Best Classic Rock Songs

Rock songs like all other music have brought people together. Here's a list of best classic rock songs ever.

It was Chuck Berry, an Afro-American who was one of the pioneers of this insatiable cult of music. The trend spread across the continent of America, which made these compositions the best classic rock songs to dance to. Even today, the songs are immensely nostalgic and astoundingly mood changing. Here a list of best classic rock songs of the 70's and best classic rock songs of the 80's that are revered by the young and the restless of this decade too.

Best Classic Rock Songs of All Time

• Flying High Again - Ozzy Osborne
• Stairway to Heaven - Led Zepplin
• All Day and All of the Night - Kinks
• Sunshine of Your Love - Cream
• Satisfaction - Rolling Stones
• Light My Fire - Doors
• Runaway - Del Shannon
• House of the Rising Sun - Animals
• In the Presence of the Lord - Blind Faith
• Truckin' - Grateful Dead
• Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum
• Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix
• Good Vibrations - Beach Boys
• Sounds of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel
• Woodstock - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
• Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
• American Woman - Guess Who
• You've Lost That Loving Feeling - Righteous Brothers
• Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
• Here Comes My Girl - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
• Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
• California Dreaming - Mamas & Papas
• Jesus Is Just Alright - Doobie Brothers
• You Really Got Me - Kinks
• Eight Miles High - Byrds
• Oye Como Va - Santana
• Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress - Hollies
• Johnny B Goode - Chuck Berry
• Nights in White Satin - Moody Blues
• Do You Believe In Magic - Lovin' Spoonful
• Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin
• Gimme Shelter - Rolling Stones
• Walk Away Renee - The Left Banke
• Do Wah Diddy Diddy - Manfred Mann
• Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
• Whipping Post - Allman Brothers
• Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane
• Time of the Season - Zombies
• Turn, Turn, Turn - Byrds
• White Room - Cream
• Dust In the Wind – Kansas
• For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield
• You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet - Bachman Turner Overdrive
• Heart Full of Soul - Yardbirds
• Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
• Unchained Melody - Righteous Brothers
• Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
• Dream On - Aerosmith
• Roadhouse Blues - The Doors
• Wear Your Love Like Heaven - Donovan
• Piece of My Heart - Big Brother and the Holding Company
• Shambhala - Three Dog Night
• Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple
• Respect - Aretha Franklin
• Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
• Be My Baby - The Ronettes
• Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
• The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan
• Crazy - Patsy Cline
• You Can't Always Get What You What - The Rolling Stones
• What's Your Name - Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Hard To Handle - The Black Crowes
• Creep - Radiohead
• Sledgehammer - Peter Gabrie
• Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith
• Over the Hills and Far Away - Led Zepplin
• Highway To Hell - ACDC
• Voodoo Chile - Jimi Hendrix
• Fade To Black - Metallica
• Killing in the Name - Rage Against the Machine
• Last Resort - Papa Roach

Rock Music

Even with the advent and popularization of pop, soul, R&B, rap and hip-hop in the MTV era, rock is a genre of music that has retained a wide fan base with hordes of enthusiasts since the late 1960s. Read on to learn of the origins of rock music and its proponents...

What is Rock?
Essentially "Rock" is an eclectic mix of a prominent vocal melody accompanied by guitar, drums, and bass. Several bands use an innovative mix of piano, synthesizers, saxophone, flute, mandolin and sitar to heady effect. The earliest known roots of rock music as a unique genre of music branching out from rock ‘n’ roll date back to the early-to-mid 1960s. Over the next 5 decades since then, rock has been propelled into being one of the most popular and best-selling branches of commercial music by now legendary artists.

With the wave of popularity of rock ‘n’ roll, made immensely popular by the Beatles, two British bands – Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath, in completely contrasting styles, founded the sub-genres of progressive rock and heavy metal. Pink Floyd explored a more psychedelic sound combining electric guitars and keyboards to create amazing sound variations while Black Sabbath delved into a darker, heavier sound emphasizing a slow tempo and tuned down guitars.

The next few years saw an explosion in the rock genres in general giving rise to varied genres discussed in this article along with other less known genres. As you will be able to tell many genres are very hard to define and others overlap with each other making clear lines between genres impossible to draw.

Rock Classifications
Numerous branches of rock have been born – rock ‘n’ roll, soft rock, hard rock, progressive rock, metal, alternative, grunge... each of which have several subtle variations. e.g heavy metal has branched off into progressive, death, acid, dark ambient, power, symphonic, Goth…the list goes on.

