A Day in the Life
1967 · From Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Two unfinished songs bolted together, an orchestra climbing to nothing, and the last piano chord in pop.
★ 9.9
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.
(I Can't Get No) SatisfactionThe Rolling Stones
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
1965 · From Out of Our Heads
Keith dreamt the fuzz riff, taped it half-asleep, and woke up holding the sound of teenage frustration.
★ 9.8
Strawberry Fields Forever
1966 · From Magical Mystery Tour
Two takes in different keys and tempos spliced into one, a Mellotron haze over Lennon's Liverpool childhood.
★ 9.7
Whole Lotta Love
1969 · From Led Zeppelin II
Page's riff, Plant's howl, and a theremin freakout in the middle that still sounds like the roof coming off.
★ 9.7
I Want to Hold Your Hand
1963 · From Meet the Beatles!
Handclaps, that leaping chord under "I can't hide," and five weeks later America belonged to them.
★ 9.6
Here Comes the Sun
1969 · From Abbey Road
Harrison wrote it in Clapton's garden while skipping a business meeting, and it sounds exactly like that relief.
★ 9.6
Hey JudeThe Beatles
Hey Jude
1968
Seven minutes, four of them just na-na-na, and somehow nobody has ever wanted it to end sooner.
★ 9.5
Yesterday
1965 · From Help!
McCartney dreamt the melody, called it "Scrambled Eggs" for weeks, then let a string quartet make it immortal.
★ 9.5
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
Stairway to HeavenLed Zeppelin
Stairway to Heaven
1971 · From Led Zeppelin IV
Eight minutes that climb from recorders to Page's solo, never released as a single and never needing to be.
★ 9.3
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
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
HeroesDavid Bowie
Heroes
1977 · From "Heroes"
Recorded beside the Berlin Wall, Fripp's feedback howling while Bowie sings himself hoarse over a single defiant day.
★ 9.1
In My Life
1965 · From Rubber Soul
Lennon's first draft listed bus stops in Liverpool; Martin's piano solo, taped at half speed, sounds baroque.
★ 9.0
Baba O'Riley
1971 · From Who's Next
That opening arpeggio is a Lowrey organ's marimba repeat function; Dave Arbus's violin sends the ending careening.
★ 9.0
Eleanor Rigby
1966 · From Revolver
No Beatle plays an instrument on it; George Martin's string octet does everything, sawing away at two solitary lives.
★ 8.9
Let it Be
1970 · From Let It Be
McCartney dreamed of his mother Mary telling him it would be all right; Harrison cut two different solos.
★ 8.9
Love Will Tear Us Apart
1980
The title flips Captain and Tennille into its opposite, and the single arrived a month after Curtis's death.
★ 8.9
Sympathy for the DevilThe Rolling Stones
Sympathy for the Devil
1968 · From Beggars Banquet
Faithfull handed Jagger Bulgakov, Richards turned the folk sketch into samba and played both bass and the solo.
★ 8.9
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
She Loves YouThe Beatles
She Loves You
1963 · From The Beatles' Second Album
Lennon and McCartney started it on a tour bus after a Newcastle show; Martin thought the sixth-chord ending corny.
★ 8.8
Come Together
1969 · From Abbey Road
Lennon started it as a campaign song for Timothy Leary, then Ringo muffled his drums with tea towels.
★ 8.7
My GenerationThe Who
My Generation
1965 · From My Generation
Entwistle's bass solo needed a Fender after his Danelectro strings snapped, and Daltrey stuttered his way into history.
★ 8.7
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
ParanoidBlack Sabbath
Paranoid
1970 · From Paranoid
Iommi's riff arrived as three-minute filler for the album, Butler wrote the words fast, and Sabbath had their biggest UK hit.
★ 8.5
Imagine
1971 · From Imagine
Grapefruit, Ono's book of poems, supplied the idea; Lennon supplied the piano; in 2017 she finally got the credit.
★ 8.5
Blue Monday
1983
A die-cut sleeve modelled on a floppy disk, an Oberheim drum machine, and the best-selling twelve-inch single ever pressed.
★ 8.4
House of the Rising SunThe Animals
House of the Rising Sun
1964
Hilton Valentine's arpeggio, one take at De Lane Lea, and four and a half minutes when singles ran two.
★ 8.4
Under PressureDavid Bowie
Under Pressure
David Bowie and Queen
1981 · From Hot Space
Bowie lived near Mountain Studios, dropped in, and one evening's jam became a UK number one with a disputed bassline.
★ 8.4
You Really Got MeThe Kinks
You Really Got Me
1964 · From Kinks
Dave Davies took a razor blade to his little Elpico amp's speaker cone, and distortion arrived on British radio.
★ 8.3
Changes (David Bowie)
1971 · From Hunky Dory
Rick Wakeman's piano, Bowie's own saxophone, and a stutter on the title that flopped before it defined him.
