I'm agreeing that this is too vague a question... I suppose I'll post my top few, in no particular order, subject as always to change, based on factors I'll be making up as I go along.

"I Want to Hold Your Hand," Beatles
"Heartbreaker," Pat Benatar
"Rock and Roll," Led Zeppelin
"Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)," Ween
"She's an Angel," They Might Be Giants
"Here, There and Everywhere," Beatles
"Problems and Bigger Ones," Harvey Danger
"Soma," Smashing Pumpkins
"Last Goodbye," Jeff Buckley
"Imagine," John Lennon

I know these are skewed toward recent artists, but what am I gonna do? I'm barely 26.

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- christ@myself.com - fuck a cat, kill yourself - my alter ego has five stars

Also, the Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog is a lovely song and very well constructed to boot.

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Peeing sitting down is the gift you give yourself.

Beatles. Pfah.

Crowded House, Don't Dream It's Over

If not the best pop/rock song of all time, it's certainly in the top ten.

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This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

"Don't Front The Fat Kid" - JD Fresh

Jeez, I hope you're being serious, because I'm agreeing with you.

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I am not 16 going on not 17, I know that I'm naive.

"Astronomy" by Blue Oyster Cult. Like so much of thier music, it sounds deep but doesn't make a lick of sense. Therefor you can read anything you want into it and pretend that it's the most brilliant thing ever.

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I was gonna send a robot back in time, but I got high.

Err... I'm gonna have to say that if we're talking modern pop music (in which I'm including metal, indie, all that stuff) that the Beatles were really the masters of the craft when it came to guitar and piano songs. If I had to name particulars, I'd pick either Strawberry Fields, I am the Walrus, and basically everything off Revolver.

However, seeing as its a subjective question, I'll go ahead and throw out a few others that I think are perfect songs (at least in their categories, which is pop/rock/hip-hop/whatever)

Do you Realize??? - The Flaming Lips

Mind-numbingly cheesy lyrics with symphonic backdrop, plus a key shift in the middle of the song for the ultimate effect of glorious superfi-soul shaking and feel good mushiness. You can't help but love it, and if anyone tells you they don't, they're lying. (Also worth noting: while "Yoshimi" was a big seller last year (or two years ago, I can't remember) their "Soft Bulletin" released in 1999 is really an example of pop-rock perfection in album form. I'd recommend it to any music lovers that wanna hear what may be a freaky reincarnation-while-still-alive of Brian Wilson in lead singer/writer Wayne Coyne.

Oh Sweet 'Nuthin - The Velvet Underground

Sad, sweet, and three chords. That's how it's done if you really want to do it right.

Now, this one may seem obvious, but I'm gonna throw it out there because I really feel its genius:

Hey ya - OutKast

I hated it initially because everyone was singing it and I didn't understand. It got overplayed, but thanks to the fact that I don't listen to the radio I I can listen to it now with fresh ears. Speakerboxx/The Love Below is a truly great album and Hey ya is so weirdly catchy. It's a fucked up song that the whole world could dance to. Seriously. Listen to the bass line. The song structure is anything but standard. The lyrics are dirty but accurate and somewhat personal. It's got that cool chime thing, plus a perfect hip-hop beat. It can raise the spirits of everyone in the room and can make white boys like most of you dance like they've never done before if they'd only forget that they don't like Rap because it's all the same.

I can think of a few more, but yeah, those are my thoughts for now.

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Sex Piano.

[u]POST HURT BIRDS IN SPACE!!![/u]

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

BEST SONG EVER!!!!
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost
By: Wesley Willis

Casper was fucked in the ass by fifty Muslims.
He was fucked twenty-five times on top.
He was also fucked thirty-seven times bent over a wheelbarrow
And eleven more times at the bank.
He was fucked at night in the ass.
His ass was a bit ruptured.

He was born for getting ass-rammed!
Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!

Casper got fucked in the ass brutally
And the fifty Muslims' semen was pissed on his tonsils.
He was up to his eyeballs in Muslim jism.
He was so full of cum, he had to shit.
This guy really took a shit, pushed away the Muslim jism
And took his own foreskin
And started fucking himself in his ass brutally.

Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!

Casper was taken to a hospital by an ambulance.
At the hospital, he told the doctor to say "asshole licker".
After the doctor said "asshole licker".
He got on top of Casper and started fucking him in his ass brutally.
So far, Casper was diagnosed with holy freakaholic
And became loose for super duper maneuvers!

Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!

Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!

Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual!
Casper the homosexual!
Casper the homosexual!
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!

Rock over London, Rock on Chicago!
Western Union: It's the Fastest Way To Send Money!

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Crowded House, Don't Dream It's Over

If not the best pop/rock song of all time, it's certainly in the top ten.

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Jeez, I hope you're being serious, because I'm agreeing with you.

Oh no, I'm quite serious.

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Peeing sitting down is the gift you give yourself.

Holiday song: The Pogues - Fairy Tale of New York

Sad song: George Jones: He Stopped Loving Her Today

Rock song: Metallica - Fade To Black

None are the best but all are damn good.

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-=- You eat one lousy foot and they call you a cannibal. What a world. -=-

There is no best song ever written.

"Light My Fire" is not even the best Doors song. "People Are Strange" is. And Jim didn't even write the lyrics to that one.

"People Are Strange" is a perfect song. Not one word wasted. Potent imagery. Insightful, which is not a word to use lightly. Skillful use of structural devices like internal rhyme and alliteration. Abundant symmetry. Underneath it, a swinging barrelhouse tack piano invoking good times, truly creepy. Despair in clown makeup.

