500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2004)

Writers: Brian Burton, Thomas Calloway, Gianfranco Reverberi, Gian Piero Reverberi
Producer: Danger Mouse
Released: May '06, Downtown
24 weeks; No. 2

"Crazy" was a rarity in the 2000s: a universal pop smash that was played on virtually every radio format — it went Top 10 on both the pop and the modern-rock charts — and was covered by singers from Nelly Furtado to Billy Idol. The lyrics, which celebrate risk-taking, came out of a conversation Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse had in the studio: The pair decided that their genre-smashing collaborations were indeed "crazy." With a haunting melody inspired by spaghetti Western soundtrack-composer Ennio Morricone, "Crazy" didn't feel like a hit. "It seemed too out there for urban radio and too urban for rock radio," Danger Mouse told Rolling Stone.

Appears on: St. Elsewhere (Downtown)

Writer: John Fogerty
Producer: Fogerty
Released: Oct. '69, Fantasy
14 weeks; No. 14

"Fortunate Son" is a blast at rich folks who plan wars and then draft poor people to fight them. Fogerty wrote it out of disgust at the fancy wedding plans of Richard Nixon's daughter. "You just had the feeling that none of these people were going to be too involved with the war," he said.

Appears on: Willy and the Poor Boys (Fantasy) 

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Writers: Green, Mabon "Teenie" Hodges
Producer: Willie Mitchell
Released: June '72, Hi
12 weeks; No. 3

"Sixty percent of my audience are women," Green once said. "And a woman is more sensitive than a man, especially in the area of love and happiness." Hodges wrote the urgent, romantic "Love and Happiness" one morning in between having sex with his girlfriend and watching wrestling on TV. Green recently claimed that Hodges sang him the opening guitar riff on a road trip and they drove 160 miles back to Memphis to record it that night. He has described the song as "like a slow fever, building on the beat, pushing up the temperature with each breath of the staccato horns and pushing through delirium as we came up on the fade."

Appears on: I'm Still in Love With You (Capitol) 

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Writer: Berry
Producers: Leonard and Phil Chess
Released: May '56, Chess
5 weeks; No. 29

"I wanted to play the blues," Chuck Berry told Rolling Stone. "But I wasn't blue enough. We always had food on the table." Berry originally wrote this guitar anthem as an affectionate dig at his sister Lucy, who spent so much time playing classical music on the family piano that young Chuck couldn't get a turn. But "Roll Over Beethoven" became the ultimate rock & roll call to arms, declaring a new era: "Roll over, Beethoven/And tell Tchaikovsky the news." Berry announced this changing of the musical guard with a blazing guitar riff and pounding piano from sidekick Johnnie Johnson.

Appears on: The Anthology (Chess) 

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Writers: Otis Blackwell, Jack Hammer
Producer: Sam Phillips
Released: Nov. '57, Sun
21 weeks; No. 2

With Lewis pounding the piano and leering, "Great Balls of Fire" was full of Southern Baptist hellfire turned into a near-blasphemous ode to pure lust. Lewis, a Bible-college dropout and cousin to Jimmy Swaggart, refused to sing it at first and got into a theological argument with Phillips that concluded with Lewis asking, "How can the devil save souls?" But as the session wore on and the liquor kept flowing, Lewis' mood changed considerably — on bootleg tapes he can be heard saying, "I would like to eat a little pussy if I had some." Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, indeed.

Appears on: Original Sun Greatest Hits (Rhino) 

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Writer: Perkins
Producer: Sam Phillips
Released: Feb '56, Sun
21 weeks; No. 2

Johnny Cash had already given Perkins the phrase "blue suede shoes" as an idea for a song. But when he overheard a Tennessee hepcat who was trying to keep the girl he was dancing with from scuffing up his new kicks, Perkins was inspired to write the song that would be his Sun debut. It was the first single to crack the pop, R&B and country charts, and Perkins was driving to New York to perform the song on The Perry Como Show when his car crashed into a poultry truck, laying him up for weeks. He could only sit home and watch while "Blue Suede Shoes" was performed on The Milton Berle Show — sung by Elvis Presley, who would later admit he couldn't top Perkins' original.

