Rock legends from the 70s with names start with S- either last name or band name. Originally I was going to include musicians whose first name starts with s on this list. That's why Stevie Wonder is here. However once you put the great Stevie Wonder on a list you- or at least I- don't take him off. Enjoy some memories- for those of you old enough- and some nostalgia.
Since we are only days away from 2026- gasp!- I would like to follow up on some of the greatest songs of that year. I'm going to share videos of the Top 51 songs- how the heck did Eddie Murphy's "Party All The Time" finish #7 of the year end chart? This first blog is the best of the other 49 songs from this year end countdown. There were just so many great songs in 1986. Why 51 songs, because I usually have 17 songs on each blog. Special thanks to Billboard and Wikipedia for the information.
The best of the rest and many of these songs are more worthy of the #7 spot than "Party All The Time":
The number in parenthesis is where the sogn ranked on the 1986 Billboard year end charts. 99) Toto "I'll Be Over You":
96) Thompson Twins "King For A Day":
95) Force M.D.'s "Tender Love":
93) Starpoint "Object Of My Desire":
92) Paul McCartney "Spies Like Us":
91) Moody Blues "Your Wildest Dreams":
90) Anita Baker "Sweet Love":
89) RUN-D.M.C. featuring Aerosmith "Walk This Way":
This will eventually be a twenty blog series with the best of the best of hair metal music. The first 18 blogs will be covering the entire breadth of hair metal and then the final 2 blogs will be Greatest Hits blogs.
Obviously there's a great deal of debate about what is and isn't hair metal. I looked at Ranker's Top Three Hair Metal bands and it's 1) Van Halen 2) Guns N' Roses and 3) Def Leppard. I'd say that none of those were hair metal bands. Other bands not Hair Metal Bands include Metallica, Megadeth, The Scorpions
Obviously there will never be consensus on who is and who isn't Hair Metal bands. But I suggest the best Hair Metal bands are Warrant, Ratt, Poison, Whitesnake, Skid Row and Motley Crue. There are also some bads that I would consider Hair Metal adjacent, bands such as Bon Jovi, Cinderella and Firehouse.
Also recently I have discovered some hair metal bands that I wasn't really aware of or knew at all back in the day. Bands such as Blue Murder, Savatage, FM and Leatherwolf. Also one of my favorite new unknown, at least to me, bands is the Hair Metal adjacent Thunder.
The main timeframe I'll be using is roughly 1983 to 1991 with a few outliers thrown in. Who knows how long Hair Metal would have been around, but in 1991 Grunge steamrolled Hair Metal back to obscurity. Here are roughly the 300 best hair metal songs. As always I welcome criticisms, compliments and suggestions to make these lists better.
18) Motley Crue "Starry Eyes":
19) Motley Crue "Kickstart My Heart":
20) Bon Jovi "Let It Rock":
21) Bon Jovi "Edge of A Broken Heart":
22) Poison "I Want Action":
23) Cinderella "Shake Me":
24) Skid Row "Sweet Little Sister":
25) Warrant "Down Boys":
A Dee Snider live version. 26) Twisted Sister "I Wanna Rock":
27) Ratt "Loving You Is A Dirty Job":
28) Ratt "Nobody Rides For Free":
Probably the saddest video in the hair metal genre. 29) Faster Pussycat "House of Pain":
These are the Top 50 CDs of 2023 as according to Classic Rock magazine. Many of these bands or albums I've never heard of, obviously that doesn't mean they aren't good. I actually own only a few of these CDs. What I'm going to do is to add the song that Classic Rock picked for each CD. If I like that song I'll add another song to the blog. I'll do that until I run out of songs I like, up to 5 songs. I like rock music so it's quite likely I will like a lot of the songs from these 50 CDs. I have picked most of the songs to be played due to each song's ranking on iTunes.
Other than the Classic Rock rankings I would have had no clue this CD, "Another Door, even existed. 46) Ann Wilson & Tripsitter "Another Door":
"Rain of Hell":
"Ruler of The Night/ Love Alive":
From the CD "Love, Death and In Between". 45) DeWolff "Night Train":
"Rosita":
"Will O' The Wisp":
"Counterfeit Love":
Wow, I'm really loving this CD "Can't Die, Won't Die". That's just from the songs I've heard because of the Classic Rock countdown. 44) Black Spiders "Can't Die, Won't Die":
"Destroyer":
Black Spiders "Alright Alright Alright":
Black Spiders "End of the World":
"It Is What It Is":
From the Royal Thunder CD "Rebuilding The Mountain". 43) "The Knife":
"Fade":
"Nowhere- Now Here":
From the Yes CD "Mirror To The Sky". 42) All Connected":
This will eventually be a twenty blog series with the best of the best of hair metal music. The first 18 blogs will be covering the entire breadth of hair metal and then the final 2 blogs will be Greatest Hits blogs.
