The Top Fifteen Historical Pop/Rock Songs of All Time

As compiled by Yours Truly, that is

I am a huge fan of Rick Beato and his YouTube channel(s). If you don’t know who he is, Rick Beato is a former musician/producer/college professor whose YouTube channel is both a venue for him to teach people about the music he loves but also a means of promoting his other endeavors. (Besides being a wonderful and informative channel, he is also a huge Beatles fan, as am I. Great minds think alike.) I can’t recommend it enough.

One of the things Rick likes to do is “Top Ten” lists of best rock ballads, guitar solos and the like. In imitation, I one day became curious and wondered: what were the best rock or pop songs that are about an historical event or person? I had never give the question much thought, but as it combined two of my great loves, music and history, I decided to rack my brain and do some research. The result is what I believe are the best fifteen pop/rock songs that can be described accurately as historical.

What does “historical” mean you ask? Well, here are the criteria I used when selecting the songs:

1. The song has to refer to an event at least 10 years older than its release date, and if it refers to a person, at least ten years after they have been deceased. This is the minimum amount of time I think has to pass before something can be called “historic” (actually it should be closer to 100 years, but this is the historian in me speaking. If that were the criteria, there would only be six or seven songs on here.)

2. It commemorates an event or pays tribute to that person or event;

3. It must refer to real events that have occurred in that past, and cannot be completely or mostly fictional;

4. It cannot be a response to contemporary events (events that occurred within ten years of the release of the song) i.e., a protest songs, like Dylan’s “The Hurricane,” or Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

The other criteria are merely my musical tastes, and so are necessarily arbitrary. But what did you expect from a “top fifteen” list anyway?

So, without further ado, here are the top fifteen historical pop/rock songs of all time, according to moi.

15. “Candle in the Wind,” Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1974)

Comment: our first song on the list is historical only by the skin of its teeth, as Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 and the song was released in 1974. It pays tribute to an historical figure who died young, though Bernie Taupin has said in an interview that he wasn’t really a Marilyn Monroe fan growing up. He simply wanted to write a song about a famous person who died young and that it could have been about James Dean or other celebrities that died before their time. “Candle in the Wind” has become a bit cliched by being associated with Princess Diana and her death, but it is still a great song.

14. “Jack Ruby,” Deep Purple, Abandon (1998)

Comment: This song is not exactly historical in its lyrics, but it does reference the murderer of Lee Harvey Oswald, and is a cool song with a very different time signature. It makes the list by virtue of its music more than the lyrics, but fits the historical criteria (I’m counting it as a tribute—sue me).

13. “Pride (in the Name of Love),” U2, The Unforgettable Fire (1984)

Comment: This is another tribute song, this time to Martin Luther King Jr. The song is a good one, and its lyrics commemorate King and his message. The only chink in its armor is that it gets the hour of his assassination wrong: the song says “early morning April 4” but James Earl Ray assassinated King around 6:05pm on Thursday, April 4, 1968, in Memphis.

12. “Cortez the Killer,” Neil Young, Crazy Horse (1975)

Comment: Young’s song is an attack on the Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortes (1485-1547), the man who overthrew the Aztec Empire in the early sixteenth century. Cortes was indeed a brutal, hardened soldier, but Young’s lyrics give a romanticized version of the Aztecs (“Hate was just a legend / And war was never known”) whereas in reality the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice on a monumental scale, which is why subject Indian peoples allied with Cortes to defeat them. But this seven and a half minute song begins with an awesome three minute guitar solo, which is one reason why it makes the list. (Historical accuracy, you will note, was NOT among my criteria for a reason.)

11. “Buffalo Soldier,” Bob Marley & the Wailers, Confrontation (1983)

Comment: Bob Marley’s catchy tune about African American soldiers serving in the US Army in the 19^th century could be categorized as a protest song, but as history it isn’t very accurate. “The Buffalo Soldiers” fought in wars against Native Americans (who gave them the nickname) but weren’t “stolen from Africa” nor did they have much to do with Jamaica or San Juan as the song indicates. Still, they really existed, and the song is one of Marley’s most accessible to a non-reggae audience. Hence its place on the list.

10. “Vincent,” Don McLean, American Pie (1971)

Comment: For the first song in the top ten of my count down, we have the only artist with two songs in my top ten, Don McLean’s “Vincent,” whose balladeer talents inspired Roberta Flack’s song “Killing Me Softly.” “Vincent” is a sentimental, romantic homage to the painter Vincent Van Gogh, and makes reference to his mental instability and attempt at suicide. It has been covered by many artists (it was also a favorite of the rapper Tupac Shakur, who apparently loved it so much he had it played by his bedside as he lay dying in a Las Vegas hospital. Seriously.) Best of all, there are no egregious howlers in it, which make its a cut above the songs outside our top ten, and is a great example of McLean’s talent for lovely sad songs.

9. “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” U2, War (1983)

Comment: Okay, okay, so I am breaking my own rules—this actually is a protest song. My only justification for including it here is that its title and chorus refers to the 1972 “Bloody Sunday” massacre in Northern Ireland of Irish Catholics by British troops. The band has stated in interviews that they were not specifically talking only about violence against Catholics, and the lyrics are pretty generally a protest against the whole British occupation and not just that one event. But the title along with the song, which is almost perfect anthem of protest against sectarian violence, puts it in the top ten.