Appears on: Original Sun Greatest Hits (Rhino) 

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Writers: Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, John Marascalco
Producer: Blackwell
Released: Feb. '58, Specialty
15 weeks; No. 10

Little Richard first heard the phrase "Good golly, Miss Molly," from a Southern DJ named Jimmy Pennick. He turned the words into perhaps his most blatant assault on American propriety: "Good golly, Miss Molly/You sure like to ball." He swiped the music from Ike Turner's piano intro to Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88," recorded by Sam Phillips in Memphis seven years earlier. "I always liked that record," Richard recalled, "and I used to use the riff in my act, so when we were looking for a lead-in to 'Good Golly, Miss Molly,' I did that and it fit." Richard had renounced rock & roll the previous year, but Specialty couldn't leave this classic in the vaults.

Appears on: The Georgia Peach (Specialty)

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Writer: Bono
Producers: Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno
Released: May '87, Island
17 weeks; No. 1

"The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God," Bono told Rolling Stone. U2's second Number One single revels in ambivalence — "an anthem of doubt more than faith," Bono has called it. The song was typical of the arduous sessions for The Joshua Tree: Originally called "Under the Weather," it began, like most U2 songs, as a jam. "It sounded to me a little like 'Eye of the Tiger' played by a reggae band," the Edge recalled. "It had this great beat," Lanois said. "I remember humming a traditional melody in Bono's ear. He said, 'That's it! Don't sing any more!' — and went off and wrote the melody as we know it."

Appears on: The Joshua Tree (Island) 

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Writers: The Ramones
Producer: Craig Leon
Released: May '76, Sire
Did not chart

In less than three minutes, this song threw down the blueprint for punk rock. It's all here on the opening track of the Ramones' debut: the buzz-saw chords, which Johnny played on his $50 Mosrite guitar; the snotty words, courtesy of drummer Tommy (with bassist Dee Dee adding the brilliant line "Shoot 'em in the back now"); and the hairball-in-the-throat vocals, sung by Joey in a faux British accent. Recorded on the cheap at New York's Radio City Music Hall, of all places, "Blitzkrieg Bop" never made the charts; instead, it almost single-handedly created a world beyond the charts. The kick-off chant "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" meanwhile, is now an anthem of its own at sporting events nationwide.

Appears on: Ramones (Rhino)

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Writer: Mark James
Producers: Chips Moman, Felton Jarvis, Presley
Released: Sept. '69, RCA
15 weeks; No. 1

When Moman presented this song to Presley in 1969, the singer was, as the lyrics put it, "caught in a trap" — a cash cow being milked dry by his label and hangers-on. That might be why Presley was convinced he could turn the song into a deep-soul hit, even though it had flopped in 1968 for singer-songwriter Mark James. Recorded between four and seven in the morning, during the landmark Memphis session that helped return the King to his throne, "Suspicious Minds" — the final Number One single of his lifetime — is Presley's masterpiece: He sings so intensely through the fade-out that his band returns for another minute of the tear-stained chorus.

Appears on: Elvis 30 #1 Hits (RCA) 

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Writer: Fred Parris
Producers: The Five Satins
Released: Sept. '56, Standord
19 weeks; No. 24

Five Satins frontman Parris wrote the song while on guard duty in the Army, and the group recorded it in the basement of a church in Parris' hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. The roughness shows: The drums and piano are muffled, the alto sax cracks during the solo, and the backing vocals wander off-key. But the primitive sound — and the fact that only four of the Five Satins were even present for the session — can't keep "In the Still of the Night," originally released as a B side, from being a sublime, definitive piece of doo-wop.

Appears on: The Five Satins: Their Greatest Hits (Collectables) 

Writers: John and Michelle Phillips
Producer: Lou Adler
Released: Dec. '65, Dunhill
17 weeks; No. 4

One frigid winter in Manhattan, a song came to John Phillips in the middle of the night. He woke up his young wife, Michelle, who was homesick for the West Coast, to help him finish writing "California Dreamin'," one of the all-time sunniest songs of longing. The tune was first recorded by Phillips' folk group the New Journeymen and later given to Barry McGuire as a thank-you after McGuire, riding high with "Eve of Destruction," introduced the group to producer Lou Adler, who convinced the Mamas and the Papas to cut it themselves.

