this list is a complete joke... lynyrd skynyrd at #64? what the ****. I Need You The Ballad of Curtis Lowe Was I Right or Wrong Comin' Home should all be on the list. best american band ever.
It's a list for Rolling Stone magazine in 2008. Talking about Randy Rhodes, or Jeff Beck for their target audience (younger than us) is like mentioning Django Reinhardt at this point. They have your list every year at guitar player magazine anyway. I guess the magazine might be making an aesthetic point that guitar solos aren't always the be all, end all of guitar songs. I would say they have a good point, but then I realized that arguing about a best guitar song list put out by Rolling Stone magazine is like getting all worked up about about the top 20 sundials list in Primitive Time Telling Quarterly (Spring, 1942).
you have got to be kidding me. greatest guitar songs of all time, and you bring up SHINEDOWN?????? dude thats cool if you listen to shinedown on your ipod when you feel 'crunk', but what do they have to do with this list?? not even close to the greatest guitar songs. sorry but shinedown sucks so bad its making my head spin. the argument of old vs new is a pretty moot one, as old will always win. first off, there are more enlightened older music enthusiasts, and second, the songs which antedate modern rock cannot even be compared on a historical scale because of a little thing called influence. nirvana doesn't compare technically, even if it was innovative at the time, but they make the list for one obvious reason called the trickle down effect.
you know.. threads in this forum.. that revolve around the subject of music.. usually tend to bother me.. but this one... is pretty funny...
I can think of thousands of better songs. Better technical guitar playing in terms of degree of difficulty...probably not. For me hooks, arrangements, structure, innovation, melody, and just good old-fashioned song-writing trumps showy, masturbatory guitar playing any day of the week. Still, the list should have at least had an introduction explaining the criteria. I think it's really aiming for most influential guitar songs/sounds/style that shaped the future, and ignoring guitar-playing prowess. Even then it's still obviously tilted towards Rolling Stone Magazine's usual suspects.
so i went back and looked at the list.... your assessment seems correct. its a targeted audience the magazine is going for.
someone wanted to a list of decent newer bands. so i just listed a few. obviously stuff from way back is better. i have like all sabbath, maiden, megadeth, etc. albums. but shinedown isn't bad at all. pretty powerful performance. got good energy. rock music isn't all about the music itself.
I like a lot of new music as well, but this really bugs me. Almost none of these new bands play guitar solos. Sure they might have a guitar break where they double the melody, but that's not a solo. It's like the guitar solo has become passe or something and that makes me sad.
They got #1 right...before I clicked the link, I thought "If Johnny B. Goode is not #1, this list sucks" I didn't bother to read the whole list, because once I saw "Crossroads" by The Cream at #3, I lost all respect for the list. That might be the worst cover of a blues classic ever recorded. Bass and drums are okay, but Clapton sounds awful on that song. At times, the guitar sounds like a fiddle in the solo, and his singing is so bad on that track. I will never understand how people like that song.
Every musician I know always says Clapton is the most overrated guitarist of all time. By contrast, they say T-Bone Walker was one of the greatest. I tend to agree. I am not a Clapton fan, I don't think he could hold SRV's jock strap.
If that were the case, Chuck Berry wouldn't be #1 and most of the other artists wouldn't be on this list.
Bullet with Butterfly Wings? Why not a song like Geek USA, thats a nasty guitar song. Smells Like Teen Spirit? Why not Umass (Pixies) which preceded it? I don't get it.
I don't think a solo should be required. A recognizable riff would be more important. Also the song would have to be good. I didn't feel like clicking through every page - do they have it listed out on one page anywhere?
Did you mean 'Sleater Kinney'? The 3 chick band? I like 'em, but there's no way any of their songs deserve to be on a "Greatest Guitar Songs" list.
I agree but it never saw airplay. Or maybe even Today, which isn't a technical masterpiece, but still manages to be a great riff. I'm still awestruck that Corgan played every guitar piece for the entire Siamese Dream album.
Top Guitar Songs? Oh, the top 10 is easy: 1. Eruption 2. Spanish Fly 3. Cathedral 4. Ain't Talkin Bout Love 5. Mean Streets' 6. Hot For Teacher 7. Everybody Wants Some 8. Atomic Punk 9. Take Your Whiskey Home 10. Little Guitars OK, that's an exaggeration, but not far off. As long as Elliott Easton is on that list, it's legit. If not, it's incomplete. E.E. needs to be on there, regardless of the fact that their music was more "new wave" and featured keyboards.
