5 '70s Artists Whose Biggest Hits Happened By Accident

Music is strange. A band that whipped up a filler track without much effort can go to No. 1 and create a song that is known for generations, or a band can spend days, if not weeks, fine-tuning a song. They'll agonize over every intricate arrangement, while clashing with controlling producers over whether or not the 93rd or 94th take on the opening note was the best. And after all that pain and torment, those bands will release this track as a single — only to die on the vine without ever coming close to the Hot 100. Here, we're going to take a look at those lucky artists from the '70s who scored big hits without even trying that hard. 

For some of the biggest names in rock, this lackadaisical approach resulted in not just chart success, but songs that defined their legacies. A heavy metal group's last-minute addition became their definitive hit. A stylistic departure gave British rock royalty another jewel for their crown. And one group clowning about watching a fire across the lake resulted in the greatest rock riff of all time. All these hits came about practically by accident, which really makes this rock 'n' roll thing look all too easy.

"Paranoid" is Black Sabbath's biggest hit, going to No. 4 on the U.K. Charts. It's the pioneering metal group's defining track, so much so that it was the last song the band played at Ozzy Osbourne's final concert in 2025. It's often considered one of, if not the best, heavy metal songs of all time. Not bad for what the band's guitarist, Tony Iommi, called "a filler track."

Technically, that's what it was. When recording what would become the "Paranoid" LP in 1970, Black Sabbath's engineer realized that they were a song short. "We had three minutes to fill for it to be a legal album," Geezer Butler told UnCut. At the time, an LP wasn't officially considered an "album" unless it was 40 minutes or longer. So, the rest of the band — Butler, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bill Ward — stepped out for a break while Iommi stayed behind to work. Roughly 20 minutes later, Iommi had the makings for the song.

"Ozzy mumbled something before he had the lyrics and then he and Geezer worked on it. It's one of the simplest songs we'd ever done. It fell into place very quickly," said Iommi. The sub-three-minute-long song was perfect for radio, and the band's label released it as a single. The success propelled the "Paranoid" album to No. 1 on the album charts and resulted in a now-legendary performance on the U.K. music program, "Top of the Pops."

When "Another One Bites The Dust" went to the top of the Hot 100 in 1980, giving Queen their second No. 1 in the U.S., many realized that the bassline was similar to Chic's "Good Times." One such person was Chic's Nile Rodgers. "It was clearly an homage," Rodgers told The Guardian, "not to mention that John Deacon was with me in the studio when I wrote the damn thing!"

Deacon later explained that he grew up listening to soul music, and he wanted to do a funky song for a while. "But originally, all I had was the line and the bass riff," he said (via Music Radar). "I could hear it as a song for dancing, but had no idea it would become as big as it did." When he presented "Another One Bites The Dust" to the band, drummer Roger Taylor thought it "too funky and not enough rock" for Queen. Eventually, Deacon got his way, and the song was included on the band's eighth album, "The Game." The album went to No. 1 on the Billboard album charts, and "Another One Bites the Dust" became the band's second and final U.S. No. 1 hit.

Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" is an accidental hit based on an actual accident: the December 4, 1971, fire that destroyed the Montreux Casino in Montreux, Switzerland. As Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention played in the Casino's theater, an enthusiastic audience member fired a flare gun. The flare set the theater's wooden ceiling ablaze, and the fire soon engulfed the Casino. Thankfully, no one was killed or seriously hurt.

Deep Purple watched from their hotel room near Lake Geneva as this was going down. The group was in Montreux to record what would be their "Machine Head" album at the Casino's theater. But with the venue in ruins, Claude Nobs, director of the Montreux Jazz Festival, relocated the band to a vacant theater called The Pavilion. "[We] started to record, but we only managed to do one track ... it was just a jam, we didn't know what it was going to be ..." said bassist Roger Glover, in an interview with Eska Rocks (via YouTube). The recording ended abruptly when the cops came and shut them down. That "mid-tempo jam" would evolve into "Smoke on the Water" when the group was desperate for a song.

You see, Deep Purple were in a crunch: they had rented the Rolling Stones' mobile studio setup, and all the fire-based delays left them with about three weeks to write and record the album. With time dwindling, Grover said the band realized they were one song short. "We thought, 'Well, let's listen to that thing we did in the small theater.'" With biographical lyrics and what is now considered the greatest guitar riff of all time, "Smoke on the Water" was a massive hit, going to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 while "Machine Head" went to No. 1 in the U.K.

It's hard to imagine that "All Right Now," arguably the soundtrack to the free-wheeling, revolutionary spirit of the '70s, was born in response to a bad gig. Free — the English rock group formed in 1968 by Paul Rodgers, Andy Fraser, Paul Kossoff, and Simon Kirke — were still trying to find an audience when they played a fateful gig in Durham. "It was cold and miserable, and we got there in a pretty foul mood to be honest," bassist and songwriter Andy Fraser told Songwriting Magazine. And then we saw the audience ... it was a venue that could hold 2,000 people, but there were only about 30 people there."

The band was used to playing sparsely-populated gigs — "We'd just play for ourselves, basically, and have a good time," said Fraser — but they bombed. "We absolutely sucked," said Fraser, but the audience was too wasted on drugs to notice. Back in the dressing room, Fraser tried to cheer everyone up by goofing on a song. "So to try and alleviate the tension, I just started singing... y'know, 'All right now, baby it's all right now,' over and over," he said. "The rest of the band started tapping along, and so I thought, we're onto something here."

The band whipped together the song as " something light and throwaway" (per Fraser) for their third album, 1970's "Fire and Water." However, the label heard a hit on their hands and released the song as a single, despite the band's initial protests. "All Right Now" went on to be Free's biggest hit, going to No. 2 in the U.K. and No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Despite their iconic status, Led Zeppelin rarely had hits on the charts. The band hated releasing singles, so they weren't too mad that only two songs of theirs cracked the top 40 in their native U.K; in the U.S., they fared better, but only "Whole Lotta Love" reached the Top 10. So, while "Rock and Roll" wasn't a hit, it's still one of Zeppelin's most recognizable songs. And, it's one that came about in a moment of frustration.

While working on "Led Zeppelin IV" in 1971, the group was struggling to piece together "Four Sticks," so they decided to take a break. Page was a strong believer in shifting gears instead of powering through a problem. "You should stop and do something else," he said in 2012's "Light & Shade: Conversations With Jimmy Page," adding, "go to the pub or a restaurant or something. Or play another song" (via Ultimate Classic Rock). Drummer John Bonham decided to vent out his anger by playing the drum intro to Little Richard's "Keep a Knockin'."

According to Far Out, Page told Uncut,"I immediately started playing the riff for 'Rock And Roll. Instead of laughing it off and going back to the previous song, we kept going. 'Rock And Roll' was written in minutes and recorded within an hour." Robert Plant whipped up lyrics that paid tribute to early rock songs, like "The Stroll" and "Book of Love." It was a defiant declaration of love for rock 'n' roll, and a return to form for Zep. "We just thought rock 'n' roll needed to be taken on again," said Plant (via UCR). "I was finally in a really successful band, and we felt it was time for actually kicking ass."