Appears on: If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears (MCA) 

Writers: Smokey Robinson, Ronald White
Producers: Robinson, White
Released: Jan. '65, Gordy
13 weeks; No. 1

The Temptations were sharing a bill with Robinson and his group the Miracles at Harlem's Apollo Theater when Robinson took time out to cut the rhythm track for a new song. After they heard it, the Tempts begged him to let them record the song rather than the Miracles, as he had been planning. Robinson relented and chose the throaty tenor David Ruffin to sing lead, the first time he had done so with the group. The Tempts rehearsed the song that week at the Apollo, then recorded it back home in Detroit on December 21st, 1964.

Appears on: The Temptations Sing Smokey (Motown) 

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Writers: June Carter, Merle Kilgore
Producer: Don Law
Released: May '63, Columbia
13 weeks; No. 17

Carter wrote this song while driving around aimlessly one night, worried about Cash's wildman ways — and aware that she couldn't resist him. "There is no way to be in that kind of hell, no way to extinguish a flame that burns, burns, burns," she wrote. Not long after hearing June's sister Anita's take on the song, Cash had a dream that he was singing it with mariachi horns. Cash's version became one of his biggest hits (inspiring cover versions by everyone from Frank Zappa to Adam Lambert), and his marriage to June four years later helped save his life.

Appears on: The Man in Black: His Greatest Hits (Columbia) 

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Writer: Springsteen
Producers: Springsteen, Jon Landau, Mike Appel
Released: Aug. '75, Columbia
Non-single

"We decided to make a guitar album, but then I wrote all the songs on piano," Springsteen said of his third album, Born to Run. "Thunder Road," its opening track, is a cinematic tale of redemption with a title borrowed from a 1958 hillbilly noir starring Robert Mitchum as a bootlegger with a car that can't be beat (though the Boss had never actually seen the movie). An early title for the song was "Wings for Wheels," which resurfaced as the name of a Born to Run documentary. Decades later, Springsteen would marvel that he wrote the line "You're scared, and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore" when he was all of 24 years old.

Appears on: Born to Run (Columbia) 

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Writer: Willie Nelson
Producer: Owen Bradley
Released: Oct. '61, Decca
11 weeks; No. 9

Cline wasn't impressed when her husband, Charlie Dick, brought home a demo by a 28-year-old rookie Nashville songwriter named Willie Nelson. Told that the song's title was "Crazy," she responded, "It sure is." But Bradley helped Cline make the song her own with a lush arrangement and understated backing vocals from gospel group the Jordanaires. Cline's vocals, cut in one take, infused Nelson's lyrics with slow-burn sex appeal. "Crazy" set the stage for a sophisticated new phase of the C&W sound known as "countrypolitan," although Cline herself wouldn't be around to shape it: She died in a plane crash less than two years later.

Appears on: Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits (MCA) 

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Writer: Sting
Producer: Hugh Padgham
Released: May '83, A&M
22 weeks; No 1

For their biggest hit, the Police went back to basics, junking an elaborate synth part that distracted from the song's hypnotic bass line in favor of a lick that guitarist Andy Summers recorded in one live take. Sting admitted that the lyrics — which sounded tender but were actually bitter — were pulled from the rock & roll cliche handbook. "'Every Breath You Take' is an archetypal song," he told Rolling Stone. "If you have a major chord followed by a relative minor, you're not original." Following Sting's unoriginal-and-proud manifesto, Puff Daddy would sample "Breath" extensively 14 years later for his own huge hit, the Notorious B.I.G. tribute "I'll Be Missing You."

Appears on: Synchronicity (Interscope) 

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Writers: John Lennon, Paul McCartney
Producer: George Martin
Released: Dec. '65, Capitol 
Non-single

This wry, wistful folk ballad was among the first of the Beatles' revolutionary studio experiments. The inclusion of the sitar, an instrument that George Harrison had recently discovered, was groundbreaking. The song, written by Lennon, is the tale of a late-night tryst — although it's electric with sexual possibility, the bemused cad ends up sleeping in the bathtub (and maybe takes his revenge by burning the place down the next morning). Lennon said that the lyrics disguised an actual affair: "I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there was something going on."

Appears on: Rubber Soul (Capitol)

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Writers: Al Lewis, Larry Stock, Vincent Rose
Producer: Dave Bartholomew
Released: Oct. '56, Imperial 
27 weeks; No. 2

"Blueberry Hill" was first recorded in 1940 by several artists, including Gene Autry and Glenn Miller. But Domino drew on the 1949 Louis Armstrong version when he had run out of material at a session. Producer Bartholomew thought it was a terrible idea but lost the argument. Good thing, too. It ended up being Domino's biggest hit and broadened his audience once and for all. As Carl Perkins later said, "In the white honky-tonks where I was playin', they were punchin' 'Blueberry Hill.' And white cats were dancin' to Fats Domino."

