Smells Like Teen Spirit
1991 · From Nevermind
Four chords, a mumble nobody could decipher, and the riff that ended one decade of rock and started another.
★ 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.
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
Walk This Way (Aerosmith)
1975 · From Toys in the Attic
Perry built the riff at a Honolulu soundcheck; Tyler wrote the words on a Record Plant stairwell wall.
★ 7.7
Walk This Way
1986 · From Raising Hell
Rubin had to talk Run-DMC into it; Tyler smashed through the video's wall and Aerosmith got a career back.
★ 7.6
Summertime BluesEddie Cochran
Summertime Blues
1958
Cochran overdubbed his own bass voice for the boss and the senator, Earl Palmer drumming behind the great teenage complaint.
★ 7.4
1979
1996 · From Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Flood said it wasn't good enough, so Corgan rewrote it that night and got the band's biggest hit.
★ 7.2
Jack and Diane
1982 · From American Fool
Mick Ronson suggested the baby rattles and sang the "let it rock" hook; the handclaps were only a guide track.
★ 6.9
Sweet Little Sixteen
1958 · From One Dozen Berrys
Lafayette Leake's piano, Willie Dixon's bass, and a melody Brian Wilson borrowed so closely he lost the copyright.
★ 6.9
SurrenderCheap Trick
Surrender
1978
Two deliberate key changes raise the temperature under a teenager discovering his parents are cooler than he is.
★ 6.6
In My RoomThe Beach Boys
In My Room
1963 · From Surfer Girl
Three Wilson brothers on the first verse, singing harmonies worked out in the Hawthorne bedroom the song describes.
★ 6.6
You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party
1986 · From Licensed to Ill
Conceived as a satire of party songs, it became the band's only top ten hit, the joke unnoticed.
★ 6.5
Memory Lane (Sittin' in da Park)
1994 · From Illmatic
Nas was twenty and already writing memoir here, over DJ Premier's loop of a Reuben Wilson organ.
★ 6.5
I'm Eighteen
1970
Ezrin cut an eight-minute jam down to three, and John Lydon mimed along to it to join the Sex Pistols.
★ 6.4
Brick
1997
Written on guitar rather than piano, cut live in a bedroom on a few microphones, and unbearably calm.
★ 5.7
Teenage Dirtbag
2000
Number one in Australia, number two in Britain, built from Brown's memory of Long Island parents fearing metal records.
★ 5.5
Tennis Court
2013 · From Pure Heroine
Cut with Joel Little in a small Auckland studio, the beat built before a word, that "Yeah" doing everything.
★ 5.4
Phantom LimbThe Shins
Phantom Limb
2006 · From Wincing the Night Away
Mercer sketched a young lesbian couple stuck in a small town, then floated it on Chiccarelli's widescreen jangle.
★ 5.2
Stacy's Mom
2003
Schlesinger owned up to this one, chasing the Cars; Ocasek assumed the intro was sampled from Just What I Needed.
★ 5.1
Teardrops On My Guitar
2007 · From Taylor Swift
Nathan Chapman's production stays hushed while Swift and Liz Rose leave the real classmate's name, Drew, in the lyric.
★ 5.1