Songs that people say are the best ever written

Keith Richards actually wrote this song in just 20 minutes. “Gimme Shelter” was the first track on the album “Let It Bleed,” which was released in 1969. It was never released as a single but is included in compilation albums and performed live many times over the years.

The Rolling Stones performed the song with Florence Welch, Mary J. Blige, and Lady Gaga for their 50th-anniversary tour in 2012. Cool stuff.

The song is the third track from the band’s 1991 album “Achtung Baby.” It’s a spin-off from the second single, “Mysterious Ways.”

The Edge thought of two bridge ideas, and Bono loved the other one so much that he wrote a new set of lyrics for it. The band never expected “One” to be a wedding hit though.

“People have told me they play it at their wedding,” said the Edge. “And I think, ‘Have you listened to the lyrics? It’s not that kind of a song.’

They say the best version of “No Woman, No Cry” is the one from “Live!” On July 17, 1975, performed at the Lyceum Theatre, which was a part of Bob Marley’s Natty Dread Tour.

This changed Marley’s life, and he credited Vincent “Tata” Ford, a childhood friend, for the songwriting. Ford’s soup kitchen in Kingston stayed afloat thanks to the song’s success.

“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was first recorded in 1964, soaring to the top of the charts in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The song became the fifth-best-selling song in the United States the next year.

Hall and Oates, Dionne Warwick, and many others have covered the song. And who can forget Tom Cruise in the first Top Gun movie when he sang, “You never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips.”

The Rolling Stones released “Sympathy for the Devil” from “Beggars Banquet” in 1968, causing a stir among religious groups. They had the impression that it was devil worship.

In 1995, Mick Jagger explained that he came up with the phrase because of French writing. “I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it,” he said. “I wrote it as sort of like a Bob Dylan song.”

Johnny Cash was serving in the Air Force stationed in Germany when he wrote this song. He only got to record it many years later, when he found out that the original tape was damaged. Cash embraced the unique sound that resulted, even wrapping a piece of wax paper around the guitar strings.

This is how Cash got his first Billboard chart No. 1 hit. “It was different than anything else you had ever heard,” he shared, “A voice from the middle of the Earth.”

Phil Spector considers the 1966 Ike and Tina Turner album as his best work. He was the producer for the album in question being: “River Deep – Mountain High.”

The song made Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time at No. 33, and was also inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. Turner says putting the song together was “unforgettable.”

Spector had her sing for hours to make it “perfect.”

“I must have sung that 500,000 times,” she explained to the Rolling Stone. “I was drenched with sweat. I had to take my shirt off and stand there in my bra to sing.”

John Lennon had this to say about the song. “Most people think it’s just a fast rock ‘n’ roll song. Subconsciously, I was crying out for help. I didn’t realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie.”

He then told Rolling Stone that he didn’t like the recording: “We did it too fast, to try and be commercial.”

The Impressions’ most famous song is, “People Get Ready.” It was written by Curtis Mayfield, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard R&B chart. It was the Civil Rights Movement’s unofficial anthem.

Mojo Magazine named it one of the top ten songs of all time. “That was taken from my church or the upbringing of messages from the church. Like there’s no hiding place and get on board, and images of that sort. I must have been in an intense mood of that type of religious inspiration when I wrote that song,” said Mayfield himself.

John Lennon says this 1965 single from “Rubber Soul” is of the greatest songs ever written. Lennon even says that it was: “my first real, major piece of work.”

He added that “up until then, it had all been glib and threw away.”

His friend and biographer, Peter Shotton, stated that the line: “Some [friends] are dead and some are living / In my life I’ve loved them all” was a tribute to both Shotton himself and Stuart Sutcliffe, a friend who passed away in 1962.

“The Story of Layla and Majnun” is a 12th-century book from Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi. That inspired Eric Clapton to write “Layla” where he also drew inspiration from his own life, especially his unrequited love for Pattie Boyd.

Boyd was the wife of friend and fellow musician George Harrison. It did work out in the end, with a marriage that lasted for nearly a decade.

“It was the heaviest thing going on at the time,” Clapton shared with Rolling Stone in 1974. “That’s what I wanted to write about most of all.”

Redding was sitting on the bay’s dock when he wrote the song’s lyrics. He was in a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California, after the Monterrey Pop Festival.

That’s the real sound of waves for the background track too. He recorded it a few months later with guitarist Steve Cropper, just a few days before he died in a plane crash. It wass the first posthumous single to reach number one in the United States.

The Beatles were on the verge of breaking up, so Paul McCartney found solace in a dream where his late mother gave him advice. The song’s first few lines, “When I find myself in times of trouble / Mother Mary comes to me” is proof of that dream.

