By far the best rock song of all time is Smells Like the Sunshine of Your White Walrus’s Generation. I dare anyone to build a city on that.
Hear hear. Certainly one of the greatest musical “moments” comes from listening to that album and reaching this point (or at least the album starting with You Never Give Me Your Money).
I’ll never understand why “Her Majesty” is tagged onto the end of that album. A pretty poor footnote, IMO.
I think you have to play the whole side to get the full effect - my favorite moment from that medley is the horns playing the You Never Give Me Your Money theme during Carry That Weight. That or the arpeggio that pops up in almost every song during that sequence.
Goodness me.
I certainly couldn’t begin to suggest a greatest rock song of all time, but if you want to pretend to intelligently discuss Queen’s best tunes, at least give a listen to their first 2 albums. Keep Yourself Alive and Liar from 1, and basically all of II kick BR’s ass. Or Tie Your Mother Down off DATR.
And the White and Black tour following II was one of the best shows ever.
And now this old fart fondly remembering his misspent youth now returns you to your discussion…
I nominate The Baha Men’s Who Let the Dogs Out for best rock song ever. If you disagree, or don’t think it’s a rock song, then you’re just an idiot. 
Only if by greatest you mean most nauseating. There have been half a hundred more worthy cantidates already mentioned. BR is like, the oppoisite of Rock or something…
mm
Bah. Of Queen songs: “Under Pressure” is better for serious themes. “We Will Rock You” will endure when all other Queen songs have been forgotten–it’s nigh-cultic. “Bohemian Rhapsody” wins the “goofy fun” category, but only for sheer silliness.
Greatest Rock Song? Comparisons are invidious, insidious, & highly subjective. Nonetheless:
3 Serious songs better than “Under Pressure”: “Part of the Machine” & “Farm on the Freeway” by Jethro Tull, “Revolution” by Lennon/McCartney.
Other possible Enduring songs: “God” by John Lennon, “Something” by George Harrison, “Hey You” by Pink Floyd, “Time after Time” by Cyndi Lauper.
Goofy Fun/Weird songs that can challenge “BR”: “Godzilla” by Blue Oyster Cult, “One More Minute” by Weird Al, “Come Sail Away” by Styx.
My personal Ultimate Rock Song is, at this moment, a tie between “Games People Play” by the Alan Parsons Project, & part “Nobody Loves Me” by Portishead. But I usually say “Feel Like Making Love” (with honorable mention to “Bad Company”) by Bad Company.
So, NO.
Yes, of course. Songs grow on me all the time… let’s use E-40’s “Tell Me When To Go,” as a recent song that I did not like on first listen, but has since grown on me. When I first heard “Tell Me When To Go,” I did not see much special about it. However, the goofy phrases in the call and response section wouldn’t leave my head, and I even begun to enjoy E-40’s flow that stumbles over the beat rather than riding it. So, yes, originally I thought the song was mediocre to average and I now think it’s a good song. That does not mean the song changed. It means I changed. That is not a problem, though; the value of music is something assigned by the listener, not an inherent part of the composition. The E-40 track was only ever bad in the sense that it didn’t sound good to me, and it is now only good in the sense that it sounds good to me.
If we attempt to create a means to evaluate music independently of personal taste, we encounter a minefield of arbitarily assigned criteria. We could, for instance, consider how many people like a song, say, by examining sales records. But does popularity automatically make art good? It certainly would create problems for all those people who are sure that the White Album is better than Thriller, or that Rachmaninov is better than Britney Spears. And then, all this thread would require is a glance at a Billboard chart.
Perhaps, rather than sales figures, we could explore characteristics of the music itself. But which characteristics? Music is multifaceted, diverse and nearly always requires cultural knowledge to understand. Think, for instance, of all the people who insisted the Beatles were talentless thugs who weren’t even making music when the group first appeared. Any supposedly neutral criteria used to judge music would be more likely to reflect predominant cultural biases than the worth of the music. Think of the traditional hierarchy of music in the western world, that places music by dead Europeans from hundreds of years ago at the top and a large part of contemporary music by women and minorities at the bottom.
And then there’s perhaps the worst option, which is to anoint a special group of people, called critics, as the guardians of musical quality, and assume we can entrust our musical opinions to their whims and prejudices.
No, I think it is much better to simply see that “Greatest” and “My favorite” are synonymous descriptors, and not be concerned that we cannot objectively rate the inherently subjective.
