Beloved College Hits From The '70s That Never Hit No. 1

College students of the 1970s were blessed with some of the most enduring rock music of all time. In fact, many of the songs released back in the day remain radio classics even now and amass hundreds of millions of listens on streaming platforms. Indeed, these tunes have maintained a hugely loyal following for more than half a century at this point and firmly established themselves as some of the most popular rock songs of all time. Yet in a surprising number of cases, they failed to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

While one reason for these songs' continued popularity is undoubtedly nostalgia, these are tracks of boundless quality. As well as being earworms and boasting epic musicianship, these rockers have stayed in the popular imagination largely because they connected with college-age listeners in a way few other '70s rock hits have. Here are five such tracks.

"Free Bird," Lynyrd Skynyrd's epic signature song, is at once a haunting requiem and a wig-out extolling the 1970s youth's desire for freedom and liberation. Vocalist Ronnie Van Zant initially struggled to develop a set of lyrics to match the mournful opening chords, initially finding the instrumental overcomplicated. But he eventually found himself reflecting on the tragic death of the Allman Brothers Band co-founder Duane Allman, who had died in a motorcycle accident shortly before "Free Bird" was recorded.

From the funereal opening chords, "Free Bird" delves into a melancholic mode that few rockers have successfully explored. As the minutes pass, the song builds in intensity until it finally climaxes with an explosive solo that millions must have air-guitared to over the years. From mourning to swaggering, "Free Bird" is a great rock 'n' roll journey.

Despite its popularity, the song only just scraped into the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 19. But on reflection, it is perhaps unsurprising that "Free Bird" struggled relatively on the singles chart. At over nine minutes long, it is distinctly uncommercial, but that has not stopped it becoming the one-time most requested song on FM radio and a rite of passage for '70s student rock fans.

The debut song by Massachusetts rock juggernaut Boston, "More Than a Feeling" is possibly the ultimate 1970s college dorm headphones track. Today, it's a staple of classic rock stations the world over and a favorite inclusion in TV show soundtracks. Yet despite its ubiquity and its parent album going 17 times platinum, the song only made it to No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

"More Than a Feeling" was developed by frontman Tom Scholz over the course of five years while he was working as a product designer for camera manufacturer Polaroid. The song was recorded in a home studio with the band and producer John Boylan. What resulted was one of the cleanest sounding tracks in the '70s rock canon, featuring a soaring vocal performance from Brad Delp and some of the crispest guitar licks of the era.

The song was inspired by Scholz's adolescent crush on a girl called Marianne, whose name features in the lyrics. As he told Entertainment Weekly, Marianne was actually his older first cousin. "I had a crush on [her] when I was 10," he explained. Regardless, "More Than a Feeling" is ultimately uplifting and joyous, which has undoubtedly contributed to its popularity all these years.

Fleetwood Mac's seminal 1977 album "Rumours" is one of the most critically acclaimed and biggest-selling albums of all time. The LP was written and recorded at the band's commercial peak after the arrival of musical couple Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, whose relationship was on the rocks during the album's recording sessions. The fallout from the break-up led to the two songwriters pouring their feelings into song, with Buckingham penning the angry and defiant "Go Your Own Way." The up-tempo rocker builds from vulnerable, lightly sung verses to Buckingham's full-voiced chorus and sees the guitarist round out the track with one of the most striking, muscular solos in the band's extensive discography.

The track made it to No. 10 in the singles chart in March 1977, meaning the song was a hit, but it wasn't as big as the band's other singles of the period (such as "Don't Stop," which hit No. 3, and "Dreams," which was Fleetwood Mac's only No. 1 single). However, the reputation of "Go Your Own Way" has grown over the years. And in the age of streaming, it's among the band's songs with the largest listenership with over 1 billion streams, having surely soundtracked countless college student break-ups.

Mark Knopfler's masterpiece, the sizzling guitar track "Sultans of Swing" is one of the most popular tunes of the '70s. Since then, the word-of-mouth classic has continued to captivate budding college-age musicians. However, the single failed to top the charts at the time of release, peaking at No. 4 in April 1979.

Despite its surface coolness — the result of Knopfler's disengaged vocal style combined with his exceptional plucked guitar work — "Sultans of Swing" is in fact streaked in irony. The song was written in 1977, after Knopfler witnessed the titular band performing to a near-empty pub. Knopfler found the contrast between the band's bombastic name and the lackluster show entertaining, and he wrote the song originally on a steel guitar before switching it up on his iconic Fender Stratocaster.

Dire Straits eclipsed the commercial performance of "Sultans of Swing" in 1985. That year, their hit "Money for Nothing" struck No. 1, the band's only song to do so. Yet "Sultans of Swing" has emerged as the group's most popular recording in the decades since its release, racking up almost 2 billion streams on Spotify.

Kansas' breakthrough hit came in 1976, when after years of toil as a successful live act, they finally had a high-charting single to show for their efforts. "Carry On Wayward Son" marked the band's debut on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 11 and staying on the chart for 20 weeks in total. The song was the lead single of the band's fourth album, "Leftoverture," and it was evidence for Kansas that their hard work was finally paying off.

Written primarily by guitarist and keyboardist Kerry Livgren while singer Steve Walsh was suffering from writer's block, the lyrics are in fact autobiographical. In a way that surely resonated with younger college-age listeners, Livgren delves into his spiritual life for inspiration. "It was a song of self-encouragement," he explained to Classic Rock. "I was telling myself to keep on looking and I would find what I sought."

Opening with the song's iconic vocal harmonies, "Carry On Wayward Son" soon veers between multiple groove-infused licks and riffs before veering through balladic passages. It feels operatic, theatrical, bold, and confident — the perfect style for self-encouragement. It's a track that rock fans have used to pump themselves up ever since.