John Denver, 1972
This song had a huge impact on me when it came out because of its strong ties to nature. I think I would have to exclude Heart to limit it to five.
Great idea for a thread, PM. My list of songs is a bit eclectic. I'm not a musician by any stretch, but music has been a big part of my life.
1. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah from Disney's Song of the South
This song is meaningful not because of the movie, but because my father sang it to me when I was a kid. It always put a smile on his face which put a smile on my face, too.
2. Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music
My first trip to a drive-in theater was to see The Sound of Music. Of course I promptly fell asleep, but my father knew he needed to wake me up for Do-Re-Mi. At the time, it was my favorite song from the movie and my entire family sang along. This movie and The Wizard of Oz kick-started my love of musical films.
3. The Rain in Spain from My Fair Lady
The first musical theater production I saw was My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison. Unfortunately Julie Andrews did not play Eliza Doolittle. I absolutely love this show in particular and musical theater in general.
4. Take It To the Limit by the Eagles
Yes, there is an Eagles song in my list. This is the first Eagles song I vividly remember playing on the radio. I swear I heard this song every day for quite a while. I credit that repetition for solidifying my love of the Eagles.
5. Star Wars Main Theme by John Williams
I was blown away when I first saw Star Wars, now called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. The special effects were amazing and the film's score was so powerful. I realized that a great song doesn't necessarily need lyrics.
Well this is interesting. My Fair Lady is my favourite musical film apart from Singin' In The Rain & the songs are part of my DNA. I also grew up with both Mary Poppins & The Sound Of Music. But I wouldn't put any of those songs into a list of five songs which made an impact on me. I also could not seriously include the Beatles because I was too young at the time they were recording.
I had to be ruthless here:
Galveston - Glen Campbell (1969)
The song I believe started my llifelong obsession with travel & songs about travelling & places.
Children Of The Revolution - T. Rex (1972)
The first rock song I consciously remember thinking how great it was. It may have subsconsciously influenced my political beliefs.
Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen (1975 - but I didn't hear it until 1976)
I don't know what to say about it. If a song changed my life, this is it. How? I don't know.
Hotel California - Eagles (1976)
Introduced me to American culture.
Romeo & Juliet - Dire Straits (1980)
Combined rock music with my ultimate hero, Shakespeare, while also brilliantly referencing the modern adaptation of the play, West Side Story.
I knew you could do it, FP. :nod:
That's what I wanted - ruthlessness. What good is a list if it's a mile long? ;)
I know what you mean about a song influencing your life, but you're not exactly sure how. Some songs, like She Loves You, in my case, influenced a whole generation. I was swept away with the Beatle's revolution and it changed my life in ways I can't even understand.
In no particular order,
"From the Beginning" by ELP is the only song that commands my attention every time. My favourite song, and it conveys my own philosophy of life: "You see, it's all clear. You were meant to be near from the beginning."
"Aqualung" by Jethro Tull is my mind's idea of what a musical soundscape is all about.
"Day Tripper" by the Beatles sparked my interest in playing guitar.
"What is Life?" by George Harrison is the most powerful question ever posed in a song.
"I'm Not in Love" by 10cc so perfectly fit the time in which I heard it back when I was 11, and it fits even more right now.
geez. lol
Angel- Jimi Hendrix. I first heard this song when my ex husband and I started dating years ago. I was getting more into rock and discovering Jimi was the best thing ever. he went out same day and got me his box set. even though we didn't part on the best of terms I played it constantly after he passed away.
She Talks To Angels- Black Crowes. Another ex song. because he would always say that this song made him think of me.
And I Love Her- The Beatles. This song made me fall head over heels for them lol
Am I The One- Beth Hart. got me through a difficult phase in my life
Oh Happy Day- Edwin Hawkins Singers. my family sang it at my mothers funeral. I still find it difficult to sit through.
Bonus one is Desperado. :)
I’ve been meaning to get around to doing this for a while, so here goes. I’ve decided to present my list in chronological order.
Sky Blue And Black – Jackson Browne
I would have first heard this when I was 8 years old. I remember my parents playing Jackson’s I’m Alive album in the car on cassette. I didn’t really understand what the song was about then but the power of this beautiful song still reached me. I also think it subconsciously shaped my musical tastes – once I had heard quality songwriting like this, the dance pop stuff in the charts was unlikely to do it for me! It haunted me (in a good way!) for years even though at one point I probably went about six years without hearing. It was between this or The End of The Innocence, which I heard at a very similar stage of my life, although I went for this as the artist behind the latter song will appear later…
Sultans Of Swing – Dire Straits
It would have been about 2007 (when I was 12-13) when I was introduced to this song. My Dad had (still has) the Money For Nothing compilation album on CD and I think I’d read something negative about Dire Straits, so he must have decided to play me a song from this disc to prove this wrong. This was the first track on the album and it immediately clicked with me, I knew straight away that I absolutely loved it! Back then I used to just put in the CD and play this song 4-5 times over. This was years before I got into any of the rest of their music but this song truly was love on first listen for me.
