Vh1's Top 100 Hard Rock Songs of All Time

Hmm, I've always thought that there's sort of a line between rock and metal, and the heavier you go on that line towards metal the harder your rock was. At about the halfway point, the rock turns into hard rock, and anything past that is hard rock. That includes grunge and metal, but not punk.

Personally I don't trust wiki with music classification. I prefer sites like allmusic.com.

In my opinion, metal is more of a parallell genre of hard rock. Early on they were pretty much two words for the same stuff, but metal developed into something else that's very easy to distinguish from hard rock. Grunge, I'd say, is the subgenre of the hard rock. It sounds much more like hard rock than most metal does. 

Atrocious list. But I'm not really surprised (except maybe by my own reaction... I knew it would be this way so I shouldn't be upset).

It's mostly just a list of hits, which shows how little effort these people really put into the making of it. Yes, hits can be "genre defining" or whatever, but there are many, many choices that could have been omitted. If the authors actually bothered listening thoroughly to the albums the hits are on, instead of just looking at the videos in their archives, the list could have been much better. There's too much stuff in there that isn't particularly interesting, neither in terms of quality nor historical significance.

Their definition of hard rock is also questionable. So Green Day are hard rock now, are they? The choice of song would be appropriate in the context, but the band itself isn't. There are many more examples of this type of "faulty inclusion" (for lack of a better term). They've thrown in too much punk and metal in the list, and that alone shatters its credibility, even if one doesn't go into detail looking at the choice of songs. The inclusion of punk and metal would have been acceptable if the people responsible strived to make a "100 greatest rock songs" list, however the title says they've been focusing specifically on the hard rock subgenre, rendering non-hard rock bands/songs inappropriate for inclusion.

If allmusic or some decent paper did a list like this, it would probably be better. VH1 in general is not worth bothering with, much less any kind of "greatest" list they turn out.

[/rant]


Edited by Philéas - January 06 2009 at 13:51

manofmystery wrote: how come everyone seems to like Nirvana's version of More Than A Feeling better than Boston's?

First - Hard Rock Songs. And just as non-prog groups can have a prog song in their repertoire, punk, grunge, heck even country bands can have a hard rock song.
Two - with the change in generations, why would it be surprising that GnR's Welcome to the Jungle surpassed Smoke on the Water ? Time will tell which one ends up on top, or gets passed over by another song.
And at the moment, I hear more guitar players playing that riff than Smoke on the Water.
And as with all these lamenting threads (oh my, they got it quite wrong from what me & my friend (no "s") know to be true), it seems like the majority opinion, which includes the unwashed hoi polloi who are not proggers, is dismissed.
The list seems quite accurate if you were to do a poll among hard rock music fans, as opposed to say , corporate country fans.
And while arguements could be made as to why these songs are on, well ... they do merit inclusion, if only in the debate, eh.

King By-Tor wrote: A Person wrote: I wouldn't have considered all of those bands as hard rock, but even if I did I wouldn't be able to take any list seriously that puts Blue Öyster Cult only 55th. AMEN BROTHA!! Black Blade for #1!!

YES!!!!!!

King By-Tor wrote: That really is a shot to the heart. I really, honestly think that you would be the one to blame (darling).

That really is a shot to the heart. I really, honestly think that you would be the one to blame (darling).

Why are the White Stripes on this list at all. A better question is, why so low?

And I don't think they could have picked a worse song for #1. Really, that thing is atrocious.

how come everyone seems to like Nirvana's version of More Than A Feeling better than Boston's?