Appears on: The Fats Domino Jukebox (Capitol) 

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Writers: Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield
Producer: Whitfield
Released: Oct. '68, Tamla 
15 weeks; No. 1

Motown producer Whitfield had a reputation for recording the same song with a number of acts, changing the arrangement each time. This irritated some of the label's artists, but every now and then he would get a golden idea — as happened with Gaye's 1968 version of "Grapevine," which had been a hit the year before for Gladys Knight. Whitfield and co-writer Strong set the track in a slower, more mysterious tempo, and the song — which Gaye initially resisted recording — became the bestselling Motown single of the decade.

Appears on: Every Motown Hit (Motown) 

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Writer: Ray Davies
Producer: Shel Talmy
Released: Sept. '64, Reprise 
15 weeks; No. 7

Convinced that the band's previous two singles had flopped because they were too pristine, the Kinks went into the studio in the summer of 1964 to record this deliberately raw rave-up, written by Ray Davies on the piano in his parents' living room. But the original recording still felt too shiny, and the band had to borrow 200 pounds to cover the cost of another session. Seventeen-year-old guitarist Dave Davies took a razor to the speaker cone on his amp to get the desired dirty sound for that immortal, blistering riff. "The song came out of a working-class environment," Dave recalled. "People fighting for something." A month later, the proto-heavy-metal song went straight to the top of the British charts.

Appears on: Kinks (Castle) 

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Writer: Bob Dylan
Producer: Terry Melcher
Released: May '65, Columbia
13 weeks; No. 1

The only Byrd to play on the band's first hit was Roger McGuinn, whose chiming 12-string Rickenbacker guitar became folk rock's defining sound. Everything else came from L.A. session players, including drummer Hal Blaine and bassist Larry Knechtel of Phil Spector's Wrecking Crew. But the rest of the Byrds soon caught up, and as the song was breaking, a curious Dylan checked out the band at Ciro's, a Los Angeles club. Reportedly, he didn't recognize some of his own songs in their electrified versions.

Appears on: Mr. Tambourine Man (Columbia/Legacy)

Writer: Brown
Producer: Brown
Released: Nov. '65, King
12 weeks; No. 3

The same year he hit with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," Soul Brother Number One scored his biggest pop success with "I Got You." It was a sped-up, hyped-up new version of a song called "I Found You" that Brown had written a few years previous for one of his early proteges, James Brown Revue singer Yvonne Fair. "I Got You" received some help on the pop charts from a most unlikely source; a few months before the single was released, Brown performed the song in the Frankie Avalon teen flick Ski Party.

Appears on: James Brown 50th Anniversary Collection (UTV/Polydor) 

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Writer: Junior Parker, Sam Phillips
Producer: Phillips
Released: Sept. '55, Sun
Did not chart

"Mystery Train" is one of Presley's most haunting songs, a stark blues number that sounds ancient but was actually first cut only two years before by Memphis blues singer Junior Parker. Presley recorded it with the groove from the flip side of the same Parker single, "Love My Baby," and Sun producer Phillips' taut, rubbery echo effect made guitarist Scotty Moore's every note sound doubled. Presley added a final verse — "Train . . . took my baby, but it never will again" — capped by a celebratory falsetto whoop that transformed a pastoral about death into a song about the power to overcome it.

Appears on: Sunrise (RCA) 

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Writers: John Lennon, Paul McCartney
Producer: George Martin
Released: Feb. '67, Capitol
9 weeks; No. 8

Lennon often considered "Strawberry Fields Forever" his greatest accomplishment with the Beatles. The song, a surreal kaleidoscope of sound, was the first track recorded for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (although it was released as a single instead). The lyrics are a nostalgic look at Lennon's Liverpool childhood and an expression of his own pride. Said Lennon, "The second line goes, 'No one I think is in my tree.' Well, what I was trying to say in that line is, 'Nobody seems to be as hip as me, therefore I must be crazy or a genius.'"

