Gimme ShelterThe Rolling Stones
Gimme Shelter
1969 · From Let It Bleed
Merry Clayton's voice cracking on "murder" is the sound of the sixties ending, mid-take, in one syllable.
★ 9.4
The Songs canon
Sourced and sung.
Every song chosen by hand, with the recording to play it.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
All Along the Watchtower
1968
Hendrix took Dylan's parable and lit it, and Dylan has played it Hendrix's way ever since.
★ 9.2
London Calling
1979 · From London Calling
Strummer borrowing the BBC's wartime call sign to announce the end of the world, and sounding thrilled about it.
★ 9.2
Iron ManBlack Sabbath
Iron Man
1970 · From Paranoid
Osbourne heard Iommi's riff and called it a big iron bloke walking; Butler built the science fiction around that.
★ 8.0
Black Hole Sun
1994 · From Superunknown
A Leslie speaker gives the guitars their swirl, and Cornell built the title from a misheard news broadcast.
★ 7.7
Sinnerman
1965 · From Pastel Blues
Simone learned it at her mother's revival meetings and stretched it past ten minutes of piano vamp and handclaps.
★ 7.4
Bad Moon Rising
1969 · From Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits
Fogerty wrote it after a hurricane scene in a 1941 film, then set the apocalypse to a cheerful rockabilly stomp.
★ 7.3
After the Gold RushNeil Young
After the Gold Rush
1970 · From After the Gold Rush
Piano and Bill Peterson's flugelhorn, cut at Young's Topanga home studio, written for a Dean Stockwell screenplay.
★ 7.0
It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
1987 · From Document
A dream about a party where every guest had Lenny Bruce's initials, sped into Document's headlong disaster list.
★ 6.8
Forever Young (Alphaville)Alphaville
Forever Young (Alphaville)
1984
Two days on a dance version, scrapped for synth pads and a Cold War fear of growing old.
★ 5.7
I Melt With You
1982
Producer Hugh Jones talked Grey out of shouting, and the nuclear-apocalypse lyric arrives as the warmest chorus of 1982.
★ 5.6