It was the title track of the last studio album of the band. “Let it Be” was released in March 1970, and was the Beatles’ final single before announcing their breakup.

Pete Townshend of the Who found his influence in Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master. Terry Riley is credited for the first to use a minimalist composition style in this piece. When he combined the two, it produced “Baba O’Riley”.

It was released as a single in 1971 and was written for Lifehouse at first. The song was created as a follow-up to “Tommy”. In 2018, Roger Daltrey described the song as a warning to kids who excessively used social media.

“Be my baby” is on NME’s, Pitchfork’s, Time’s, and Rolling Stone’s best-of lists. The song was produced by Phil Spector, featuring a full orchestra and Cher’s backing vocals.

“The things Phil was doing were crazy and exhausting,” said engineer Larr Levine. “But that’s not the sign of a nut. That’s genius.”

Springsteen’s most ambitious song was also the title song of his 1975 album, “Born to Run.” He told Rolling Stone, “I wanted to make the greatest rock record I’d ever heard.”

It was Springsteen’s first international single, making it to the top 20 in the US. It was a cult hit, being so popular in Philadelphia that the song was broadcast many times in a day on a top-40 morning station.

“Behind Blue Eyes” was released in 1971, and was thought to be inspired by an incident during a concert. Pete Townshend was said to have been tempted by one of the groupies in 1970.

But he chose to go back to his hotel room to write a prayer. It began with, “When my fist clenches, crack it open.”

“La Bamba” was covered by Los Lobos, a Mexican folk song that was the title track of a film starring Lou Diamond Phillips as Ritchie Valens in 1987. Valens’ 1958 rendition is in both the Rolling Stone Top 500 and the Ranker chart.

It is the only song sung in a language other than English on the list.

The King of Rock and Roll’s version made it to number 19 on the Rolling Stone top 500. Elvis heard Freddie Bell and the Bellboys singing the song in Las Vegas, so he included it in his 1956 setlist.

On the Steve Allen Show later that year, Presley serenaded a dog dressed in a top hat. He revealed, “It was a ridiculous appearance I ever did, and I regret ever doing it.”

“Hound Dog” became Presley’s best-selling single and is now one of the best-selling singles in history.

It’s a rock ‘n’ roll classic, but Bill Haley and the Comets’ version has to be the most popular. Released in 1954, the song came out topping the U.K. and the U.S., including charts from the United States.

The song was featured in the opening credits of The Blackboard Jungle and was dubbed “the world’s first rock anthem” by The Guardian.

“Break on Through (To the Other Side)” did not do well upon release, getting to only No. 126 on the US charts but it’s become one of their more popular ones. Jim Morrison told Hit Parader that he wrote it walking through Venice’s canals.

“I was walking over a bridge,” he shared. “I guess it’s one girl, a girl I knew at the time.” he said.

Elektra Records removed “high” from “she gets high” knowing it might affect radio airplay. So until the 1990s, every re-release of the song came without that word.

“Here Comes the Sun” was on the 1969 album “Abbey Road.” Most of the songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, but it was George Harrison who deserves credit for this one.

Harrison was said to have written the song at Eric Clapton’s house. He avoided a meeting at the band’s Apple Corps organization, and as he sat in Clapton’s garden, the sun shone through after a long, cold season.

David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” was allegedly his farewell to the glam rock movement. Released in 1974, the song speaks of a young boy who goes against his parents’ wishes by wearing makeup and female clothing.

The song peaked at No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, and reached No. 5 in the United Kingdom. It’s a “glam anthem” that’s been covered by the Smashing Pumpkins, Bryan Adams, and many others.

Written by Ray Davies for the Kinks’ third single, “You Got Me” reached No. 1 on the singles chart of the UK, and in 1964 peaked at No. 7. Rolling Stone says that the incredible sound of the riff came about when Dave Davies’ guitarist used a razor on his amp’s speaker cone.

“The song came out of a working-class environment,” he explained. “People fighting for something.”

“Purple Haze” was written by Jimi Hendrix and released as the second single from The Jimi Hendrix Experience back in 1967. It frequently appears on lists that talks about the greatest guitar songs. Q magazine’s No. 1 and Rolling Stone’s No. 2 are some of them, and it was voted the fifth-best Jimi Hendrix song by readers of Rolling Stone in 2013.

The Clash wrote this song as they went through personal difficulties all while being concerned about global events. They were in debt.

“We felt that we were struggling,” said lead vocalist Joe Strummer, “about to slip down a slope or something, grasping with our fingernails. And there was no one there to help us.”

This was the only single in the UK from the eponymous album. The song climbed to No. 11 on the charts in 1980, becoming the highest-charting single band until “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was released a decade after.