8. “Rooster,” Alice in Chains, Dirt (1992)

Comment: When I began compiling my list, I had a few songs in mind, but I admit I had to do a fair bit of research to find ten or more songs that something to do with history (according to my criteria). One song I had heard before but never realized what it was about was Alice in Chains’ “Rooster.” I had no idea the title and lyrics in this song referred to the nickname of lead singer Jerry Cantrell’s father when it first came out. Detailing his father’s sufferings in the Vietnam war, the lyrics are poignant (“They spit on me in my homeland”) but also defiant (“Here they come to snuff the rooster, oh yeah / You know he ain't gonna die”). I am not the biggest fan of grunge, but that style of music embodies a sort of moody defiance that fits the song perfectly. Combined with Cantrell’s vocals and well crafted guitar parts it makes this one of the ten best historical rock songs.

7. “American Pie,” Don McLean, American Pie (1971)

Comment: You knew it had to be on here. Don McLean’s inventive poetic history of rock n’ roll from the death of Buddy Holly and company to his own day in the early 1970s has to be one of the most overplayed songs in radio history, but there’s a reason for that. Its epic scale and wistful melancholy sound captures something important about the era makes the song rightfully beloved, and so it makes it into my top ten.

6. “The British Are Coming,” Weezer, Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014)

Comment: I admit I found this song from a Google search and had never heard a song by Weezer in my life before I heard this one. But it is one hell of a song musically speaking—the vocals, the guitar playing, the whole thing is just really good. As for the history, the lyrics are written from the perspective of the American colonists during the Revolution (hence “The British Are Coming”) but it is not clear to me if they are being ironic or not with their meaning—which just makes the song that much better.

5. “John Wesley Harding,” Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding (1967)

Comment: You had to figure folk inspired songs would feature prominently on this list, and specifically Bob Dylan’s. The misspelled name of a popular Western outlaw (it was John Wesley Hardin not Harding) gives us the title, and the lyrics accurately reflect Hardin’s reputation for affability (“for he was always known / To lend a helping hand”). Dylan’s harmonica blends with the drums and bass line that make the music equal to the task of supporting the lyrics, and this is why the song ranks in the top five for me.

4. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Comment: Most of these songs on the list pay tribute to or commemorate an historic event, but naturally the Beatles just went ahead and recreated an historic event in music. No sweat. Famously, John Lennon found a vintage poster from 1843 while shopping in London, which announced a show by the Mr. Kite and Mr. Henderson referenced in the song, a real performing act, to which the Beatles and George Martin set music redolent of a nineteenth century carnival. Perhaps only the Beatles could have produced such a unique and wonderful song.

3. “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” Billy Joel, Storm Front (1989)

Comment: If you know the story, Billy Joel wrote this song as a response to a young man’s assertion that nothing of any significance had happened since WWII. Written in an almost stream of consciousness style, Joel spits out one event or person after another intended to make the point that history has not yet ended (makes you wonder if he read Francis Fukuyama). Ironically, many of the events and people enumerated in the song are not really terribly significant—I doubt most people today would recognize who Walter Winchell was or what the “cola wars” are that Joel refers to. Still, he covers the big ones, and the song retains the infectiousness it had when it first appeared on the radio. This combination makes it one of the best historical rock songs in my book.

2.  “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” The Band, The Band (1969)

Comment: Written by the Canadian Robbie Robertson (with the help of Arkansan Levon Helm), this song tells the story of a poor Southern soldier at the end of the Civil War. It references the real life exploits of George Stoneman, the union officer responsible for destroying Southern railroad lines at the war’s end, and Robert E. Lee. The song’s elegiac tone captures the sense of loss amidst defeat that ordinary Southerners must have felt, and this is why it was so well received when it was originally released. I know some have tried to claim the song was a tribute to slavery, but I respectfully disagree. Everyone has a right to mourn their losses, even if they are in service of a terrible cause, at least in my opinion. The song’s musical pathos and its lyrics’ emotional realism capture that perfectly, and this is why I ranked it as high as I did.

1. “Kings,” Steely Dan, Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972)

Comment: The number one song on my list of the best historical pop/rock songs of all time is the one that actually inspired me to write this list in the first place. “Kings” was a song on Steely Dan’s debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill, which I don’t believe was ever released as a single. The first time I listened to it, I thought the “kings” of the title were just a fictionalized reference and didn’t quite catch their names. When I listened to it again, I nearly fell out of my chair when I realized who Donald Fagen was singing about: King Richard the Lion Heart, the English crusader king of the Middle Ages, and his brother and successor King John, the “good King John” of the lyrics. The song’s lines “though he conquered far and wide / all his starving children cried” is a likely reference to Richard’s career, in which he spent only six months of his ten year reign in England and the rest on military campaigns. Even better than this, its reference to how “though we sung his fame / we all went hungry just the same” hints at both Richard’s prowess as a troubadour poet and the fascination such poets had with him. It is rare to hear popular artists make references to historical figures as distant in time as those from the Middle Ages, and to do it with this kind of historical sensibility is even more surprising, which I why I have always loved it. The song has great vocals, a great guitar solo, and basically recreates a troubadour song in the guise of 1970s alternative rock. Turns out That Bard College education really made a difference—to my mind (and ears), this is the best historical rock song of them all.

So that is my totally objective and totally not arbitrary list of the top fifteen historical pop/rock songs of all time. What do you think? Did I miss anything? I’ll keep this post open so just leave a comment if you can think of a killer song that I missed.