But if the singers’ or musicians’ production or lyrics or talent or whatever has not resulted in music that sounds good, then surely it means they’ve failed. If you listen to a song and decide that the guitarist is very talented, but you don’t like the song, then all that means is that the guitarist has used his supposed talent unsuccessfully. You want to hear music you enjoy, the guitarist, despite all his talent, hasn’t delivered. Why should he deserve a pat on the head and the affirmation that he’s done something good, when his composition has failed the first test of being good - that is, being enjoyable to listen to.
As I said above, I think you liking a song does make it good, and you disliking a song does make it bad. You’re the one listening to the music, so why let anyone else’s taste dictate how you feel about it?
My nomination would be “Devil With The Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly” by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. (Short sample from Amazon below for any unfamiliar with it, it’s very old)
Just my own opinion, but I think Mr. Ryder had one of the best voices ever in Rock (after Little Richard) and Devil/Miss Molly sent chills up and down my 15 year old spine when I first heard it. Still moves me now (I’m 56) if I happen to hear it on some oldies station. I was always impressed at the level of tension/excitement in Devil With The Blue Dress, from the beginning, and how it ramps up with the modulation into another key for Good Golly Miss Molly. Cool guitar lead in too.
BR’s a great song, as are most of the nominees in this thread, I just think for a song to be proper Rock (& Roll), it should be a lot less complex than BR. I don’t mind complexity, but if a Rock song becomes too complex, I start thinking of it as Pop, rather than Rock.
Good and Bad can be determined outside of personal taste. There are any number of musical works that I personally hate that I still see as masterpieces. Same with art and architecture. I can state that Lord of the Rings, for instance, is a masterpiece of fiction, even though it didn’t do much for me. I can also say that there are songs I adore that are total crap. Just because you like it doesn’t make it good.
I like “Her Majesty” for what it is (a catchy little throwaway), but I think I agree with you. The last album the Beatles recorded should have ended with “The End.”
And replace “Hotel California” with almost anything. “Layla” will do fine. But aside from that, it’s a pretty good list, after your modifications. (I regard “Imagine” as one of the most overrated songs of all time. Always makes me feel like I’m in a waiting room where I’ve spent too long.)
BR is good in a very arty sort of way. I suppose it could be your best rock song ever if you like very arty rock. I personally can’t stand this part of the lyrics:
Mama,just killed a man,
Put a gun against his head,
Pulled my trigger,now he’s dead,
Mama, life had just begun,
But now I’ve gone and thrown it all away
This song’s about a guy who kills somebody then has a pity party about how his life is all ruined. Yeah, I know the song goes in enough different directions that by the time you get to ‘galileo’ you’ve forgotten all about that, but it’s still an irritant (for me, at least) every time I hear the song.
As for “We Will Rock You,” I wish I could erase from my mind the last few thousand times I’ve heard that goddam BOOM-BOOM-BAM. Then maybe I could tolerate it again.
Favorites I think should be contenders:
“Sunshine of Your Love”
“Foxy Lady”
“Riders on the Storm”
“Black Dog”
And my favorite roll down the windows scream at the top of my lungs song in the world that probably shouldn’t be a contender but would be on any list of my favorite rockin’ songs:
“Rock You Like a Hurricane”
You gotta be kidding. Bhemian Rhapsody is a piece of shit. I can’t push the button to change channels fast enough when it comes on.
As far as something better, I nominate Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty, which I think really is the Greatest Rock Song ever.
I think the lyrics work beautifully, if you look at the song as classic opera (which is full of pity parties and people doing stupid stuff and then getting all overwrought and singing about it) with a bit of “Folsom Prison Blues” (“I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die”) thrown in.
In fact, one could describe “Bohemian Rhapsody” as a rock opera in miniature; and it is arguably the second-best under-10-minute opera ever.
How can good or bad be determined? I considered a number of ways, and found them arbitrary or inadequate. Did you disagree with my analysis?
You say that there are a number of works that you think are masterpieces, though you cannot stand them. How do you derive the standards by which you judge those works as masterpieces, and how are those standards anything but arbitrary?
That all depends on your definition of “Rock”. I we are talking about the “Classic Rock” format, then I can’t come up with a convincing argument against Purple Haze.
But I’m going to expand the definition a bit, and talk about “Rock and Roll”. Then everything becomes clear, and the one true “greatest” song of all time stands out.
Johnny B. Good by Chuck Berry
Without Chuck Berry, most of the artists mentioned in this thread would never have bothered to learn to play guitar in the first place.