Music: Each Band's/Artist's Most Iconic Song

Neutrinos

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Sep 23, 2016
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Some are obvious:

Led Zeppelin
Stairway To Heaven

The Eagles
Hotel California

Steppenwolf
Born To Be Wild

Nirvana
Smells Like Teen Spirit

Weezer
Say It Ain't So


While others not so much:

Aerosmith
Dream On or Sweet Emotion?

The Guess Who
American Woman or These Eyes?

The Beatles
Yesterday? Hey Jude? Let It Be? I Want To Hold Your Hand?

The Beach Boys
Good Vibrations? I Get Around? California Girls? God Only Knows?

Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody or We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions?
 
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Hammettf2b

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Jul 9, 2012
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So California
Metallica
Enter Sandman

Green Day
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

Jimi Hendrix
Purple Haze

John Lennon
Imagine

Michael Jackson
Billie Jean

The Eagles
Hotel California

Bruce Springsteen
Born To Run
 

Babe Ruth

Proud member of the precariat working class.
Feb 2, 2016
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cool thread..

My opinion, not Soundgarden's best track, but their biggest: Black Hole Sun.
 
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NyQuil

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Jan 5, 2005
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Some are obvious:

Weezer
Say It Ain't So

While I would be inclined to agree, a lot of folks associate Buddy Holly more strongly with Weezer.

Neutrinos said:
Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody or We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions?

I would have said We Are The Champions until the movie Wayne's World.

Neutrinos said:
Aerosmith
Dream On or Sweet Emotion?

Sweet Emotion.

I'd say something like Cryin' or Walk This Way might have a shot but probably not.

The former because of the similar sounding Crazy and Amazing and the latter because of the association with Run DMC.

A lot of younger people I know don't even recognize that Dream On is Aerosmith.

Neutrinos said:
The Guess Who
American Woman or These Eyes?

American Woman is pretty obvious I think.
 

Neutrinos

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Sep 23, 2016
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While I would be inclined to agree, a lot of folks associate Buddy Holly more strongly with Weezer.



I would have said We Are The Champions until the movie Wayne's World.



Sweet Emotion.

A lot of younger people I know don't even recognize that Dream On is Aerosmith.



American Woman is pretty obvious I think.

I think Say It Ain't So reached a level that Buddy Holly simply didn't

On Weezer's official YouTube channel, Say It Ain't So has been viewed 89 million times, Buddy Holly 47 million


Exactly how many younger people do you know? Unless it's in the hundreds of thousands, I'm not sure it can be used as a sound argument

On Aerosmith's official YouTube channel, Sweet Emotion has been viewed 23 million times, while Dream On has 22 million

Aersosmith's Crazy video has been viewed 498 million times! So maybe that's the right answer?


I'd lean towards American Woman as well
 

Neutrinos

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Sep 23, 2016
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Wait, really??? I'm sure you've heard it before. Its pretty damn popular and a staple of his.



Nope, had never heard it before today

I went and checked it out on YouTube before I responded to your earlier comment
 

Hammettf2b

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I think Say It Ain't So reached a level that Buddy Holly simply didn't

On Weezer's official YouTube channel, Say It Ain't So has been viewed 89 million times, Buddy Holly 47 million


Exactly how many younger people do you know? Unless it's in the hundreds of thousands, I'm not sure it can be used as a sound argument

On Aerosmith's official YouTube channel, Sweet Emotion has been viewed 23 million times, while Dream On has 22 million

Aersosmith's Crazy video has been viewed 498 million times! So maybe that's the right answer?


I'd lean towards American Woman as well
I would caution on using youtube views as a point of reference of how popular these older songs are/were.
 

Pinkfloyd

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Oct 29, 2006
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I'm not so sure about that

Wish You Were Here, Comfortable Numb, and Another Brick In The Wall would all be contenders

The reason why I would say that it is would be because it was their first US hit on their most successful album that was the peak of the band's creativity.
 

Hostile Offer

Artist formerly known as Eagle Peninsula
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The reason why I would say that it is would be because it was their first US hit on their most successful album that was the peak of the band's creativity.

I think the peak of the band's creativity came well after that but that's just me. To me there's really no competition for their most iconic song; it's Comfortably Numb. That guitar solo man.
 

Pinkfloyd

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I think the peak of the band's creativity came well after that but that's just me. To me there's really no competition for their most iconic song; it's Comfortably Numb. That guitar solo man.

Everything past Dark Side of the Moon became more and more of a Roger Waters band rather than the band. Comfortably Numb is a hell of a song but the band's greatest success is Dark Side of the Moon and Money was its biggest hit. I feel iconic songs tend to go to what is the most successful. Money is what made the band as big as they were.
 

Hostile Offer

Artist formerly known as Eagle Peninsula
Jun 17, 2017
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Everything past Dark Side of the Moon became more and more of a Roger Waters band rather than the band. Comfortably Numb is a hell of a song but the band's greatest success is Dark Side of the Moon and Money was its biggest hit. I feel iconic songs tend to go to what is the most successful. Money is what made the band as big as they were.

Funnily enough, IMO the Roger Waters dominated Floyd was the peak of the band's (if you at that point want to call it that) creativity. When people talk about Floyd's greatest songs, I've noticed Money rarely comes up in the discussion. It was one of the band's biggest hits but it's not necessarily a defining Floyd song per se, which I think the word "iconic" strongly refers to.
 

NyQuil

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Jan 5, 2005
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Ottawa, ON
I think Say It Ain't So reached a level that Buddy Holly simply didn't

On Weezer's official YouTube channel, Say It Ain't So has been viewed 89 million times, Buddy Holly 47 million


Exactly how many younger people do you know? Unless it's in the hundreds of thousands, I'm not sure it can be used as a sound argument

On Aerosmith's official YouTube channel, Sweet Emotion has been viewed 23 million times, while Dream On has 22 million

Aersosmith's Crazy video has been viewed 498 million times! So maybe that's the right answer?


I'd lean towards American Woman as well

People don’t watch the Crazy video for Aerosmith.
 
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Pinkfloyd

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Funnily enough, IMO the Roger Waters dominated Floyd was the peak of the band's (if you at that point want to call it that) creativity. When people talk about Floyd's greatest songs, I've noticed Money rarely comes up in the discussion. It was one of the band's biggest hits but it's not necessarily a defining Floyd song per se, which I think the word "iconic" strongly refers to.

I don't see a good argument to say that Money isn't a defining Floyd song considering that it's the song that got them big in the states, is their biggest hit on their most successful album by a long shot, and is an incredibly creative piece of music. Money is the reason why they went from big to superstar big and one of the best of all time. They followed it up with some great pieces of music and even if those songs can be argued as most popular, Money is their biggest claim to fame and success.
 

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