What would Milk Cow Blues be doing there? It never even hit the charts.. And BLPH ahead of ASU would simply be obscure.. A multi-platinum selling single below a song that didn't even make the hot 100?

You're right.

Let's get rid of "Time" by Pink Floyd. It was the flip side of a single (Us And Them) that only got to #101 on the Bubbling Under chart. "Time" never even bubbled under.

So is popularity the ONLY thing we're judging these songs on?

Cause I'm willing to bet that Baby Let's Play House got way more people into rock & roll than Dont Be Cruel.
To give one example, Jimmy Page has said he was inspired to play guitar by hearing Scotty's licks in that song.

You'd lose that one.

"Baby Let's Play House" barely made the country chart when it was out. Not near enough people heard it for it to have gotten more people into rock and roll than "Don't Be Cruel."

"Baby" was perhaps the most important record in the sub genre of rockabilly, but that sub genre was never all that popular and was pretty much dead by 1959.

Actually I meant to put All Shook Up, not Dont Be Cruel. But both of those are closer to doo-wop than the raunchy rock & roll Elvis was known for.

To be honest, I could go with either Jailhouse Rock OR Heartbreak Hotel as his highest.
I'd prefer Jailhouse to be there, but HH is probably his biggest song, and the one most people associate him with the most.
It's lyrics, beat, guitar solo, vocal delivery, etc., have all become so iconic so that it's practically reached a level of cliche.

Nah, they associate him more with "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" than with "Heartbreak Hotel."

You may be overstating the importance of the charts. "Time" has had vastly more staying power than countless chart hits. Personally, I think it's the ultimate Pink Floyd song, but its credentials for the top 100 rock songs may not be strong enough.

Time Magazine picks "Jailhouse Rock", too.

Guess which Who song they pick.

Elvis Presley's top ten songs on acclaimedmusic.net:

All-Time Rank

15. Heartbreak Hotel

56. Suspicious Minds

73. That's All Right
76. Hound Dog
79. Mystery Train

119. Don't Be Cruel

174. Jailhouse Rock

590. In The Ghetto

981. Blue Moon of Kentucky

1045. All Shook Up

"Suspicious Minds" #2 is preposterous. That's much more reflective of the ages of the critics involved than anything else.

Well here's my thinking - Heartbreak came one year before Jailhouse, so it was much more vital to his breakthrough. Not only was the studio version an instant classic in itself, but it also had a few classic tv performances to sweeten it, a la Hound Dog....
However, Jailhouse Rock....well it's Jailhouse Rock. All you have to do is hear the song and you know. It was the apex of what rock & roll was about at that time, and it's inconic, influential, copied beyond belief, etc.

All things considered, looking at the bigger picture, Heartbreak Hotel/Jailhouse Rock > Hound Dog.

And Bruce you reeeeeally underrate his late 60's/early 70's material dont you?

No, HH does not beat HD.



Not at all. I thionk YOU overrate it immensely, but no way that "Suspicious Minds" belongs above at least 7 or 8 of his early classics. It barely sounds any different than the Mark James original version from a year earlier.

So what does that matter if his version sounds the same?
Elvis' version is the one that "made it".



Hell yah.

As for acclaimedmusic, I love Suspicious Minds but I do agree with Bruce that it's way too high there.
Heartbreak Hotel at #1 for him DOES make sense though.

I guess my definitive top 5 for him would be like this...

1. Jailhouse Rock
2. Heartbreak Hotel
3. That's All Right (huge effect on American culture when it came out, one of the first and best crossover records ever)
4. Hound Dog (even though it's overrated)
5. Baby Let's Play House/Money Honey/or a slew of others that could make it...

Are you insane?

The record DID NOT cross over. It did not even make the national country chrats, let along cross over to the pop audience. The vast majority of Americans never heard of Elvis until 1956 when he debuted on TV and had his first pop hit "Heartbreak Hotel."

The record made him known within a handful of southern states, and that's it.

It sold to both country (white) and r&b (black) audiences. Given the racial tension of those times, I think that's a pretty amazing feat. Do you not know anything about Presley's history? Guys like Dewey Phillips were playing it on their radio stations, and listeners were somewhat surprised when they found out the singer they were hearing was a 19 year-old white guy.
It had impact, maybe not as much as the bigger tunes that came in 56, but it still gets massive points for importance.

Perhaps I overstated it with "huge effect on American culture", but it could be argued that That's All Right is the song that made 'Elvis the rocker' possible in the first place.
Remember, it was just Elvis goofing around with it in the studio, putting his own personal twang into it, and that's when Sam Phillips realized what he really had on his hands...
In otherwords, it's probably his most 'important' song, at least in a context of historical significance.