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Weekend Rock Question: What Is the Greatest Vocal Performance in Rock History?

Cast your vote in our weekly poll

John Lennon; Bob Dylan; Tina Turner
Jan Persson/Redferns; Evening Standard/Getty Images; GAB Archive/Redferns
August 31, 2012 2:40 PM ET

An impassioned vocal delivery can elevate a song to amazing heights. Would "Twist and Shout" be as memorable without John Lennon's shredded vocal cord screams? Can you imagine "Like a Rolling Stone" without Bob Dylan's nasal delivery of "How does it feeeeeeel?" A lot of people have sung "River Deep, Mountain High," but nobody hits the notes quite like Tina Turner. 

Now we have a question for you: what is your favorite vocal performance of the rock era? Please vote for a single artist and song. Tracks like "Unchained Melody" have been covered by a lot of people, so specify if you're voting for the Righteous Brothers, Al Green, Sam Cooke, etc. Please only vote once and only for a single song. If we get 9,000 votes for Biz Markie's "Just a Friend," we'll know something's up. 

You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone or on Twitter using the #weekend rock hashtag. 

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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