The Times They Are A-Changin'
1964 · From The Times They Are A-Changin'
Dylan set out to write an anthem on purpose, borrowing the cadence of Irish and Scottish ballads, and got one.
★ 8.1
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.
All the Young DudesMott the Hoople
All the Young Dudes
1972
Mott were splitting up when Bowie offered them this, written within hours of hearing the band was finished.
★ 7.5
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
SurrenderCheap Trick
Surrender
1978
Two deliberate key changes raise the temperature under a teenager discovering his parents are cooler than he is.
★ 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
Hey Nineteen
1980 · From Gaucho
Nineteen weeks on the Hot 100, fittingly, and a middle-aged narrator undone by a girlfriend who doesn't know Aretha Franklin.
★ 5.8
Yakety Yak
1958
King Curtis honks the tenor break, later echoed in Yakety Sax, while Leiber and Stoller turn chores into comedy.
★ 5.6
We're Not Gonna Take It
1984
Snider hung the melody on "O Come, All Ye Faithful," and the PMRC filed it under filth anyway.
★ 5.5
We Didn't Start the Fire
1989 · From Storm Front
Joel wrote it at forty, after a twenty-one-year-old told him the fifties were dull; he has called the melody terrible.
★ 4.1
Waiting on the World to Change
2006
Steve Jordan on drums, Pino Palladino on bass, and a Grammy for a chorus about feeling politically stuck.
★ 3.9