“What a Wonderful World was written by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele. The song reached number one in the United Kingdom after Louis Armstrong’s recording. In 1999, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Many artists have covered the song. Names like Tony Bennett, Katie Melua, The Flaming Lips, Joey Ramone, Nick Cave, Shane MacGowan, Katie Melua, and Eva Cassidy are just a few who came out with their rendition of this beloved hit.

“A Change is Gonna Come” came out as the B-side of Cooke’s posthumous single “Shake.” He was laid to rest in December 1964 after he was killed by a woman in a Los Angeles motel. It became an anthem of the civil rights movement, and chosen for preservation by the National Recording Registry in 2007 since they saw it as a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” song.

“The Sound of Silence” was recorded as part of the debut album of Simon & Garfunkel in 1964: “Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.” The song got to the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1966, plus the top 10 in many countries like Austria, Australia, the Netherlands, West Germany, and Japan.

Paul Simon says that the key to the song was “the simplicity of the melody and the words, which are youthful alienation.”

They say this was one of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s final true collaborations. “A Day in the Life” was The Beatles’ dramatic conclusion to their 1967 album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

Paul McCartney still performs the song live. Rolling Stone called it the Beatles’ greatest song and according to Acclaimed Music, is the third most popular song in the history of music.

“My Generation” finds itself as the 11th greatest song of all time thanks to Rolling Stone. The song is also ranked 13th on VH1’s list of the 100 Greatest Rock & Roll Songs, then 37th on the Greatest Hard Rock Songs.

NME has the song on their list of the 100 Best Songs of the 1960s, saying, “Taking in a timeless sense of youthful disaffection via a countercultural, Mod lens, Pete Townshend’s age-defying ditty distilled what it feels like to be young, energized and in the prime of life into 3:18 minutes of bristling hedonism.”

“Light My Fire” is on the band’s self-titled album in 1967. The edited single took the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks. The band performed on The Ed Sullivan Show with Jim Morrison asked not to sing a particular line.

It was the part that said, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.”

Morrison still sang the line and that was their first and last appearance on the show.

“What’d I Say” is the 10th best song in history according Rolling Stone. Charles wrote it while performing in Pittsburgh in 1958. He had some free time so, “I said to the guys, ‘Hey, whatever I do, just follow me’” Charles shared with David Letterman.

He added, “And I said the same thing to the girls, I said, ‘Whatever I say, just repeat it, I don’t care what it is.’”

The audience loved him so they obeyed. The song was Charles’ first top ten pop hit and was always played at the end of his shows. The song made the National Recording Registry in 2002.

“Paint It Black” was released in 1966, reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and in the United Kingdom. Rolling Stone readers voted and said it was the band’s third-best single, just behind “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Gimme Shelter.”

Keith Richards credited Bill Wyman’s organ for the song’s success. He said, “It didn’t sound anything like the finished record until Bill said, ‘You go like this.’”

It was Otis Redding who wrote and recorded this song in 1965, but Aretha Franklin turned it into a female empowerment anthem two years later. Franklin mixed it up by adding the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” part to the chorus, including “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me…” in the refrain.

She won two Grammys in 1968, with the first for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording, and the second for Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female. In 1987, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Bob Dylan wrote “All Along the Watchtower” for his album “John Wesley Harding,” which was released in 1967. Six months later, Hendrix covered the song for “Electric Ladyland”, reaching the top 20 in 1968. Hendrix’s version is the 47th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone. U2, Eddie Vedder, and Neil Young have covered the song themselves.

This song was inspired by the police brutality cases reported in California in 1971. It went on to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is one of Gaye’s most successful Motown records. Rolling Stone called it an “exquisite plea for peace on Earth”, placing it fourth on the list of the best songs in history.

Led Zeppelin released “Stairway to Heaven” in 1971. Planet Rock readers have it as the top song of all time. “Stairway” was not released as a commercial single in the United Kingdom, but it was voted as the country’s favorite rock anthem. “Stairway to heaven” was the most requested song on the radio at the time.

Rolling Stone says the greatest song was “Like a Rolling Stone” since, “No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”

The track is long at six minutes and thirteen seconds. No wonder radio stations were hesitant to play the song. It peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Green Day and the Jimi Hendrix Experience have covered the song, and Acclaimed Music says it is the most acclaimed song in history.

In 2014, Dylan’s handwritten lyrics were auctioned off for 2 million dollars.

“God Only Knows” is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Pitchfork Media’s list of the best 1960s songs. It may be a B-side track on “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” but “God Only Knows” remains popular among their fans. Rolling Stone ranked it 25th and their readers voted it as their favorite song. This is also Paul McCartney’s favorite song.