“You Light Up My Life” - D. Boone
“Better” - Helmet
“Electric Youth” - D. Gibson
Tough to just pick three. Since the classics are pretty much already covered, I’ll stick to recent favorites, and just to be a true metal snob, they’ll all be Scandinavian:
Norway: Pagan’s Mind “New World Order”
Sweden: Amon Amarth “Pursuit of Vikings”
Finland: Finntroll “Det Iskalla Trollblodet”
D
Not quite traditional metal, but in the same general space:
Motorhead - “Lost Johnny”, from the On Parole album. This album has much more a hard-rock/punk flavor than the speed metal sound they developed later.
Chrome - “Armageddon”. This is actually early industrial, of course.
Hawkwind - “Brainstorm”. The boys in Hawkwind had a foolproof formula:
1 - Get one of the best riffs in the history of riffdom.
2 - Play it four times.
3 - Change it slightly.
4 - Play that four times.
5 - Change it slightly.
6 - Play that four times.
7 - Make it explode.
Couple that with an insane poet writing a lot of your lyrics, and add extra points for having a musician who literally used a double-bitted wood axe as an instrument.
My suggestions:
Number of the beast - Iron Maiden
The Prisoner - Iron Maiden
Turn up the night - Black Sabbath
Deep Purple – Smoke on the Water
Black Sabbath – Iron Man
Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
I don’t know about best, but I’d say these three songs are certainly the most iconic.
I dithered a bit about putting Blue Oyster Cult’s *Don’t Fear the Reaper * on the list instead of Stairway to Heaven, but finally decided against it
You young punks just don’t know nothin’ 'bout music. Listen to yer grandpa …