Top 10 long – exhausting, at times -- but ultimately great songs

1.     Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin

2.     Rosalita, Bruce Springsteen

3.     Hey Jude, The Beatles

4.     Suite Judy Blue Eyes, Crosby, Stills and Nash

5.     Hotel California, The Eagles

6.     Livin’ for the City, Stevie Wonder

7.     Whole Lotta Love, Led Zeppelin

8.     Angry Eyes, Loggins and Messina

9.     Move on Up, Curtis Mayfield

10.                        Hot Lanta/In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Allman Brothers

 

Long songs, longer list. And there are more great ones, and we put the Allmans 10^th, just to be fair; those two songs could be 1 and 2 in our book.

 

This list could be re-sequenced many ways and we’d be fine with that. The two on here that you may be scratching your head about our #8 and 9. If one of the judges of a great long song are a smile when the song begins, as opposed to dread (which, we admit, does sometimes hit us with the opening vocals of Hey Jude), then Angry Eyes is a great song. And it just gets better, with alternating vocals, a great sax solo, a fantastic resolution and more.

As for Curtis’ Move On Up, some of you may remember the seminal Groove Tube, which, to us, was the precursor to Saturday Night Live, and not just because it starred Chevy Chase. Well, Move On Up was the music behind the hilarious opening piece. It has one of the greatest extended drum and percussion solos of all time, with great bass and horns, and better yet, it is also a brilliant song about empowerment, as Curtis was known for.

Comments

[Michael Boggs]

I could go on and on here -- Dylan's "Brownsville Girl" "Hurricane" "Tangled Up in Blue" Neil Young's "Down By the River" "Cowgirl in the Sand" "Cortez the Killer" Velvet Underground's "Heroin", Boz Scaggs "Loan Me a Dime" (w/ Duane Allman), CCR's "Heard it Through the Grapevine", Derek & Dominoes "Layla" and so on.

[Bob Hegarty]

What about the best long song ever...Inagaddadavida by Iron Butterfly.(Put the hyphens in wherever you think they belong).