"Light My Fire," on the other hand, begs to be taken seriously, but it strikes me as a forced and futile attempt to find words that rhyme with "fire." "No time to wallow in the mire?" What mire? And why would I want to wallow in it? Why is Jim admonishing me not to wallow in "the mire?" Because it rhymes with "pyre," which rhymes with "fire." That's the only reason I can think of.

Also, the chorus illustrates that "fire" rhymes with itself. Light my fire, set the world on... fire! OK. Anticlimactic, in my humble opinion.

Granted, it has a towering hook rendered in a monstrous organ tone. (Hammond? I'm guessing.) But the other instrument tracks pale beside it. The guitar solo wants a meatier tone and more daring tonality. In all, it's fifth-rate poetry backed by third-rate musicianship. The mix is first-rate.

For superior lyric craft from the same time, consult practically any Bob Dylan song. If Jim Morrison ever got off a line like "the hypnotic splattered mess was slowly lifting," I'd like to hear it. For superior musicianship from the same time, consult (for example) the Byrds. Roger McGuinn had more going on under his four fingers than all The Doors put together. He's a 12-string Charlie Parker on "Psychodrama City," and I don't know what the hell he is on "Hey Joe." I hear arpeggios and blues licks thrown together at hypersonic speed. It was all recorded live to 2-track. I imagine if I showed up at some club in the mid-60s, and some band I'd never heard of called the Byrds were playing, I'd faint dead away at "Hey, Joe."

That's just a couple of popular Americans who put the Doors to shame in the 60s. Then there's the top half of the British Invasion. Hell, even forgetting the Beatles, it's an avalanche of talent. The Hollies-- who remembers them? They had range! They could play anything they wanted, anytime. Masters of their craft. The Who: a psychotic reaction in progress, live onstage. The Stones: high magic in three chords or fewer. The Kinks: Well, they were just insane and indispensable. I'd love to go back in time and watch The Doors open for The Who. Guess who'd get blown off the stage.

Anyway, if it's great songs you're after, we have to at least nod to "Stardust." It's not the most covered song of all time by accident. Drippy and sentimental, yes, but structurally impeccable, and on further examination, not so sentimental after all. A sentimental rejection of sentimentality, if that's possible.

A few "songs I wish I'd written": Talking Heads, "Life during Wartime"; REM, "Life and How to Live It"; Some unknown Nashville guy, "Beyond the Blue Horizon"; Neil Young, "Powderfinger"; Tom Waits, "A Soldier's Things." To name a few.

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What others say about boorite!

Oh, yeah: Roy Orbison, and while we're at it, Johnny Cash. And why not the Beach Boys? Don't tell me Brian Wilson wasn't some kind of freak. A sorry drunk and a junkie, like Jim, but at least Brian Wilson lived through it. (More or less.)

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What others say about boorite!

On the subject of The Doors songs, my personal picks are Roadhouse Blues and Peace Frog.

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Poop.

That's easy. The greatest song of all time is "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies.

No, I'm just kidding. That's a little inside humor for those who have read my latest strips for CC 271.

Well, this is a tough question to answer, but I do have some favorites that come to mind. I'll try to arrange them by category:

For best ambience:
"Awaken" by Yes.

For use of polyphony:
"Machine Messiah" by Yes.

For going to sleep:
"Ashes are Burning" by Renaissance.

For sheer beauty:
"O Virga ac Diadema" by Hildegard von Bingen.
"Habanera" by George Bizet.
"Ode to Joy" by Ludwig von Beethoven.
"I Vow to Thee, My Country" for the music stolen from Gustav Holst's Planets.

For emotional appeal:
"Picking up the Pieces" by Jenni Muldaur.
"Something More Than This" by October Project.
"Bring Me to Life" by Evanescence.

For raw energy and exhuberence:
"In the Mood" by Glenn Miller.

Best songs from musicals:
"Maria" by Leonard Bernstein (from Westside Story).
"Promises, Promises" by Burt Bacharach (from Promises, Promises)

For fun:
"Yesterday Once More" by Richard Carpenter and John Bettis.
"Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" by Klaatu, but as performed by the Carpenters.

Best songs without words:
"Take Five" by Dave Brubeck.

There are more songs I like a lot, but I think I'll cut the list here.

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FPD is the foremost plague on discussion boards. Do your part to stomp out FPD.

Any Evanescence song has no right being in any topic with the word "Best" in the title. ESPECIALLY Bring Me To Life, just because the girl was in the school choir doesn't mean it has emotion.

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Poop.

Very true. I actually wanted this thread in FGH in the hopes that it would spark an argument for the hell of it. And I was listening to Typo O at the time so I wasn't thinking of anything else. So there.

Over my dead, bloated corpse will I ever give that bloated semi-corpse, Dylan any kudos.

I'd like to forget them, yes.

Love them too.

Depends on the person. I prefer the Doors over The Who, only because The Doors made more songs that I actually like than The Who did.

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For raw energy and exhuberence:
"In the Mood" by Glenn Miller.

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I like Evanescence so I say they can say.

Now Dylan...there's someone who needs no place in this thread.

Then again, we are talking about a song being written, if not performed, and as far as I'm concerned, that marble-mouthed gutter rat lacks on that one.

My personal favorite is Blind Guardian's "...And Then There was Silence". Awesome song, 14 minutes long, very epic.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

I always liked L.A. Woman more than any other Doors song. It somehow manages to change the pace a few times, each period after the pace-change is delectable, and somehow it all meshes.

I remember reading that "Light My Fire" was Jim's concession to label assholes to come up with something hook-y and radio-friendly.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

Sorry, Ivy, but anyone who hates The Beatles and loves Evanescence is in dire need of a taste transplant. Get to the hospital quickly before you start wearing fluoro moccasins and watching Jerry Springer.

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This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

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I actually wanted this thread in FGH in the hopes that it would spark an argument for the hell of it.

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