The 100 Greatest Songs of All Time

I started tinkering with this list around five years ago, when my local classic rock station played a list of the five hundred greatest classic rock songs of all time. I didn't agree with the list at all; it hardly reflected what I considered to be the best of the classic rock genre, and considering many of the greatest songs of all time do fall under the heading of so-called "classic rock," the station's list did an even poorer job of representing the greatest songs of all time, which I found frustrating at the time. So I made a list of my own, comprised mostly of classic rock songs and some other favorites from different genres. But the emphasis was, for the most part, on what commonly can be heard on classic rock radio. I published the list right here at this very web address in the spring of 2006, and I didn't touch it again until now.

At the time classic rock was still relatively new to me, as I had spent the previous five or so years listening to the steadily eroding alternative rock genre until I became so frustrated by the lack of talent and innovation that I decided to, for the most part, give up completely on the contemporary music scene. I went the one place I could go: the past. I then spent another five years "mastering" classic rock radio, listening to it every time I was in the car and researching everything they played until I could instantly recognize every song. But then something happened I didn't expect: about three years ago I picked up the guitar, and I haven't put it down since. This has given me a much fresher perspective on music.

I grew tired of classic rock, since classic rock really is just '70s era rock music, with some exceptions from the '60s and '80s. While the term "rock and roll" includes rock music from the mid-'50s to the end of the '80s, classic rock is actually much more specific, focusing almost entirely on guitar-driven rock music from 1970s. I then went even farther back into the past, learning as much as I could about the blues and early rock and roll. The blues, like jazz, is hard to get into if you've only listened to popular music, because the blues, unlike rock, isn't articulate. Real blues, like jazz, relies heavily on improvisation and, in many ways, is much more pure. However, to those who aren't familiar with it, the blues is neither interesting nor compelling at first. It takes time to get into it and it takes real effort to actually understand it, but once you're through the door you'll find that the blues is some of the most rewarding music you'll ever hear.

About a year and a half ago I read Eric Clapton's autobiography and I was struck by his description of the blues: "The blues is a style of music that was born from the union between African and European folk cultures, conceived in slavery, and fostered in the Mississippi delta. It has its own scale, its own laws and traditions, and its own language. In my view it's a celebration of triumph over adversity, full of humor, double entendre, and irony, and it's very rarely, if ever, depressing to listen to. It can be, and usually is, the most uplifting music you will ever hear." Clapton really is something of an ambassador for the blues. Most think of him as a rock musician, but at heart, he's really a blues man, and he's been a lot of people's entry point into the blues, myself included. Whenever I tell people to listen to the blues and they ask me where to start, my response has always been the same: Clapton.

When I decided that it was time to update this list, I had a much improved perspective than I didn't have the first time around. I had a better understanding of what made songs work, of how they were played, of what their specific influences were, of what they influenced, and what was actually original. There are a lot of earlier rock and roll and blues songs that didn't used to make the list that I think are of much higher quality than I used to believe and were highly influential in shaping the sound of rock and roll. Yeah, there's still a lot of those classic rock songs on the list, but is that really a surprise? Some of them are just too good to leave off.

The word "great" is a bit non-specific when used in this kind of situation, and many have asked me whether I lean towards influence, quality, popularity, etc. when I determine the rankings. The truth is, this is a pretty subjective process, and this list is entirely my opinion. I don't pretend to be objective here, but one thing I do want to make clear is that this is by no means a list of favorites, although if I made a similar list of favorites many of the same songs would appear on it. I would like to point out that this list is not called the most influential, best or popular songs of all time, because I think those imply that there is some kind of exact science to ranking songs, when there is none, at least in the case of this list.

I was truly startled recently to discover that the original list was getting over 30,000 visitors a week. Sure enough, when I typed in "greatest songs of all time" into Google earlier today, this page was first on the results list, which I also couldn't believe. It's been amazing to get such wonderful feedback. I had to finally admit to myself, "Okay, this thing has done quite well. Maybe I should update it." On the original list, I provided a lot of rather poorly written commentary (hey, I was in high school) and some lyric samples to go along with the songs, but since that took a while to do and I wasn't very happy with the results anyway, I've decided to just let the songs speak for themselves this time. However, Squidoo has recently provided an iTunes module that lets you play a 30 second clip and download the song directly from this page into your iTunes account (just click the price). Unfortunately, the Beatles aren't on iTunes, but you can rock out to almost all the rest of 'em. I've tried to include as many original album versions of the songs as possible.

Finally, if you want to contact me, you can always read my consistently entertaining Twitter page @EricMackAttacks or view my underutilized blog, ericmackattacks.wordpress.com. Also, feel free to comment on the guestbook thing at the bottom. I'll try to respond to as many of your comments as I can.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy!

Eric
August 2010

EDIT: Hi, everybody. Thanks for your continued support over the past year. I've actually undertaken a much more ambitious project on my personal website, ericmackattacks.com. I'm currently in the midst of counting down my 100 favorite albums! Feel free to drop by and say hello. Thanks!

Eric
January 2012