Appears on: Magical Mystery Tour (Capitol)  

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Writers: Willie Dixon, Led Zeppelin
Producer: Jimmy Page
Released: Oct. '69, Atlantic
15 weeks; No. 4

The members of Led Zeppelin first got their sound together by jamming on blues standards, stretching them out into psychedelic orgies. "Whole Lotta Love" was a tribute to Chicago blues songwriter Willie Dixon, based on his "You Need Love," a Muddy Waters single from 1962 (though Robert Plant also threw in quotes from songs Dixon wrote for Howlin' Wolf). The copyright issues weren't sorted out until 1985, when Dixon brought legal action and got his rightful share of the credit for "Whole Lotta Love." "Page's riff was Page's riff," Plant said. "I just thought, 'Well, what am I going to sing?' That was it, a nick. Now happily paid for." Said Page, "Usually my riffs are pretty damn original. What can I say?"

Appears on: Led Zeppelin II (Atlantic) 

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Writers: Cochran, Jerry Capehart
Producer: Capehart
Released: July '58, Liberty
16 weeks; No. 8

Cochran's label tried molding him into a crooning teen idol, but he made his mark with a string of rockabilly ravers written with partner Capehart. Explaining the inspiration for this classic, Capehart said, "There had been a lot of songs about summer, but none about the hardships of summer." With that idea and a guitar lick from Cochran, they knocked out the song in 45 minutes.

Appears on: Somethin' Else (Razor and Tie) 

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Writer: Wonder
Producers: Wonder, Malcolm Cecil, Robert Margouleff
Released: Nov. '72, Tamla
16 weeks; No. 1

Wonder debuted this hard blast of funk live while opening for the Rolling Stones in the summer of 1972, intent on expanding his audience. The 22-year-old former child star had written it at the drum set, humming the other parts to himself. Wonder had initially intended for Jeff Beck to record the song, but Berry Gordy wouldn't let him give it away. It became the first single from Talking Book — and Wonder's first Number One hit in nearly a decade.

Appears on: Talking Book (Motown)

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Writers: Brian Wilson, Mike Love
Producer: Wilson
Released: July '65, Capitol
11 weeks; No. 3

The first time Wilson took acid, he sat at the piano and wrote the brooding, beautiful opening bars to "California Girls." It was a breakthrough moment, Wilson has said, that led him to begin creating more complex, emotional music. The lyrics, written by Love, were inspired by Wilson's assertion that "everybody loves girls." And despite the teen-fantasy theme, the singing is tougher than earlier Beach Boys hits, with tightly wound harmonies and an aggressive lead vocal. "I taught Mike to sing with attitude," said Wilson. "I was trying to create a new Beach Boys sound."

Appears on: Sounds of Summer: The Very Best of the Beach Boys (Capitol)

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Writer: Brown
Producer: Brown
Released: July '66, King

13 weeks; No. 8

In mid-1965, Brown was locked in a contract struggle with King Records, but when he learned King was nearly bankrupt, he threw the label a bone: a song he'd recorded a few months earlier, yelling, "This is a hit!" as the tape rolled. Arguably the first funk record, it's driven by the empty space between beats as much as by Brown's bellow and guitarist Jimmy Nolen's ice-chipper scratch. In a stroke of postproduction genius (you can hear the original recording on the Grammy-winning Star Time box set), Brown sliced off the intro to have the song start with a face-smashing horn blast, and sped it up just enough so it sounded like an urgent bulletin from the future.

Appears on: 50th Anniversary Collection (UTV/Polydor) 

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Writers: Burt Bacharach, Hal David
Producers: Bacharach, David
Released: April '64, Scepter
13 weeks, No. 6

Early in her career, Warwick was a back-up singer who also cut demos for Brill Building songwriters Bacharach and David. This forlorn classic solidified her stardom, capping a series of singles in which she played the pleading lover. A downcast ballad set to a bossa nova beat, it was originally relegated to the B side of "Any Old Time of the Day," until New York DJ Murray the K asked listeners to vote on the single's two sides. The winning cut scaled the charts during the heady exuberance of Beatlemania, which provided an unwitting foil for the understated perseverance of "Walk On By." "I didn't get the guy very often in those days," Warwick said.

