Bohemian Rhapsody
1975 · From A Night at the Opera
Six minutes with no chorus and so many vocal overdubs the tape wore transparent. Still nothing else like it.
★ 9.1
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.
Comfortably Numb
1979 · From The Wall
A tranquilizer shot before a 1977 Philadelphia show gave Waters the lyric; Gilmour brought the chords and the solo.
★ 8.9
Kashmir
1975 · From Physical Graffiti
Page tuned to DADGAD, Plant wrote it driving through southern Morocco, and none of them had seen Kashmir.
★ 8.6
Space OddityDavid Bowie
Space Oddity
1969 · From David Bowie (Space Oddity)
Released five days before Apollo 11 launched, with a children's Stylophone buzzing under an astronaut who never comes home.
★ 8.2
Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
1975 · From Wish You Were Here
Gilmour's twelve-string comes through a recorded car radio, and Grappelli's violin sits buried near the very end.
★ 8.0
Another Brick in the Wall Part 2
1979 · From The Wall
Ezrin sent Gilmour to the discos, and twenty-three Islington schoolchildren got forty minutes to sing themselves onto a number one.
★ 7.9
A Whiter Shade of Pale
1967
Fisher's Hammond nods at Bach for a bar before veering off, and Reid took the title from a party remark.
★ 7.7
Money
1973 · From The Dark Side of the Moon
Seven beats to the bar, a tape loop of coins and cash registers, and Pink Floyd's first American hit.
★ 7.7
Shine on You Crazy DiamondPink Floyd
Shine on You Crazy Diamond
1975 · From Wish You Were Here
Four notes known as Syd's theme, and Barrett himself turning up at Abbey Road mid-session, unrecognized by the band.
★ 7.6
Time (Pink Floyd)
1974 · From The Dark Side of the Moon
Alan Parsons taped antique-shop clocks as a quadraphonic test; Mason's rototoms follow, and the alarms still land like panic.
★ 7.5
Money for Nothing
1985 · From Brothers in Arms
Knopfler borrowed a pen in a New York appliance store to copy down a delivery man's complaints about MTV.
★ 7.4
Solsbury Hill
1977 · From Peter Gabriel
Seven-four time, Steve Hunter's Martin triple-tracked at three tape speeds, and Gabriel's first record after walking out of Genesis.
★ 6.8
Carry On Wayward Son
1976
Kerry Livgren's last-minute addition to Leftoverture opens a cappella, then hands Kansas their first top forty hit.
★ 6.7
Funeral For a Friend Love Lies Bleeding
1973 · From Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
John wrote the instrumental half imagining music for his own funeral; Hentschel's ARP 2500 overdubs did the rest.
★ 6.3
Fly Like an Eagle (Steve Miller Band)
1976
Miller ran a Stratocaster through an Echoplex for that staggered triplet echo, and the synthesizer drifts like weather.
★ 5.9
Dust in the Wind
1977
A fingerpicking exercise Livgren's wife overheard and told him to finish, now Kansas's only American top ten.
★ 5.9
Separate Ways
1983
Cain and Perry wrote it backstage during the Escape tour, melody one evening and lyrics the next afternoon.
★ 5.9
Come Sail Away
1977
A piano ballad at first, then a synthesizer break, then guitars, angels and a starship headed skyward.
★ 5.5
Goodbye Stranger
1979
Davies wrote and sang it, Hodgson answered in falsetto, and that Wurlitzer figure runs the whole drifter's farewell.
★ 4.9
Sirius, Eye in the Sky
1982
Woolfson took the title from casino surveillance slang; Sirius became the music that introduced Michael Jordan's Bulls.
★ 4.8