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- Jan 11
- 3 min read
I love making lists, always have, if there's a list-able subject, I will give it a go.
My Spotify page is littered with dozens of "introduction" playlists of my favourite artists, as well as the best singles for each year from 1963 to 1983 that made the UK top 50, and that's just scratching the surface.
I attempted a "Top 100 Singles Of All Time" a while back, which ballooned to 200 pretty quickly, which indicates how difficult it is to prune your favourite songs down to the essentials.
So, I thought I would try the top 100 songs, not just singles, but every song ever. There had to be some limits, as you could make an argument that "all time" must include all the fantastic songs written throughout the whole of the 20th century (and before), show tunes, jazz standards, evergreen ballads, but I had to draw some lines in the sand.
So I tried to limit it to songs that have been made famous in my lifetime, so from about 1955 and the birth of rock'n'roll, to the present day, and it generally focusses on rock, pop and other popular genres that infect the charts or the streaming services.
It wasn't a scientific process, from a musicologists point of view, so it isn't looking at revolutionary chord sequences or breathtaking arrangements, it's simply a list of songs I really, really like.
I tried hard not to include songs that I might think should be in there, to please others, so it is a very personal list. But even so, there are a good few that would probably make the majority of lists, such as "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" (Simon & Garfunkel), "Born To Run" (Bruce Springsteen), and "Baba O'Riley" (The Who), but some wild cards crept in that would probably be unique to this particular list, such as "Beasley Street" (John Cooper Clarke), and "10000000 Miles" by Andy White, who has only 1859 monthly listeners on Spotify at the moment.
I discarded the rule to say only one song per artist, so I include several from acts such as The Beatles, Jethro Tull, Genesis, Joni Mitchell and others.
Prize for the most obscure goes to "Who Is Innocent" by new wave band The Out, who have a mere 32 monthly listeners, fewer even than my bands!
I first compiled the list in June 2024, and since that time I have been forced to add a handful of songs I had initially overlooked, which of course means I have to trawl through the list to find one to take out - not an easy task!
A % breakdown reveals that the vast majority of the list spans my favourite decades, namely the 1960's, 70's & 80's.
1960's: 19%
1970's: 50%
1980's: 20%
1990's: 6%
2000's: 4%
2010's: 1%
Does this mean there's no great music being made in the modern era? I guess not, but I pretty much zoned out of listening to "new" music towards the end of the 80's, with bands like The Smiths and The Stone Roses signalling the end of my listening habits, with a few exceptions.
Anyway, I had tremendous fun compiling the list, maybe you could do one of your own?
Here is the link to my Spotify playlist of the "Top 100 Songs Of All Time"
