Once again, local greater New York metropolitan area classic rock station Q104.3 continued their Thanksgiving tradition of listing the 1,043 greatest rock songs of all time. The big question every year is whether or not somebody, or rather some song, will finally knock off "Stairway To Heaven" by Led Zeppelin as the number one song.
Spoiler alert: it was ranked number one again, and remains undefeated on this particular list, which is determined by votes.
Still, the rest of the list is interesting, and surely, it is all material for debate. There are some songs that I was shocked to see just how highly they were rated, and other songs that, frankly, seemed almost impossibly low. For example, "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters was ranked 74th, which seemed just too low for such an incredible and unique song. And "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which had an immediate and profound impact on the direction of rock music in the nineties, was ranked number 40?
There were some other unbelievable tunes and artists who were conspicuous by their absence in the top 100 or 150 list. For example, I see "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits ranked 85 and "Money For Nothing" by them ranked 120. However, I believe that Telegraph Road is actually that band's masterpiece, and I'm not even entirely sure that it is ranked on this list at all (admittedly, I did not go through the entire list to achieve certainty on this point).
Yet another song that seems strange simply because of it's absence was the beautiful "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand" by the Primitive Radio Gods. For that matter, where is "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails? And I still always felt that "Imagine" by John Lennon should rank higher than it always seems to. It was ranked number 16 this year, which I believe was higher than past years. But to me, that is such an iconic and beautiful song, with an actual vision for the best possibilities for the future that seemed to define the idealism of the era of Lennon and the Beatles, that it deserves to be in the top ten, as far as I'm concerned.
In any case, lists like this are made for debate. That's what it's there for. So here is the link below, if you are interested in looking at it. And please feel free to debate the merit (or again, the possible lack there) here, if you are so inclined.
https://q1043.iheart.com/featured/top-1043-songs-of-all-time/
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