5 Classic Rock Songs From The '70s That Sound Even Cooler Today

Few musical decades produced such explosive creativity and eclecticism as the 1970s. Classic rock from the early "golden era" (1964 to 1982) went mainstream along with the '60s counterculture, which itself fostered anti-establishment scorn that brewed the mid-'70s punk rock scene. Motown — a catch-all musical term derived from the 1959-birthed record label — was on the decline, but still evolving along with soul, funk, gospel, R&B, jazz, etc., which themselves went through iterations leading into the '80s broader adoption of hip-hop. But even amidst all this restless, churning desire to make novel and cool music, certain songs stood out as especially cool on the classic rock front.  

But first, we've got to address the terminological elephant in the room: "cool," which means something different to practically everyone. That is, unless we're talking about an artistic figure as universally heralded as David Bowie (more on him later). To be truly cool and fascinating to the ears, a '70s song has to stand out from its peers and be as non-generic as possible. It has to sound fresh to our modern ears — structure, composition, subject matter, overall outré qualities — unless a listener has already heard it a thousand times. While this could mean that a song was one-of-a-kind in the '70s, it more means that it's one-of-a-kind now, particularly when gazing back on the '70s on a whole. 

Certain artists like Frank Zappa were standard-bearers of all things weird and cool for decades, especially songs like "Nanook Rubs It" from 1974's Apostrophe('). Other more widely-listened to artists like Yes and their 1971 masterpiece "Roundabout" sound absolutely fresh and inventive. And then there's Bowie, who during his Thin White Duke phase evolved into something cooler than ever.

From guitarist Steve Howe's gorgeous, opening arpeggios and "Roundabout's" core, funky bassline right to the final, open, strummed E-major, is it possible to hear Yes' greatest '70s hit and not think it's the most dazzling, energetic, and straight-up cool song you've ever heard? "Roundabout" off of 1971's "Fragile" is a kaleidoscope of flowing, instrumental virtuosity, where each part interweaves and intertwines with the others, musical passages melodically and harmonically echo across the song's length, and the song opens up for jam session-like segments, like after the intro returns around the five-minute mark. 

"Roundabout" crushes so hard that it's shocking to think that Yes had only been around for three years at that point, since 1968. But during those three years the English progsters had been so musically proliferate that they released four studio albums, "Yes" (1969), "Time and a Word" (1970), "The Yes Album" (1971), and finally "Fragile" (1971). 

"Roundabout" came together while the band was on tour for their third album, "The Yes Album." As Ultimate Guitar tells the story, singer Jon Anderson recalls passing through "maybe 40 or so" roundabouts while traveling from Aberdeen to Glasgow, Scotland. The band was gazing out at the Scottish countryside, and passed by Loch Ness along the way (yes, the one with the Loch Ness Monster) all while Anderson was jotting down lyrics in his notebook. The line, "Oh, the mountains — look! They're coming out of the sky!" kicked the lyrical writing session off and evolved into, "In and out of the lake / Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there." As soon as the band got back to the studio they wrote what Howe described as "pure magic." It still is, even moreso.

Throw out all the descriptors you'd like — proggy, out-there, spacey, avant-garde, etc. — and you'll still fall 100% miserably short of capturing King Crimson's truly sui generis music. Written more as classical compositions where each instrument plays a precise role, down to the three drum sets (yes, three), alto saxophone, backing tracks, and all sorts of percussive weirdness of the "Starless" live 2015 version gifted to us by the gods, King Crimson sounds even more out-of-this-world now than it did in the '70s (and '60s and '80s, for that matter). And it's that exact song — fan favorite "Starless" off 1974's "Red" — that we're choosing as peak Crimson cool.

Like the cosmic visions its name implies, "Starless" is a true musical journey that builds from gentle eeriness to stank face-inducing, explosive crescendo that rivals the darkest metal out there. The song is full of endlessly fascinating time signature changes, tempo changes, polyrhythms, musical side quests, notable motifs, and goes nowhere you'd expect on first listen while still making sense by returning to its original, opening theme. And, it almost didn't happen.

"Starless" originated with Crimson keyboardist David Cross shortly before he left the band. Crimson life at that point was one, long ennui session, caught on the road, waiting in airports, traveling from gig to gig, etc. Compressed by boredom, Cross started playing around with an ascending melody during a soundcheck, one that used the ninth note in its scale. Guitarist Robert Fripp picked it up from there. By the time King Crimson recorded "Starless" in 1974 for "Red," they'd already played it live 51 times. "Red" was Crimson's worst commercially-performing tune of the '70s, but has taken on revered status since then.