Progressive Rock is a very open and intertwined genre of music which got its start in the late 60s, and continues to this day. Prog Rock artists try to take the roots of rock and apply them to a more classically influenced structure. The music is often very elaborate and generally requires very exceptional musicians with a great deal of talent. It is not unusual for Prog Rock pieces to be very lengthy – Echoes by Pink Floyd is an early example of this phenomenon and the tradition continues to this day in other pieces like First Light by Shadow Gallery.

Heavy Metal or Metal as it is currently called started back in the late ’60s and is often credited to Black Sabbath. Heavy metal found its roots in the blues and psychedelic music genres, and got its inspiration in the misery of daily life in industrialized cities combined with a fascination for mysticism. The stereotypical metal song combines heavy thudding drums sounds (often with a double bass) with thickly distorted guitar riffs, screaming vocals and powerful rhythm.

Progressive Metal or Prog Metal as some call it is a combination of progressive rock and heavy metal which came into popularity during the late ’80s with Queensryche and Dream Theater. Progressive metal has a small but very loyal and devoted group of fans who are enthralled by the combination of many unusual elements inherited from the progressive rock tradition such as incorporation of Jazz, Orchestration and other varied influences. Like in Progressive Rock, it is common for pieces to be in excess of 10-15 minutes and sometimes more like the 24-minute Octavarium by Dream Theater.

Hard Rock is a form of rock & roll that finds its roots in the early 1960s garage rock and draws from jazz, blues, rock and roll, and other influences like folk in the case of famed hard rock artist Led Zeppelin who's main writer and composer Jimmy Page was a famous studio musician and expert guitar player who was interested in Celtic and folk influences. These diverse influences can be clearly heard in one of the most influential albums of this style Led Zeppelin 4. AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple and Iron Maiden are classic examples of early hard rock.

Over the last 50 years, Rock has become one of the most popular genres of music producing numerous iconic artists who have written the history of rock with their own unique contributions to the memories of many generations.

Amazingly, several of the above remain as popular as ever with Pink Floyd drawing record crowds at the Live 8 concert and several other bands formed in the 70s releasing albums recently

Straight Edge, Punk's Younger Brother

Born in the mid-1980s as a derivative of punk rock, Straight Edge bands wrote songs about wholesome ideals while adhering to other characteristics of punk music.

Punk rock is known for many things, but restraint is not one of them. It is a musical movement that began in the mid-1970’s and was a reaction to the disingenuousness that was perceived to be part of popular culture. Punk music was intended paint a picture of how the world actually was instead of how the culture wished it was. A desire for authenticity was a large part of the punk movement, and this was reflected in many punk recordings, which often included false starts and conversations between band members.

One thing that punk music inherited from its predecessor, rock ‘n roll, was a love of excess. Drug use and sexual promiscuity were a very large part of both cultures. Just as rock music and punk music were reactions to things that they felt were wrong in the culture around them, a subculture of punk music was born in the early 1980’s. This subculture came to be known as Straight Edge.

The Straight Edge movement was known for its core ideals of rejecting illegal drugs, alcohol, and promiscuous sex. As the Straight Edge movement evolved, it began to change and other ideals were added to these core ideals. In the 1990’s, those who were particularly vocal about Straight Edge and its ideals added vegetarianism and eventually veganism to the lifestyle.

As the 1990’s progressed, some bands from the Straight Edge movement formed what came to be known as the Hardline movement. Hardliners took the ideals of Straight Edge even further. Sex was discouraged for any purpose but procreation. Hardliners tried to avoid items were produced via exploitative practices in the third world, like coffee and chocolate.

One thing that is extremely interesting about the Hardline movement is its pedigree. Rock music was seen as rebellious and edgy when it was first created in the 1950’s. Due to perceived deficiencies in rock music, punk was created. As punk evolved, its deficiencies caused Straight Edge. Straight Edge, in turn, was not perceived as being enough, so Hardliners came into being. The Hardliners had a great deal in common with the main ideals of mainstream 1950’s America, yet for completely different reasons. One thing that was very different, however, was the willingness of those in the Straight Edge and Hardline movements to use violence to support their ideals.

As the Straight Edge movement matured, its bands became more tolerant of other punk bands that were not Straight Edge. At one point it was common for Straight Edge bands to play exclusively with other Straight Edge bands because they espoused the same ideals and there was less of a chance that violence would occur.

One of the most well-known symbols of the Straight Edge movement is the letter X. Its usage began when a young punk band was signed to play at a club. When the band arrived, it was discovered that each band member was under the legal drinking age and could not be admitted to the club. To get around this, the club’s management wrote a large X on the backs of the band members’ hands to indicate that they should not be served alcohol. The idea eventually spread as a way to allow Straight Edge fans access to Straight Edge concerts that took place in establishments that served alcohol. Eventually the X became a symbol of the Straight Edge movement and a simple way for people living the Straight Edge lifestyle to identify themselves.