Whether fair or not, lots of decades tend to get associated with one or two kinds of music. If it's the 1960s, it's probably psychedelic pop/rock, the 1980s would be synthpop, and then the 1990s might be either grunge or rap. It's just a pop culture thing, and not a suggestion that each decade should just be remembered for one or two kinds of music. But it does also work for shorthand in establishing a time in history, especially in movies or TV shows (as was effectively parodied in BoJack Horseman).
If you're talking the 1970s, maybe you'd say punk, but that's more the end of the decade. What was big throughout the entirety of the decade was just good old rock, be it of the glam, heavy, heartland, or soft varieties, and what follows is an attempt to highlight some of the best rock songs from the '70s. There's a limit of one song per artist, and also, there are so many omissions, so don't get too mad. This barely scratches the surface, and is more intended to say, "Hey, this is a pretty nice surface. This surface rocks."
10 "Baba O'Riley" (1971) The Who
It's not easy to single out what the best song by the Who is, but if you absolutely had to (gun may or may not be at your head), then it's probably "Baba O'Riley." This is just about the perfect opening track, with the epic instrumental intro here being rewarding both for the song and for the entire album it kicks off: 1971's Who's Next.
"Triumphant" might be the best word to use to describe this one, and it's also big... which is saying a lot, considering how grand the Who are generally speaking. It feels like an evolution of the sort of already very good music the Who had put out in the 1960s, and they arguably got even better after this album, with Quadrophenia. But, as mentioned before, if you're just talking individual songs, they don't really get much better than "Baba O'Riley."
9 "The Chain" (1977) Fleetwood Mac
"The Chain" is found on Rumours, which many people would point to (and agree is) Fleetwood Mac's best album. It's one of those legendary sort of "no skip" albums, and "The Chain" is especially unskippable, because it's next-level stuff on an already next-level album, and it lyrically perfectly sums up the turbulent atmosphere surrounding the band and the album, the nature of which is hard to overlook when discussing Rumours.
It's great pop rock in the sense that it's catchy, and the lyrics are immediately memorable, but "The Chain" also avoids feeling too simplistic. It's got a remarkable build that's perfectly paced across a length of 4.5 minutes, which isn't huge, admittedly, but it's about a minute or two longer than a good many pop/rock songs out there. It feels shorter, but there's also so much to enjoy within the song's length, so maybe it's the opposite of an unskippable track; it's more of a replayable track, in the sense that you might want to listen to it more than once when running through Rumours.
8 "Marquee Moon" (1977) Television
Jumping into something that is properly epic in length now, "Marquee Moon" is the title track off the Television album of the same name, and this song goes for well over 10 minutes. It might seem repetitive at first, since there's this one little guitar bit that plays/repeats throughout much of the song, but the effect is hypnotic (and it's not there literally the whole time; the song does shift around and shake things up a bit).
Put simply, or as simply as possible, "Marquee Moon" uses 10+ minutes well, doing a lot of things with that time and ultimately having more ideas and inspired moments within it than some entire albums have in 30 to 40 minutes of audio. Marquee Moon, the album, was a favorite of David Bowie's, and that guy knew his music, to say the least... and yes, one of his songs will be here, but not for a little longer.
7 "Gloria" (1975) Patti Smith
Patti Smith is one of those iconic artists who can be linked to a bunch of other iconic artists, but the music she put out on her own was also sometimes remarkable. "Gloria" is a good example, because yes, you can tie this one to other artists, since it was originally written by Van Morrison, but Smith takes the song and builds upon it immensely, making it more raw while also making it longer, and adding some of her own lyrics to the whole thing.
Like the aforementioned "Baba O'Riley" on Who's Next, "Gloria" works as an amazing album opener for Patti Smith's Horses, but might be even more notable because Horses was also Smith's debut album. So "Gloria" feels a bit like Patti Smith's mission statement for her entire solo career, and it's an incredible song she arguably never topped (though she came close a bunch of times; "Gloria" is far from her only worthwhile track, of course).
6 "Starless" (1974) King Crimson
In contrast to some iconic album openers, here's one of the best closing tracks off an all-timer of a rock album: "Starless," which is the fifth and final song on King Crimson's Red. King Crimson was a progressive rock band, which is a fancy way of saying they played songs that were often long, slightly avant-garde, and maybe also a little mellower than most classic rock (or at least less immediate/radio-friendly).
