10 Best American Rock Songs of All Time, Ranked
Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He's watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don't ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can't do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies.
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Rock and roll may have really started to take off in the 1960s and 1970s with popular British bands The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin, but rock music was born in America with the likes of Chuck Berry, before the swinging hips of Elvis Presley took the emerging genre to a new level of pop culture fame. American rock has gone through many phases. It's been big and loud. It's been ruled by wild hair. It has come out of the grunge of Seattle, the garages of the Midwest, and the small clubs of New York City. Critics can say whatever they like about the death of rock and roll, but the power of its timeless songs means rock and roll will live forever through passed down generations. These 10 songs prove that American rock music can never die.
10 "American Girl" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (1977)
Tom Petty was born in Florida. From the 70s to his death in 2017, Petty's style of folk rock, whether it was with his solo career, or as part of the Heartbreakers, created millions of fans. There are so many classic songs that could be regarded as his best, but we'll go with "American Girl" from the Heartbreakers' debut album. Over an unforgettable beat, Petty sings about not giving up on the American dream and fighting through the struggle, no matter how far out of reach your desires seem.
9 "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)
Just as with Tom Petty, you can put a plethora of Jimi Hendrix songs on this list. Coming from Seattle, Washington, Hendrix's time on this Earth was short, but he left a lasting impression as the most influential rock guitarist of all-time. In 1968, on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's third album, Electric Ladyland, Hendrix took his immense talent to a new level with "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)". The sick opening riff washes over you, a sound unlike any other, before kicking into high gear. How could something so impossible come out of a human being?
8 "Dream On" by Aerosmith (1973)
Boston's Aerosmith are still getting at it today, over half a century after their 1973 self-titled debut album. On it, as the first single of their career, was the song that would define them, "Dream On". A hypnotic guitar gives way to Steve Tyler's soulful voice in this building power ballad. As the volume increases, so does Tyler's pleas to not give up. Rock song lyrics can be indecipherable or surface level. "Dream On" dares to dream of bigger things. Its success single-handedly launched a Hall of Fame career.
7 "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen (1975)
Few rock stars personify Americana more than New Jersey's Bruce Springsteen. He's made an entire career out of romanticizing American life, lifting up the unseen, and holding those in power to account. In 1975, as the titular song for an album of the same name, "Born to Run" became an anthem. Bruce sang to those who felt trapped in the pain of their working lives and dreamed of escape. He wants to run, but he doesn't want to do it alone. With the woman he loves beside him, the narrator can have it all. Throw in the explosion of sound from the E-Street Band behind him, and "Born to Run" is united perfection.
6 "Johnny Be Goode" by Chuck Berry (1958)
Before Elvis, there was Chuck Berry. Raised in St. Louis, he gave a new energy to the blues sound with songs such as "Maybelline" and "Roll Over Beethoven". They were all building towards the perfection of "Johnny B. Goode". Berry was a wizard on the guitar, and here he shines with a beat you can't help but dance to as he sings about the country boy who hit it big with his guitar playing. The song is so influential that today it exists 13 billion miles away as the chosen record for NASA's Voyager 1. What else can you say about a song used to represent all of humanity?
5 "Hotel California" by The Eagles (1977)
Los Angeles's The Eagles have existed in various forms since 1971, but they were never bigger than in 1977 thanks to their massively successful fifth album. On its second single, the title track "Hotel California," every band member has a tremendous impact. Joe Walsh and Don Felder are soul mates on the guitar, and Don Henley's voice seems to come from another mesmerizing world. The penetrating lyrics have been sung along with by generations in a song that's not about the American dream but a nightmare of American excess. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."
4 "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (1991)
In 1991, Seattle's Nirvana rose from indie punk rock glory to extreme mass appeal thanks to one song. "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the lead track from Nevermind, ripped apart saccharine mainstream rock with just one opening chord. Over often times indecipherable lyrics, Kurt Cobain screams out to an enthused generation, bringing them to consciousness with the repeated demand of, "Here we are now, entertain us." With Dave Grohl's blistering drums and Krist Novoselic's dependable bass, this song made Cobain a rock god and launched a fad that took over the world for a few years to come.
