‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ – Pink Floyd

When looking back on the history of prog rock, Pink Floyd always stood out like a sore thumb. They weren’t exactly the same theatrical bands that Yes or Genesis were, but when listening to their episodic tunes, there was always a hook to hold onto that was hard to come by in the age of mindless shredding. The songs were long, but they had heart, and after Dark Side of the Moon, they had started to make tunes that hit like an emotional wrecking ball.

While Wish You Were Here holds up better as a complete album, ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ should be considered the band’s true crowning achievement. Other albums may be better as a whole, but after spending years away from their leader, Syd Barrett, both parts of the song seem to capture everything a tribute song should be, whether that’s talking about the tragedy of losing him to his own mind to remembering all the good times that they shared together back in the 1960s.

The rest of the album is absolutely fantastic, but looking at the record objectively, ‘Shine On’ might be one of the few songs that is almost too good to have anything else follow it. This is the same album that has the title track and ‘Welcome to the Machine’, and yet even those classics can’t hold a candle to this.

‘Born to Run’ – Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen didn’t start out his career trying to be yet another singer-songwriter. He was a firm believer in the church of rock and roll, and when putting together the E Street Band, he was creating musical disciples one instrument at a time until he had what he was looking for. And when listening to Born to Run, he had finally hit on his testimony that could convert any sceptic into a believer in one song.

The entire album is a whirlwind trip to the corners of New Jersey, but the title track really is the peak of The Boss’s powers in many respects. The wall of sound that hits you from the very beginning is everything a great rock song should be, and when listening to a story of two nowhere kids trying to escape their mundane little town, the whole tune feels like a rock and roll opera taking place over the span of five minutes before the band crashes to a halt.

While the rest of the album doesn’t exactly have the happiest ending for our heroes, the longevity of ‘Born to Run’ has more to do with the story than any single instrument. The song might sound dated with that Phil Spector-style wall of sound, but no generation is ever going to forget the feeling of being young and wanting to find something better on the horizon than what your parents had.

‘Gloria’ – Patti Smith

By the time that Patti Smith began making music, punk rock didn’t really have a name yet. In fact, Smith doesn’t really fit any of the punk credentials that are thrust upon her, either, aside from the fact that she was making music that didn’t necessarily need an expert level of musical theory. She was simply an artist who sang from the heart whenever she stepped onstage, and no one was going to question her from the first line that came out of her mouth on record.

While there were many rock acts going against the grain by 1975, Smith’s cover of Them’s ‘Gloria’ feels more like a religious experience every single time it comes on. Smith was familiar with what rock and roll could do to people, but what she was doing matched Lou Reed’s level of intensity while still being able to have a heart behind it all, despite claiming that Jesus never died for her sins.

It was a bold way for anyone to start their career, but Smith’s lyrics and persona helped remind everyone of what they were in rock and roll for in the first place. Anyone could have strapped on a guitar for the money, fame and adulation, but if you didn’t have the passion that Smith did, it was time for them to go back to the drawing board, take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask themselves if they were really in the game for the right reasons.

‘Kashmir’ – Led Zeppelin

The entire ethos behind hard rock may as well be called ‘the Gospel according to Led Zeppelin’. As much as Jimmy Page loved making experiments every time he went into the studio, his knack for making one great riff after another is the reason why their music is so revered to this day. The band could have countless riffs that will be playing a century later, but in the year of Physical Graffiti, there was no sense in anyone competing with what ‘Kashmir’ did over its crushing eight minutes.

Zeppelin were never the kind to release singles, but most classic rock stations are still more than happy with this kind of tune. Compared to the bluesy foundation they had started with, Page had gone well beyond the standard he had set for himself with ‘Stairway to Heaven’. The riff itself is already a monster, but bringing in the string sections felt like listening to the hard rock version of a classical movement, all while John Bonham anchors everything to the ground with every drum hit.

And the beauty behind a song like this comes from the one thing that’s missing: a guitar solo. Any band like Zeppelin would have put the guitar front and centre throughout the tune, but their ability to practise restraint whenever they played is a testament to what they looked for in music. They wanted to make songs that packed a punch no matter what instrument was playing, and a song like this will be played in the years to come, the same way that people studied old classical pieces.

‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – Queen

For all the songs on this list, it’s easy to see some of them becoming a bit stale for some subsects of music fans. Not everyone is going to be a fan of heartland rock, or might not be able to digest something that goes on for more than ten minutes, and you can’t really fault them for that, either. It’s the way that the next generations are brought up, and yet there’s hardly any generation since 1975 that has managed to reach the kind of pinnacle Queen did when making ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

Aside from being a technical marvel from the time, Freddie Mercury packed in every single grandiose idea that rock and roll ever had into one song. Although a song like this could have easily come up as musically incoherent for its dramatic changes, everything seems to make sense in context, from going to that beautiful piano ballad to those mountains of vocal harmonies in the operatic section before giving way to one of the greatest guitar riffs the decade ever spat out.

Whether it was those listening to it back in the day, those who latched onto it watching Wayne’s World and beyond, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ represents more than a rock and roll masterpiece these days. This wasn’t merely a rock and roll song anymore. This was documented proof of what musicians could do if they had the right idea, and it was up to the rest of the world to try and reach anywhere close to that.