This is it. The biggest of the big time. You’ve seen the top 10 singers, you’ve debated the best bands, you’ve scripted rants in your head that we only have to wait a short while before they show up in our inbox.
That’s one of the most enjoyable aspect of music. It’s about more than just listening to it or lip-syncing the words in front of the bathroom mirror. Nailing the dance moves can be satisfying and perusing the liner notes of your favorite albums can prove a riveting read but where music really pays off? The debates!
That said, we don’t like to leave these matters solely up to opinion. So, we’ve run the numbers. First, we looked at some of the bestselling artists of all time, then we took what we feel is the most significant song from their biggest album. Agen Sbobet That’s what we’re here for, so sit back, relax, make sure you have your own opinions on hand to let us know just how wrong you think we are, and check out the top 10 songs of all time.
10 U2 – With or Without You
We warned you. We aren’t messing around with this list. Too much is at stake! Which is why, despite being the lead single off U2’s 1987 monster album The Joshua Tree, “With or Without You” appears at the bottom.
The album itself is a stone-cold, certified classic, selling an eye-watering 25 million copies worldwide, storming charts all over the globe, being named by the BBC as the defining album of the ‘eighties ’80s, and confirming the Irish band as superstars. Simply put, albums don’t come much bigger.
The song itself, which became the band’s first US 1, is big. Bigger than big. If E.T. landed tomorrow with an unquenchable thirst to understand Earth’s culture, you could probably use this song as the blueprint for stadium rock. It’s U2 in distilled form, with Bono switching between his distinctive croon and his equally distinctive wail at will, all the while delivering a particularly compelling lyric about, what else, a complicated love story. The band is in widescreen mode, filling your eardrums, whatever room you happen to be in and probably the horizon with that deceptively simple staccato style.
9 Elton John – Bennie and the Jets
Streams (Spotify): 395.8 Million
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is, without a doubt, Elton John’s biggest and best album, with over 31 million units sold. This is why his second Billboard Hot 100 1 comes in at 9.
The album is a Grammy Hall of Fame member since 2003, and includes such singles as “Candle in the Wind” and “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” but we opted to highlight “Bennie and the Jets”. It’s a big glittery slab of glam-rock as translated through the prism that is Elton John. The song in anyone else’s hands would come off as silly and negligible. But not when Sir Elton delivers its words. Its commercial popularity is backed by industry-wide respect, with Axl Rose name-checking it as a key inspiration, and everyone from Lady Gaga to A Tribe Called Quest covering or sampling it. Not bad for a song that long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin claimed was inspired by Orwellian science-fiction and a drug-fueled viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey. No, really.
8 The Rolling Stones – Paint It, Black
Streams (Spotify): 980 Million
Question 1: Are the Rolling Stones the world’s greatest singles band? It seems disrespectful to even pose the question of a band that have to their name such classic LPs as Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street and Let it Bleed, but when you consider the success enjoyed by their compilations, perhaps it’s not such a baseless question after all. Their first collection, 1971’s Hot Rocks 1964-1971, is their biggest seller and covers everything from “Brown Sugar” to “Sympathy for the Devil”. But even among such singles royalty, “Paint It, Black” stands out.
Question 2: Did Charlie Watt ever sound better than this? Almost certainly not. The song gallops and rattles along as Mick Jagger implores the world to join him in his misery. The result is an odd yet distinct separation in tone between the instrumentation and vocals. The song is ubiquitous, cropping up everywhere from Full Metal Jacket to Westworld, which features Ramin Djawadi’s breathtaking instrumental reimagining of the song.
7 Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven
Streams (Spotify): 870.6 Million
Led Zeppelin are a band that trades on their mystique almost as much as their music. From the Olympian—and strongly refuted—tales committed to print in the salacious (and very addictive) 1985 book, Hammer of the Gods to the frequent and adoring references to them in film and TV, including Wayne’s World, Almost Famous and, of course, This is Spinal Tap, they cast a huge shadow.
All that hype started in earnest with the release of their fourth album, IV, or Four Symbols. It was produced by guitarist Jimmy Page and bears a cover with no name or signifier other than a mystic symbol to represent each band member. The inscrutability was deliberate, with the band inviting criticism from the music cognoscenti whose reception of the band had been lukewarm at best. This time round, however, the critics would have to take notice; Page and co. knew they had a masterpiece on their hands.
“Stairway” is a perfect illustration of what made the band so irresistible in their early days. John Paul Jones’ keyboard and bass lines would become more of a fixture on subsequent albums, but this is Page and singer Robert Plant at their most regal. The song is effectively split into two parts; the first is a folksy, mystical ode to an unnamed wise woman, while the second part, ushered in by an unusually restrained drum fill by John Bonham, sees Plant transition from cosmic narrator to winking collaborator before Page blows the roof off the thing. The scourge of guitar teachers and music-instrument staff everywhere, this song is part of the firmament of rock music.
6 Pink Floyd – Money
Streams (Spotify): 448.8 Million
Dark Side of the Moon is the very definition of a classic album, shipping a barely believable 50 million copies, making it the bestselling album of the ’70s. It is the reason high fidelity sound systems exist.
“Money”, the album’s lead single, is an astonishing piece of work—a commentary on insatiable greed set to a six-minute funk workout, complete with looped sound effects, guitar lines and interviews with the band’s crew and staff. On paper it sounds, at best, baffling; at worst, unlistenable. But it works, even reaching pop-music levels of approachability. “Come in,” it seems to say to its listeners. “Welcome to the high life, don’t worry about all that chaos in the background, just groove out. It’s just ‘Money’, baby.”