I actually agree with, if not the order, the inclusion of most of those songs. For me, a riff is something that you can play that everyone immediately knows what song you are going to play. Round here, the big one is the opening bars of “Sweet Home Alabama” and ZZ Top’s “La Grange” and “Tush.” In my criterion, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” certainly qualifies. You know, you sit down with a bunch of friends, tune your guitar, and play this in order to show off/warm up/check tuning, and everybody laughs.
Note that these songs are not particularly what I play when I sit down by myself, nor what I consider the pinnacle of musical acheivement. More like what I play to make people laugh.
Using that definition, here is a top 10.
- Johnny B. Goode
- Iron Man
- Smoke on the Water
- Black Dog
- Sweet Child O’ Mine
- Layla
- Jumpin Jack Flash
- Sunshine of Your Love
- Beat It
- Foxy Lady
There are tons of instantly recognizable riffs, but I think that covers the major bases. Somewhere in the next 50 are almost all of Zep II (Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown, Livin Loving Maid, Moby Dick), Kashmir, and the Immigrant Song, Purple Haze, Red House, and Voodoo Chile, Smells Like Teen Spirit (we are talking instant recognizability in my book), Day Tripper, the bass line from Money, Sweet Home Alabama, Paranoid, White Room, Jailhouse Rock, Like a Rolling Stone, House of the Rising Sun, Pour Some Sugar on Me, Brown Sugar, Walk This Way, Enter Sandman, Paint it Black, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Brown Eyed Girl, Don’t Fear the Reaper, Who Do You Love, Tush and La Grange, Every Breath You Take. If you can’t immediately hum the riffs from these songs, well, you need to dick around with friends on the guitar more often.
These represent only instantly recognizable electric guitar riffs. Note that there is a whole suite of acoustic riffs nobody has mentioned – Yesterday and Here Comes the Sun, Tears in Heaven, More Than Words, Blackbird, Dust in the Wind, Norweigan Wood, Pinball Wizard, Over the Hills and Far Away, Roundabout, Barracuda. The songs you dick around with if you only have an acoustic.
There aren’t that many good riffs that are younger than around 15 years old, probably because mainstream pop has not been dominated by guitar rock for a while. I can make a long list of newer ones too – Breeders “Cannonball”, Radiohead “Karma Police” or “Just” or “High and Dry”, Smashing Pumpkins “Today”, that Green Day song that they play on the TV when someone dies, White Stripes “Seven Nation Army”.