Appears on: The Dionne Warwick Collection: Her All-Time Greatest Hits 

Writers: Joe Melson, Orbison
Producer: Fred Foster
Released: Aug. '61, Monument
16 weeks; No. 2

Orbison said he wrote this lush, dreamy ballad after an encounter with an old flame: "Whether I was physically crying or just crying inside is the same thing." His near-operatic performance culminated in a high, wailing note, which Orbison never lost the capacity to hit until his death in 1988. "He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business," Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles. "He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal."

Appears on: For the Lonely: 18 Greatest Hits (Rhino)

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Writer: Dylan
Producer: Dylan
Released: Jan. '75, Columbia
7 weeks, No. 31

When Dylan introduced "Tangled Up in Blue" onstage in 1978, he described it as a song that took him "10 years to live and two years to write." It's still one of his most frequently performed live staples. It was the six-minute opener from Blood on the Tracks, written as his first marriage was falling apart. Dylan takes inspiration from classic country singers like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, in a tale of a drifting heart on the road through the Sixties and Seventies. Dylan kept revising the song heavily through the years; on his 1984 Real Live, he plays with the chords and lyrics to tell a whole new story.

Appears on: Blood on the Tracks (Columbia) 

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Writers: Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller
Producer: Steve Sholes
Released: Oct. '57, RCA 
27 weeks, No. 1

Songwriters Leiber and Stoller had already penned a couple of Presley hits — most notably "Hound Dog," picked up from blues belter Big Mama Thornton — but the theme song for Presley's third movie was the duo's first studio collaboration with the young superstar. "Jailhouse Rock" was decidedly silly, the kind of tongue-in-cheek narrative goof they had been coming up with for the Coasters. The King, however, sang it as straight rock & roll, overlooking the humor in the lyrics (like the suggestion of gay romance when inmate Number 47 tells Number 3, "You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see") and introducing Scotty Moore's guitar solo with a cry so intense that the take almost collapses.

Appears on: Elvis 30 #1 Hits (RCA) 

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Writer: Marley
Producer: Chris Blackwell
Released: June '80, Island
Did not chart

Marley had already recorded a version of this freedom hymn with his band when Island Records' chief Blackwell suggested he try it as an acoustic-style folk tune. Inspired by the writings of Marcus Garvey, Marley's lyrics offer up music as an antidote to slavery, both mental and physical. "I would love to do more like that," Marley said a few months before his death, from cancer, at age 36 in 1981. As the final track on his final album, "Redemption Song" stands as his epitaph.

Appears on: Uprising (Island) 

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Writers: Jack Bruce, Pete Brown, Eric Clapton
Producer: Felix Pappalardi
Released: Jan. '68, Atco
26 weeks; No. 5 

Bassist Bruce and lyricist-poet Brown came up with "Sunshine" toward the end of an all-night session, which inspired the opening line: "It's getting near dawn/When lights close their tired eyes." The killer riff was inspired by Jimi Hendrix and based on a bass ostinato from Bruce; Clapton added the chorus hook, and drummer Ginger Baker laid down a mammoth, tom-tom-heavy beat. Bruce knew "Sunshine" would do well, but Atlantic Records nearly rejected it until some of the label's biggest acts started championing the record. "Both Booker T. Jones and Otis Redding heard it and told me it was going to be a smash," he recalled.

Appears on: Disraeli Gears (Polydor) 

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Writers: John Lennon, Paul McCartney 
Producer: George Martin 
Released: Sept. '63, Swan 
15 weeks; No. 1

Lennon and McCartney began writing this song on a tour van, and George Harrison dreamed up the harmonies, which Martin found "corny." The band overruled Martin on the harmonies, but they took his suggestion to kick off the song with the jubilant chorus. When McCartney's father heard the song, he said, "Son, there are enough Americanisms around. Couldn't you sing, 'Yes, yes, yes,' just for once?" McCartney said, "You don't understand, Dad. It wouldn't work."

Appears on: The Beatles 1 (Capitol/Apple) 

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Writer: Stephen Stills
Producers: Charles Greene, Brian Stone
Released: Feb. '67, Atco
15 weeks, No. 7

As police and teens clashed on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, Neil Young's guitar tolled like a funeral bell; the Summer of Love was unraveling before it even began. "It turned out to be indicative of what was about to happen," said Stills.

