Top 100 Classic Rock Songs

Bored with best-songs lists that are dominated by the same handful of bands? We've put an interesting twist on things.

'Sweet Emotion' by Aerosmith earns the top spot on our Top 100 Classic Rock Songs list by embodying such an overwhelming portion of the intangible things that make the rest of the songs on our countdown so timeless. It also rocks to high heaven.

Led Zeppelin earn the penultimate spot on our Top 100 Classic Rock Songs list with 'Kashmir,' a stately, epic masterpiece that refuses to acknowledge that rock music should have any uncrossable boundaries.

With an ominous mood set from the first notes, we know for certain that "the storm is threatening" on the Rolling Stones' haunting and powerful 'Gimme Shelter.' It's 'Apocalypse Now,' in just over four minutes.

It's a lesser statistic, but somehow it speaks most loudly: AC/DC's 'Back in Black' received the RIAA's Master Ringtone Sales Award (Gold and Platinum) in 2006 and reached 2x Platinum status in 2007. It's a Top 100 Classic Rock Song that is so omnipresent, so beloved, so kick-ass that millions want it to play every time they get a phone call.

Of all the acts on our countdown of the Top 100 Classic Rock Songs, none gave us a bigger challenge than the Beatles. Although the decision to only include one song per act allowed for a greater range of bands, it also meant that the entire catalog of the Beatles, the greatest and most diverse in all of rock, had to be boiled down to one -- and only one -- song...

Anyone can cover another artist's song, but few are able to take that song and truly make it their own. In the case of 'All Along The Watchtower,' there is no doubt that Jimi Hendrix most certainly turned the Bob Dylan composition into not only a Hendrix song, but into a true classic.

Released in 1975, Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' must be one of the oddest songs to ever become not just a hit, but practically a part of our daily lives.

The higher we climb on our Top 100 Classic Rock Songs list, the harder it gets to pick just one song to represent bands such as the mighty Van Halen.

Pink Floyd's David Gilmour and Roger Waters are almost as famous for their feuding as they are for their music -- and although they were bandmates for nearly two decades, their personality conflicts precluded true collaboration for many of those years. One notable exception: the No. 9 song on our Top 100 Classic Rock Songs list, 'Comfortably Numb.'