List Mania! Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Guitar Songs
Like I’ve said before, I like Rolling Stone. It’s mainstream, it has pop tarts – and “The Hills” girls – on the cover too much, but, really, any magazine that employs Matt Taibbi is cool with me. One thing about the Rolling Stone – it loves itself some lists. But hey, don’t we all? The magazine put out a list of the 100 best guitar songs of all time and, like all lists, you can nitpick and bitch about certain things, but overall, it hits the right spots. Here’s the top 10:
- Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Purple Haze”
- Cream – “Crossroads”
- The Kinks – “You Really Got Me”
- The Rolling Stones – “Brown Sugar”
- Van Halen – “Eruption”
- The Beatles - “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
- Led Zeppelin – “Stairway To Heaven”
- The Allman Brothers Band – “Statesboro Blues”
- Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
There were a couple of pleasant surprises like Prince’s “Purple Rain” at No. 19 and the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” at No. 21. A few quibbles, like Black Sabbath’s “Black Sabbath” at No. 17. Shouldn’t have Sabbath been a bit higher (like maybe before Nirvana), and the song have been “Iron Man“? Also, Queens of the Stone Age’s “No One Knows” may deserve a bit higher rank than 97. I was also pleased to see Phish’s “You Enjoy Myself” on the list (though “Stash” would have been a better choice).
Oh music lists, we’ll never stop loving you.
Pretty funny… although it depends if they are being serious with this list or not, but just thinking back to the drunken days of my college cover band experience, I guess I would add:
Sunshine of My Love - Whichever Version You Like
Welcome to the Jungle/Sweet Child of Mine - Guns
Jessica - Allman Bros
Sweet Home Alabama - Skynard
Ocean - Led Zeppelin
Today - Smashing Pumpkins
Gosh. I guess you can tell which part of the country I went to school in. Making these kinda lists have to take FOREVER.
Yeah, no doubt – you could go a million different ways. So, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was in there, as was “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.” I actually like “Today” as the Pumpkins song though – more of that wall-of-sound thing they had going. BWBW was more about the chorus. Great song, but “Today” had the loud/soft dynamic and that cute little intro that just got blasted away. They were a great band.
And, I think you could put any Led Zep song on there. I’m sure “Black Dog” was in there somewhere.
I know their lists are designed to be controversial, but damn, I always get sucked into it.
You’d be hard pressed to get me to say something bad about The Kinks, but “You Really Got Me Now” at #4?
SRV doesn’t show up until #54, Freebird until #64 (not that I’m a huge fan of the song, but come on…).
Oh, and John Mayer’s “Gravity” was at #84 (14 spots ahead of “Under the Bridge”).
If I was responsible for contributing to this list, I would humbly request that no Lynryd Skynrd be included. I have serious reservations about a band with no vowels – you know who else doesn’t use vowels? Communists.
I really don’t know why (well, they’re not good), but I think Skynrd gets under my skin more than any other band.
And, you know, I thought about SRV too, but ended with this: He’s a great guitar player, but I really can’t think of a great guitar song that he wrote. They’re mostly good because of how good he is, not the other way around.
I’m not a big Skynyrd fan either, but you can’t have a list of guitar songs without putting Freebird near the top.
As for SRV, I’ll give you that some of his best stuff was covers (his “Little Wing” is the definitive version in my book), but both “Lenny” and “Pride and Joy” were great too. I’d also argue that his playing was enough to deserve inclusion - regardless of the song (I’d consider Hendrix’s Watchtower a guitar song, but not the original, etc.)
Yes you can.