My interest in music inexplicably dwindled between about 2008 and 2010. I honestly wasn’t that bothered at that stage, which is unusual as I was at a stage when a lot of people find their musical identities. Receiving the 2 CD edition of the Very Best Of Fleetwood Mac for Christmas in 2010 reignited my love of music (albeit a lot of it being tracks I'd already heard), along with another album...
You’re A Big Girl – Bob Dylan
That other album was Blood On The Tracks, and this track became my initial favourite. I always loved the mournful harmonica at the end and the poetic lyrics but I think the most important thing was Bob’s moving and heartfelt vocal. After hearing this song, Dylan would no longer be ‘that guy who can’t sing’. It also showed me that there was really great music out there to be discovered.
Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
This is a bit of a strange one, because the first time I heard this was a bar band playing this while I was on holiday in the summer of 2012. I remember being enchanted by the chorus lyrics ‘When I was a child, I had a fever’ and the guitar work. After I got back home, I listened to this song in full and loved it, downloaded it. Within six months I had got the Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here albums and was already a huge fan of this band.
Life In The Fast Lane – Eagles
This will partially overlap with the topic about becoming a fan of the Eagles (another thread I plan to post in, hopefully sooner rather than later) as it was very shortly after I first listened to them, almost three years ago. Indeed, this was only the second track I listened to, after Hotel California itself. I was immediately impressed, with the standout moment being Don’s great vocal on the ‘he had a nasty reputation as a cruel dude’ line. I thought the lyrics and guitar work were great and I then decided to upload the entire Hotel California album from my parents’ CD. The rest is history! I also think this song (along with Victim Of Love) also opened the door to listening to hard rock music with more risqué lyrics, so it was not only a song that made me an Eagles fan, but it smoothed the road for me become a fan of bands like Led Zeppelin too.
The single most important factor is that these songs must have made an immediate impact on me. For example, The Last Resort is one of my absolute favourite Eagles songs, yet it only became great to me on about my fourth listen, so even though it has made a huge impact on me, it was not really ‘immediate’. The easiest choice for me was probably Sultans - I can remember it more clearly than memories from earlier in my childhood and there was less competition from other songs than in the later cases. I also restricted it to one song per artist, so massive favourites like Take It Easy, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Bob Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone, all of which I loved straight away, lose out to songs that I heard at an earlier stage of my fandom. Lastly, with only five slots available, I had to pick songs that were important in the development of my musical taste (introducing me to new artists or styles of music) – Man On The Moon by R.E.M., for instance, was another song I immediately loved, but it is ‘just’ a song I love. Listening to it didn’t really open any doors to me, and I didn’t become a mega-fan.
I was born in 1994, so there is a complete lack of music that has been released in my lifetime here. The truth is that there just have hardly been any songs from modern bands that have made an immediate impact on me; many of the songs that have from this era I have only discovered at an advanced stage of my fandom (I think of certain tracks from Long Road Out Of Eden and Mark Knopfler's solo albums). From a personal point of view, the single biggest exclusion is the lack of anything from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, an album I have loved for longer than any other and I would hazard a guess the album I have heard the most times in my life. This is because I have known these songs for so long that I honestly cannot remember when I first heard them.
In no particular order:
Eagles - The Last Resort
My absolute favourite song of all time. I've said more than enough about it on here over the years but no other form of art or anything similar has ever had such an impact on my life. Sadly that impact was probably to make me more of a sceptical nihilist sod than I was before, but in all seriousness the political and social messages within it are quite dear to me. The verse beginning 'Who will provide the grand design...' is just as good as any prose I have ever read in my life.
Judas Priest - Breaking the Law
A complete contrast, but my second favourite band behind the obvious. I forst heard this song on Jackass and a quick Google search left me hooked on the band. Though they have covered quite a vast array of metal types and messages over the years, they are the quintessential heavy metal band there ever will be, and as a teenager growing up their music and their message made me feel accepted (God knows by who) and OK with myself when very little else in the world did. BTL is by no stretch my favourite Priest song, and most of their early and mid-80s catalogue is far more impressive as an example of their ability, but this song is the first I ever heard of them, and as such probably has to be my choice!
UFO - Doctor Doctor
Hearing this for the first time was like being struck by lightening, sizzling off slightly and then being struck again several more times. I would put it forward as the perfect rock n' roll song - the calm intro building up into the cutting riff and lyrics so well constructed that you can sing in perfect time with the vocalist for most of the song; it is the very essence of what hard rock music is built on. Also a reasonable demonstration of the abilities of one Mr. Michael Schenker, for me one of the most underrated rock guitarists of all time. Watch any live performance of this (particularity back in the day) and it just personifies everything people think rock n' roll is.
Kiss - God Gave Rock And Roll to You II
A special mention to Argent who originally did this, but Kiss absolutely nailed the cover. It shares the same eager, hedonistic message as, for example, Take It Easy does, but I think much in the same way as I feel with Judas Priest's work, it's one of those songs that makes you feel like you belong to something and that no-one can take away from you, and again that helped me growing up and still helps me now in those odd occasions that you have a really bad run of it.