★ 8.3
God Save the QueenThe Sex Pistols
God Save the Queen
1977 · From Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Written as "No Future," banned by the BBC, and stuck at number two amid loud suspicion of chart rigging.
★ 8.3
There is a Light that Never Goes OutThe Smiths
There is a Light that Never Goes Out
1986 · From The Queen is Dead
Marr faked the strings on an Emulator, credited them to the Hated Salford Ensemble, and Britain waited six years.
★ 8.3
Waterloo SunsetThe Kinks
Waterloo Sunset
1967 · From Something Else by The Kinks
Davies started it as "Liverpool Sunset," moved it to the Thames, and Dave's tape-delay guitar did the rest.
★ 8.3
Paint It, BlackThe Rolling Stones
Paint It, Black
1966 · From Aftermath
Jones's sitar made it the first number one to feature the instrument, and Decca added the comma by mistake.
★ 8.2
Anarchy in the UK
1976 · From Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Lydon picked anarchist because it rhymed with antichrist; EMI dropped the band six weeks later and punk was loose.
★ 8.2
Every Breath You Take
1983 · From Synchronicity
Sting woke at Fleming's Goldeneye with the melody; Summers cut that arpeggio in one take and made surveillance sound tender.
★ 8.2
SomethingThe Beatles
Something
1969 · From Abbey Road
Harrison lifted the opening line from James Taylor and wrote the first Beatles A-side that wasn't Lennon or McCartney.
★ 8.2
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
War PigsBlack Sabbath
War Pigs
1970 · From Paranoid
Called Walpurgis until the label balked at the witchcraft, and Butler aimed the lyric at politicians who start wars.
★ 8.1
Jumpin' Jack FlashThe Rolling Stones
Jumpin' Jack Flash
1968
Named for the gardener who woke them up, and cut with an acoustic guitar recorded into a Philips cassette recorder.
★ 8.1
We Will Rock You
1977 · From Greatest Hits
May came home from a Stafford gig where the crowd sang back, and built a chorus from stomps and claps.
★ 8.1
How Soon is Now?The Smiths
How Soon is Now?
1985 · From Meat Is Murder
Marr's shudder came from four Fender Twins with their tremolos fighting, and Morrissey put a lonely man in a nightclub.
★ 8.1
You Can't Always Get What You Want
1969 · From Let It Bleed
A choral intro from the London Bach Choir, Al Kooper on French horn, and producer Jimmy Miller on drums.
★ 8.1
Penny Lane
1967 · From Magical Mystery Tour
McCartney heard a piccolo trumpet on a Bach broadcast, called David Mason in, and pop had never sounded brighter.
★ 8.1
While My Guitar Gently WeepsThe Beatles
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
1968 · From The White Album
Harrison opened a book at random, saw "gently weeps", and Clapton came in uncredited to play the solo.
★ 8.0
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
Won't Get Fooled Again
1971 · From Who's Next
Eight and a half minutes, a Lowrey organ run through a VCS3, and Daltrey's scream tearing into the final verse.
★ 8.0
Karma PoliceRadiohead
Karma Police
1997 · From OK Computer
Named for a tour joke about people behaving badly, with Greenwood's piano circling and a delay unit eating the ending.
★ 8.0
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
A Hard Day's Night
1964 · From A Hard Day's Night
Starr's slip of the tongue supplied the title, and the opening chord is still argued over by musicologists.
★ 7.9
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
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
1983
Recorded on a secondhand eight-track in a Chalk Farm attic, and an American number one by September.
★ 7.9
Rocket Man
1972 · From Honky Chateau
Taupin borrowed the title from a Pearls Before Swine song, and Hentschel's ARP put the loneliness in orbit.
★ 7.9
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
1965 · From Rubber Soul
Harrison's sitar, widely reckoned the first on a rock record, and Lennon smuggling an affair past everyone.
★ 7.9
Back to Black
2006 · From Back to Black
Ronson cut it at Daptone with the Dap-Kings, sixties girl-group machinery rebuilt around a voice in ruins.
★ 7.9
Bitter Sweet Symphony
1997
Built on an Andrew Oldham Orchestra recording of a Stones song; Jagger and Richards returned the credit in 2019.
★ 7.8
This Charming Man
1983
Marr stacked roughly fifteen guitar tracks and dropped a knife on the strings; Morrissey lifted a line from Sleuth.
★ 7.8
Rehab
2006 · From Back to Black
Cut live to tape at Daptone in Brooklyn with the Dap-Kings, and it took Record and Song of the Year.
★ 7.8
Paper Planes
2008 · From Kala
Gunshots and a cash register over a Clash loop, with Brixton kids singing a hook about immigrant stereotypes.
★ 7.8