With "Starless," you have to buckle in for 12 minutes of music, but it's another long song that feels about as immense as listening to several all-time great songs in a row, or maybe even more so. The opening stretch of the song is more solemn, and then the vocals disappear at a point, and things just build to an intense and cathartic instrumental outro. Words can't really do it justice, but it's almost as good as progressive and patiently-paced '70s rock ever got.
5 "Born to Run" (1975) Bruce Springsteen
The more famous "Born" song Bruce Springsteen recorded might well be "Born in the U.S.A.," but that one came out in the 1980s, and so to stick with the 1970s, it's got to be "Born to Run" instead. And honestly, even if it's between those two songs, "Born to Run" is probably the better one, and the same goes for Born to Run, the album, versus Born in the U.S.A., the album (Springsteen loves the word "Born").
"Born to Run" is just pure catharsis non-stop for about four and a half perfect minutes. Springsteen recorded plenty of songs about small-town blues and trying to make some kind of new life somewhere else (be it successful or otherwise), but never better than he did here. If you attend a Bruce Springsteen concert and for some reason he does not play "Born to Run," you may be entitled to compensation.
4 "Kashmir" (1975) Led Zeppelin
Somewhat surprisingly, not every Led Zeppelin album was well-loved upon release, or at least not as well-loved as they became some years later. Maybe Led Zeppelin were a little ahead of their time, but also, maybe not really, since they were very plainly a hard rock band at a time when hard rock was pretty big. Maybe that speaks more to how timeless their music is. Led Zeppelin might've been lost in the crowd a little in their early years, but now, with hindsight, they're more obviously better than most of their contemporaries.
With Physical Graffiti, this album did admittedly come out at a time when they were pretty big, and so fittingly, it's also their biggest album with some of their most ambitious songs. Of the bunch, "Kashmir" is the highlight, and it's possibly Led Zeppelin's single best song. Again, it's another rock song that's being shouted out here because it's epic, and the extra orchestration here (all the while the song remains very much rock-focused) really helps it stand out.
3 "Comfortably Numb" (1979) Pink Floyd
The Wall was not the best Pink Floyd album, but it did contain what might be the band's best song: "Comfortably Numb." That was all said a bit flippantly, sorry. The Wall is still a great album, and was the basis for an even greater musical/feature-length music video (in effect). It's just that Pink Floyd were capable of even greater album statements than The Wall, especially earlier in the 1970s.
Comfortably Numb has got some of Pink Floyd's best-ever lyrics, complemented by some of the band's best instrumentation.
But "Comfortably Numb" is incredible, and maybe the best single song to showcase what makes Pink Floyd special. You get the progressive rock feel of some of the band's earlier work, with the length of the song and the moodiness of it all, but it's also immediate and easy to appreciate with its structure and blending of beauty and bleakness. It's got some of Pink Floyd's best ever lyrics, complemented by some of the band's best instrumentation (especially the pair of guitar solos featured in it). Also, the single of "Comfortably Numb" admittedly came out in 1980, but the song was first heard on a 1979 album. Also, that single edit is inferior to the album version, so that's why it's being counted here - the full-length album cut - as a 1970s song.
2 "Layla" (1970) Derek and the Dominos
Since "Layla" is basically two songs in one, maybe some might consider it a mild form of cheating for it to be here, but those two halves work together so well. It's tempting to say one couldn't work without the other, but Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas does brilliantly use the more low-key second half of the song, and then Eric Clapton also found success by reworking the first part of the song into a low-key acoustic/Unplugged version well after the 1970s.
Clapton was welcome to, of course, considering he was the lead singer-guitarist of Derek and the Dominoes, but that more famous stripped-back version has nothing on the original version of "Layla." It's brash and in-your-face with its lyrics and blistering first half, but then the toned-down and more melancholic second half also makes for such an interesting contrast, with a lot of energy and then a comedown done so naturally. It's cathartic, angry, sad, and passionate, all at once.
1 "Heroes" (1977) David Bowie
There are plenty of David Bowie songs that can be called underrated, but "Heroes" is not one of them, since pretty much everyone knows this one, and it's up there as perhaps Bowie's defining song. But it should be well known, and it deserves to be considered his best song, because it's one of the best things any artist has ever recorded. Or, more succinctly, it's one of the best artists ever at his personal very best.
You know that if you've heard "Heroes," and it's another song where you can only say so much without falling into hyperbole and just kind of repeating yourself, but yeah, words can only go so far. It's "Heroes," and everything about it works exceptionally, and it's one of the best songs of all time, so it feels fair to call it perhaps the best rock song of the entire '70s, too.
NEXT: Underrated David Bowie Songs That Can Be Called Masterpieces, Ranked