If Frank Zappa was considered bizarre in the '70s, how unconventional and cool do you figure he'd be now? Zappa was as freakishly talented and he was completely unique and limitlessly entertaining. When asked to describe his music, which still sounds like nothing else these days, over 50 years later, Louder Sound quotes Zappa as saying, "You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." Well, naturally. 

Also: "Great googly-moogly!," as Zappa says in "Nanook Rubs It," an eminently cool song and the third, head-spinningly weird track in the four-song Yellow Snow Suite off 1974's "Apostrophe (')." "Nanook Rubs It" tells the tale of an Inuit boy who defends a baby seal from a trapper by rubbing the "deadly yellow snow crystals" of urine-soaked snow from Huskies into the trapper's eyes in a " ... vigorous circular motion / Hitherto unknown to the people of this area." It does so through a funky bassline and organ, splashes of trombones and blurts of saxophones, and hysterical vocal performance.   

If you read all of that and thought, "Huh??," then you're not in uncommon company. Zappa was always an outsider, no matter how many people now, over 20 years after his death in 1993, revere him as an artistic icon and great American composer. Out of both a creative desire to direct his music and a practical desire to keep his earnings out of the hands of the music industry, Zappa formed his own record label, Barking Pumpkin Records, in 1981. It's this label, and the efforts of Zappa's wife after his death, that's helped keep his music untouched for decades. Great googly-moogly, indeed!

What do you get when you combine a half-lyric-less song with layers of swooshing synths, no percussion whatsoever, some open guitar strumming, a klaxon, and the hushed chatter of a crowd? That's right, you get 1975's "Welcome to the Machine" by Pink Floyd, the most commercially successful prog/psychedelic rock outfit of all time. Their landmark 1973 album, "Dark Side of the Moon," is the highest selling album of the '70s, at over 50 million copies sold. 1979's "The Wall" had Pink Floyd's only Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 song, "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2." But right in between both outings, 1975's "Welcome to the Machine" off "Wish You Were Here" gets our vote for a '70s song that sounds even cooler today.

We already outlined the unconventional nature of "Welcome to the Machine's" composition, which sounds far less like dudes with guitars and conventional rock instruments and more like a sci-fi opera. The song's soundscape grows increasingly anxiety-inducing and oppressive over its length, even overwhelmingly so, much like its choked-by-the-gears-of-life-and-industry lyrics imply. This is a heavy song in terms of scope, emotional weight, and musical accomplishment.

"Welcome to the Machine" and its album are also the perfect follow ups to "Dark Side of the Moon." That album led to monetary success that allowed Pink Floyd to mess around in the studio. It also gave them an insider perspective on the nature of the machine, so to speak. Consequently, we've been gifted one of the coolest songs of the '70s off an album that Floyd drummer Nick Mason considers extra special out of the band's entire discography.

We're going to end on a song from an artist that ought to surprise no one for his appearance on this list: David Bowie. Come 1976, Bowie released "Station to Station," a career and persona pivot crafted amidst a no-joke addiction to cocaine that stripped him to the bone in both an emotional sense and physical sense. Enter the Thin White Duke persona, what Bowie described as a "Pierrot" (sad clown) and "everyman" "trying to paint the truth of our time," as Far Out Magazine quotes him. This persona sings on "Station to Station," an album with an unexpected Bowie hit that he originally wrote for Elvis Presley, of all people: "Golden Years."

Bowie fans will rightfully point out that "Station to Station," the first song on the album of the same name, is a masterpiece. But, it's "Golden Years" that sounds so far ahead of its time, so cool and danceable, that you can't even define what decade it came from by sound alone. Others will argue that it's the least "rock" out of our selections and more of a funky pop song. But this is Bowie we're talking about, an artist who shifted faces over decades of time, chameleonic, weaving in and out of classic rock and its adjacent stylings.

As we said, Bowie originally wrote "Golden Years" for Elvis. You can hear this in the song's lower vocal notes and overall swaggering delivery. But while Bowie intended it to be a retrospective for the then-aging Elvis (who died the year after "Station to Station's" release, in 1977), it wound up being a disillusioned portrait of Bowie's present. Now, it's something we can all celebrate.