Appears on: Buffalo Springfield (Elektra) 

Writer: Ellas McDaniel
Producers: Phil and Leonard Chess
Released: June '55, Checker 
Did not chart

Didley's first single went to Number One on the R&B charts and immortalized the bedrock beat that would power everything from Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" to the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now." The song originated as a sexually suggestive ditty titled "Uncle John," but the Chess brothers asked Diddley to clean up its lyrics and give it a more memorable title to match its otherworldly sound. Diddley, who studied violin as a child and built his own instruments, wrote songs that were deceptively simple, driven by interplay between the bass, drums and his tremolo guitar. But you can't copyright a beat, and Diddley never reaped the rewards for his greatest innovation.

Appears on: His Best: The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection (Chess) 

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Writers: Dave Williams, Roy Hall
Producer: Jack Clement
Released: June '57, Sun
29 weeks; No. 3

When Lewis decided to record what would be his breakthrough hit, it had already been cut four times and gone nowhere. Lewis filled it with frantic piano and filthy instructions ("All you got to do, honey, is kinda stand in one spot/Wiggle around just a little bit"). But what really made "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On" work was producer Cowboy Jack Clement's decision to turn the session over to the manic energy of Lewis' live shows. "I just simply turned on the machine, mixed it on the fly," he said. After Lewis played a fiery version of "Shakin'" on Steve Allen's TV show, the song went on to sell more than 6 million copies.

Appears on: Original Sun Greatest Hits (Rhino) 

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Writers: Al Green, Al Jackson Jr., Willie Mitchell
Producer: Mitchell
Released: Dec. '71, Hi
16 weeks; No. 1

After Mitchell gave Green a rough mix of a tune he and drummer Jackson had worked out, Green wrote the lyrics in five minutes. Still, Green didn't want to record the song and fought with Mitchell for two days before finally agreeing to cut it. The recording was finished late on a Friday night in the fall of 1971; Mitchell pressed the single on Monday, and by Thursday Green was told that "Let's Stay Together" would be entering the charts at Number Eight. Within two weeks, it had reached Number One on the R&B charts, and in February 1972, the warm, buoyant love song gave Green his only Number One pop hit.

Appears on: Let's Stay Together (The Right Stuff)

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Writer: Dylan
Producer: Bob Johnston
Released: Jan. '64, Columbia
Did not chart 

"I wanted to write a big song, some kind of theme song, with short, concise verses that piled up on each other in a hypnotic way," said Dylan. "This is definitely a song with a purpose." Inspired by Scottish and Irish folk ballads and released less than two months after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, "The Times They Are A-Changin'" became an immediate Sixties anthem and was covered by artists ranging from the Byrds to Cher to Eddie Vedder. Said Dylan, "I knew exactly what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to."

Appears on: The Times They Are A-Changin' (Columbia)

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Writer: Jackson
Producers: Jackson, Quincy Jones
Released: Jan. '83, Epic
7 weeks; No. 1

Sinuous, paranoid and omnipresent: The single that made Jackson the biggest star since Elvis was a denial of a paternity suit, and it spent seven weeks at Number One on the pop charts. Jackson came up with the irresistible rhythm track on his home drum machine and he nailed the vocals in one take. "I knew the song was going to be big," Jackson said. "I was really absorbed in writing it." How absorbed? Jackson said he was thinking about "Billie Jean" while riding in his Rolls-Royce down the Ventura Freeway in California — and didn't notice the car was on fire.

Appears on: Thriller (Sony)

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Writers: Keith Reid, Gary Brooker
Producer: Denny Cordell
Released: June '67, A&M
12 weeks; No. 5

A somber hymn supported by an organ theme straight out of Bach ("Air on the G String," from the "Suite No. 3 in D Major"), Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale" was unlike anything else on the radio in 1967. Reid got the idea for the song when he overheard someone at a party tell a woman, "You've gone a whiter shade of pale." The track was also the only one recorded by the initial lineup of Procol Harum, which started as a British band, the Paramounts, in 1963. A worldwide smash that sold more than 6 million copies and quickly found its way into wedding ceremonies (and, later, the Big Chill soundtrack), "Pale" helped kick-start the classical-rock boomlet that gave the world the Moody Blues.