Black Sabbath - War Pigs
This song did as much for hard rock and heavy metal as any other song ever has for its respective genre. I think that much like The Last Resort it's probably shaped my politics and personal views more than anything, but it is still such a good example of what Sabbath were capable of as a band and how good a lyricist Geezer Butler is. Lines like 'Politicians hide themselves away, they only started the war / Why should they go out to fight, they leave that all to the poor' were very accurate for a lot of what had gone on in the world and rather prophetic of what would lie ahead. There are very few hard rock songs that create relevant commentaries on the likes of war and unrest (most of the time it's usually hypothetical destruction of mankind!). All that said however, the repetition of 'masses' in the first two lines annoys me greatly :lol:
This is tough past #1. But here goes.
Hotel California - Eagles
Surprise surprise... Hotel California saved my life, gave me a purpose, and makes me feel good every time I hear it. I was in a dark place back in 2006/7 and a family friend suggested for me to play guitar and get into music as something to do with my time (as I'm disabled). I ignored him until January 2007 when he was in a horrific wreck. I then dug out my parents records and put stuff on. It was stuff I would soon appreciate if not love, but it didn't "hit" me. Then there it was. Hotel California. From the intro my interest was piqued and by the time of the solos my world had changed. I wanted to do THAT. And I dug out a guitar out of the closet, printed off a chord chart, and away I went. And I became a classic rock lover and guitarist. It still gives me chills and I'lll NEVER tire of hearing it. It is indeed my favorite song of all time, and with that being said, my favorite EAGLES song.
Tumblin' Dice - The Rolling Stones
There were two bands I was big into in the beginning of my guitar journey. The above mentioned band, and this one came a little later. I admired Joe Walsh and Keith Richards as my lead/rhythm idols. I heard this song and I was HOOKED on that swagger-filled rock n' roll. I LOVED the Stones, and still do. But at one point I would only play music from either the Eagles or the Stones, lol, and my soon to become friends broke me of that and then I opened my palate. But this song has stuck with me as being a perfect example of how less is more, groove counts, and just raw rock energy. This song is as addictive as cake and ice cream. It's my favorite Stones song by far, and it's the one I play the most often both as a listener and as a player as far as their music goes. Sick, sick groove.
Walk This Way - Aerosmith
Fun fact - I saw this band in 2004 WAY before I knew who the heck they were or became a fan or into music at all let alone a guitar player. They were my first rock concert that my parents took me with them to see. I remember NOTHING of this concert. Little did I know that I'd become a big fan of them. This song, much like Tumblin' Dice, has a rhythmic thing that I'm a sucker for. The guitar riff, the drum intro, the sleazy lyrics, I love all of it. If you look up the definition of what rock n' roll in the 70s was about, this song should be there. It is my favorite Aerosmith song but it's a favorite of mine regardless. I remember when I first heard it and I was enamored with the intro riff and the solos Joe Perry did. Again, sloppy rock pentatonic (mostly) with feeling and energy is what I go for and this has it in spades. Less is more when it comes to rock n' roll and this song just rocks!
Back In Black - AC/DC
I absolutely love this song and this band and this era of their music. Nothing against the late Bon Scott, but Brian Johnson on this album was just so great. Not only was it a good tribute to Bon, it had even more toughness to it while also appealing to a broader audience with a pop radio friendly edge. This song as fr as I remember was the first AC/DC song I latched onto and my first experience with the band. It is NOT my favorite AC/DC song (that's You Shook Me All Night Long from the same album), but it is my first AC/DC song I heard and it hooked me good. The combination of Malcolm's chugging Gretsch and Angus's singing SG just sounded so good. They were so stripped down and while they get complaints from people that all of their songs are the same, my point still applies here. Simple isn't always easy, and simple is best when it comes to rock n' roll music. These guys get the "roll" part, as do the above mentioned artists. It's important.
Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
The first LZ song I ever heard was Stairway To Heaven but the one that I heard first after that that made me fall in love with the band was Whole Lotta Love. This song was tough as nails for the kind of music in the late 60s. It truly was the prototype of what would become classic hard rock/heavy metal. They had a lot of gusto and they just sounded MEAN and I loved that. They also knew how to groove. Jimmy Page is one of my top idols and his riffs and solos in this are legendary. I'm hooked when I listen to this song. I can't skip it, change stations, nothing. And I've heard it a lot. It just has a lot of swagger and rock n' roll"ness" to it. Jimmy Page defines rock n' roll and cool. He really put it all into this song. I still have to crank the volume up when it comes on. It really fits my kind of music to a T. Led Zeppelin is absolutely one of my all time favs, and I love this one.
Now I left out a TON of songs that have made an equally big impact on me but if I kept going it'd be 20+. I have a hard time with lists past the first 2 or 3 for that reason. I love Guns N' Roses, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Fleetwood Mac, etc. But these came to mind first, so there ya go. I really am a guitar-focused classic rock electric guitar nerd and I love loud rock n' roll and this is a perfect example.
"Already Gone" - it always gets me out of low periods, feeling sorry for myself, dealing with failure or rejection.
"So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key"
-jl