Obviously there's a great deal of debate about what is and isn't hair metal. I looked at Ranker's Top Three Hair Metal bands and it's 1) Van Halen 2) Guns N' Roses and 3) Def Leppard. I would say that none of those were hair metal bands. Other bands not Hair Metal Bands include Metallica, Megadeth, The Scorpions
Obviously there will never be consensus on who is and who isn't Hair Metal bands. But I suggest the best Hair Metal bands are Warrant, Ratt, Poison, Whitesnake, Skid Row and Motley Crue. There are also some bads that I would consider Hair Metal adjacent, bands such as Bon Jovi, Cinderella and Firehouse.
Also recently I have discovered some hair metal bands that I wasn't really aware of or knew at all back in the day. Bands such as Blue Murder, Savatage, FM and Leatherwolf. Also one of my favorite new unknown, at least to me, bands is the Hair Metal adjacent Thunder.
The main timeframe I'll be using is roughly 1983 to 1991 with a few outliers thrown in. Who knows how long Hair Metal would have been around, but in 1991 Grunge steamrolled Hair Metal back to obscurity. Here are roughly the 300 best hair metal songs. As always I welcome criticisms, compliments and suggestions to make these lists better.
It's again about time to relive that great time of the early to mid 80s of New Wave music. New Wave is a genre that has quirky people, quairly lyrics and quirky music. It doesn't work all the time, but when it work at it's best the songs are great.
What exactly is/ was New Wave music. Well two things New Wave typically is energetic and fun. New Wave never took itself too seriously. The lyrics weren't serious. New Wave is basically just fun upbeat music to dance to. Who were some of the best New Wave musicians? The Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode, The Cure, New Order, Howard Jones and many others have to be considered the best New Wave bands.
You may see this and wonder why I didn't include U2 and The Police- both of who many lumped in with the New Wave movement. However both bands, especially The Police, feel like old fashioned rock bands to me. Other bands that were lumped in with New Wave, that I don't really consider New Wave, include The Talking Heads, Men At Work, Elvis Costello, The Go-Go's, The Eurythmics and David Bowie. Duran Duran was lumped in with the New Wave crowd and I'm not sure they are truly a New Wave band.
103) The Cure "Lovesong":
104) Joy Division "Love Will Tear Us Apart":
105) Fun Boy Three "Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum":
106) Tears For Fears "Mad World":
107) Peter Schilling "Major Tom (Coming Home)":
108) Depeche Mode "Master and Servant":
109) Berlin "The Metro":
110) Wall of Voodoo "Mexican Radio":
111) The Plimsouls "A Million Miles Away":
112) The English Beat "Mirror In The Bathroom":
113) The Human League "Mirror Man":
114) Dollar "Mirror Mirror (Mon Amour)":
115) The Flying Lizards "Money (That's What I Want):
It only took me thirteen months to finish this blog.
I'm not sure how accurate this is, but according to Wikipedia all of these people were born on October 2nd. I looked for other musicians with birthdays in October, but these were the five best musicians.
This song is so deservedly a classic. He seems to capture every emotion and it's a shot of pure unadulterated nostalgia. Don McLean was born on October 2nd, 1945. These next four songs are all by Don McLean. 18) American Pie":
19) "Crying":
20) "American Boys":
21) "Castles In The Air":
Genesis' Mike Rutherford was born on October 2nd, 1950. He's most well known for his work with Genesis, these next ten songs are all Genesis songs.
22) "Follow You Follow Me":
This song was after Phil Collins left the band to just Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks. This is from Genesis' last studio CD "Calling All Stations". This CD features Ray Wilson on vocals. 23) "Calling All Stations":
24) "Land of Confusion":
25) "Turn It On Again":
26) "Mama":
27) "Misunderstanding":
28) "Illegal Alien":
29) "Abacab":
30) "Invisible Touch":
31) "That's All":
32) Mike Rutherford "Halfway There":
These next three songs are all by Mike and the Mechanic 33) "Living Years":
34) "Silent Running":
35) "All I Need Is A Miracle":
Tiffany was born on October 2nd, 1971. These next five songs are by Tiffany. 36) "I Think We're Alone Now":