Appears on: Greatest Hits (A&M)

Writers: Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock, Johnny Rotten
Producers: Chris Thomas, Bill Price
Released: Nov. '77, Warner Bros.
Non-single

This is what the beginning of a revolution sounds like: an explosion of punk-rock guitar noise and Johnny Rotten's evil cackle. The Sex Pistols set out to become a national scandal in the U.K., and they succeeded with their debut single. Jones made his guitar sound like a pub brawl, while Rotten snarled, spat and snickered, declaring himself an antichrist and ending the song by urging his fans, "Get pissed/Destroy!" EMI, the Sex Pistols' record label, pulled "Anarchy in the U.K." and dropped them, which just made them more notorious. "I don't understand it," Rotten said in 1977. "All we're trying to do is destroy everything."

Appears on: Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (Warner Bros.) 

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Writers: Robert "Bumps" Blackwell, Enotris Johnson, Little Richard
Producer: Blackwell
Released: March '56, Specialty
19 weeks; No. 6 

Half of a double-sided hit (the flip was "Slippin' and Slidin' [Peepin' and Hidin']"), "Long Tall Sally" was aimed squarely at pop singer Pat Boone. "The white radio stations wouldn't play Richard's version of 'Tutti-Frutti' and made Boone's cover Number One," recalled Blackwell. "So we decided to up the tempo on the follow-up and get the lyrics going so fast that Boone wouldn't be able to get his mouth together to do it!" "Long Tall Sally" proved to be Little Richard's biggest hit. Unfazed, Boone also recorded the song, taking it to Number Eight.

Appears on: The Georgia Peach (Specialty)

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Writer: Richard Berry
Producer: Ken Chase
Released: June '63, Jerden
16 weeks; No. 2 

A blast of raw guitars and half-intelligible shouting recorded for $52, the Kingsmen's cover of Richard Berry's R&B song hit Number Two in 1963 — thanks in part to supposedly pornographic lyrics that drew the attention of the FBI. The Portland, Oregon, group accidentally rendered the decidedly noncontroversial lyrics (about a sailor trying to get home to see his lady) indecipherable by crowding around a single microphone. "I was yelling at a mike far away," singer Jack Ely told Rolling Stone. "I always thought the controversy was record-company hype."

Appears on: The Best of the Kingsmen (Rhino) 

Writers: Calvin Lewis, Andrew Wright
Producers: Marlin Greene, Quin Ivy
Released: March '66, Atlantic
13 weeks; No. 1 

Sledge was touring the South with an R&B combo called the Esquires when producer Ivy heard him belt out an intense, pleading ballad at the local Elks Club. Sledge had recently lost both his construction job and his girl, who'd taken off for L.A. to pursue a modeling career. "I didn't have any money to go after her, so there was nothing I could do to try and get her back," he later recalled. Ivy had the lyrics rewritten, and Sledge quit the Esquires to cut his first solo side, the immortal "When a Man Loves a Woman." When Atlantic's Jerry Wexler heard the song, he told partner Ahmet Ertegun, "Our billing for the summer is in the bag."

Appears on: It Tears Me Up: The Best of Percy Sledge (Rhino)

Writer: Prince
Producer: Prince
Released: June '84, Warner Bros.
21 weeks; No. 1 

The Purple Rain soundtrack album was completed, and so was the movie. But Prince just couldn't stop making music. And at the very last minute, he added a brand-new song: "When Doves Cry." Even by Prince standards, it's eccentric; after single-handedly recording the stark, broken-hearted song in the studio, he decided to erase the bass track from the final mix. According to the engineer, Prince said, "Nobody would have the balls to do this. You just wait — they'll be freaking." He was right. Prince made it the soundtrack's first single — and 1984's most avant-garde pop record became his first American Number One hit, keeping Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" out of the top spot.

Appears on: Purple Rain (Warner Bros.) 

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Writers: Duke Bootee, Melle Mel
Producer: Sylvia Robinson
Released: May '82, Sugar Hill
7 weeks; No. 62 

"The Message" was a breakthrough in hip-hop, taking the music from party anthems to street-level ghetto blues. It began as a poem by schoolteacher Bootee; Sugar Hill boss Robinson decided to make it a rap record with Melle Mel of the Furious Five. Said Flash in 1997, "I hated the fact that it was advertised as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, because the only people on the record were Mel and Duke Bootee." But the song, driven by its signature future-shock synth riff and grim lyrics about urban decay, became an instant sensation on New York's hip-hop radio. "It played all day, every day," Flash said. "It put us on a whole new level."

Appears on: The Best of Sugar Hill Records (Rhino)