3 "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys (1966)
California's The Beach Boys have a sound like few other bands. The angelic harmonies were often used for simple songs about cars surfing, but in 1966 they grew with arguably the greatest American album ever made, Pet Sounds. On "Good Vibrations," unusual instruments, like a cello and electro-theremin, combine with the voices of Mike Love and Brian Wilson, for a heavenly song. A simple but beautiful ballad of love in the lyrics becomes something more with a unique style that was at once experimental and so easy to listen to.
2 "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)
Southern rock was ruled in the early 70s by Jacksonville, Florida's Lynyrd Skynryd. Their biggest song, by far, is the nine-minute opus "Free Bird." If the British had Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", this was America's answer to the question of what the most famous rock song is. It's an epic blast that starts out as a gentle ballad about singer Ronnie Van Zant leaving his love behind for freedom before gradually turning into a jaunty hard rock anthem. Put this classic on, get out a lighter, and wave it in the air.
1 "American Pie" by Don McLean (1971)
No American song will tear into your soul better than Don McLean's "American Pie". The New York singer-songwriter has had a good career, but nothing he created came close to his masterpiece. It's the powerful lyrics that stand out over an easy beat as McLean's narrator tells the heartbreaking story about the day the music died and how the world as he knew it was changed forever when he read about the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Although a mournful tune, it's one that makes you feel so proud to be alive in America. If you can listen to it without crying, you're better than me.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Classic Album Perfectly Matches Your Vibe? Rumours · Dark Side · Purple Rain · Nevermind
Eight specific questions: what you walk out of a record shop holding, where you do your best listening, what you do with a song you love, how you behave the week something ends. Answer honestly and we will tell you which of the four biggest records ever made has been describing you this whole time.
🪞Rumours(1977)
🔺Dark Side(1973)
🏍️Purple Rain(1984)
🌊Nevermind(1991)
01
What do you walk out of a record shop holding? You went in for one thing. You never leave with one thing.
02
What do you do the week a relationship ends? Rumours exists because five people all did this at once.
03
What is playing in your car on the way home? The twenty minutes nobody else gets a vote on.
04
How do you behave in an argument with a friend? Be honest. Somebody is reading this over your shoulder.
05
Where do you stand when the lights go down at a gig? Everybody has a spot and nobody ever changes it.
06
Which film do you put on when you cannot sleep? The one you have seen so often it works as a nightlight.
07
What do you do with a song you have fallen for? The first forty-eight hours tell you everything.
08
What do you want a great record to do to you? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your album.
Side A, Track One Your Album Is…
Nevermind turned thirty-five last month and the arguments started up again immediately, which is what these four records do. Here is yours, what it says about you, and the case for it being the best album on the list.
Rumours
You are the beautiful disaster who keeps everybody together anyway. Rumours was made by five people who were all breaking up with each other in the same room and refusing to stop working, and it came out sounding like the sunniest record of the decade.
- You process everything out loud, in company, and your friends know far more than they should.
- It won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammys and has sold somewhere past forty million copies since.
- Daisy Jones & The Six was built almost entirely on this era, which is how you know the drama still sells.
- Your risk is the band's risk, which is mistaking the chaos for the thing that makes you good.
Dark Side of the Moon
You are the one who went quiet and came back with a theory. Dark Side is an album about time, money, pressure and losing your mind, built so carefully that it still sounds like it was finished yesterday.
- You need silence and a long walk before you can tell anybody what you think.
- It spent well over nine hundred weeks on the Billboard 200, a run no other album has come close to.
- The Wizard of Oz sync myth has outlived several generations of stoned students and refuses to die.
- You can overthink a thing until it stops being fun, and the people around you notice before you do.
Purple Rain
You are the main character and you have never pretended otherwise. Purple Rain is an album, a film and a complete personality delivered at once, by somebody who decided he was going to be the most interesting person alive and then simply was.
- You walk into a room and adjust it, and you would rather be talked about than ignored.
- Prince won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score in 1985, and nobody has won it since.
- The film is a genuinely strange piece of work, and the title track live is still the high-water mark.
- Your weakness is needing the audience, which is fine until the night nobody turns up.
Nevermind
You want it on your own terms or not at all. Nevermind is the record that dragged the underground into the middle of the mainstream and then spent the rest of its life uncomfortable about having done it.
- You are suspicious of anything everybody agrees on, including the things you loved first.
- It knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the Billboard 200 in January 1992 and changed what radio sounded like.
- It turned thirty-five in September, and the reissue arguments have been running ever since.
- Your flaw is that liking something popular feels like losing, and you miss good records that way.
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