Top 1000 Songs #330-#321

#330 - "The Bends" - Radiohead - The Bends - #4/8 - Back when Radiohead was best known as a band that made great albums and before they were known as a band that created great albums (sort of the Pink Floyd of their generation), "The Bends" was one of their biggest hits off a great album also called The Bends which was more of a collection of great songs than a cohesive album... the cohesive albums? They'd come next.

#329 - "Dear Mr. Fantasy" - Traffic - Welcome To The Canteen - #2/2 - Traffic's best song is also one of the first great songs of the classic rock period as it combined psychedelic elements with the kind of sweeping bombast that would later define the 1970's.

#328 - "All Apologies (Unplugged)" - Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York - #5/15 - It's hard to pick the definitive version of this song, but I'm choosing the live version from the greatest live performance in rock history as the haunting sadness of this song combines with the somber expressions on Cobain's face as he's performing for one of the last times.

#327 - "Pride & Joy" - Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood - #3/3 - SRV's biggest and best song, "Pride & Joy" is a classic blues song, let alone blues rock and features some of SRV's best lyrics and his signature lick.

#326 - "And She Was" - The Talking Heads - Little Creatures - #6/10 - One of the last great songs the Talking Heads would record before they broke up, "And She Was" was the band's least quirky hit and most radio-friendly song with it's bouncy beat and unusually straight-forward lyrics.

#325 - "Spiderwebs" - No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom - #1/1 - Here it is, the greatest song to come out of the ska movement of the mid-90's. "Spiderwebs" is easily the best song that Gwen Stefani has ever produced with it's tremendous chorus and smooth verses.

#324 - "World Wide Suicide" - Pearl Jam - Pearl Jam - #17/25 - The guitar riff that opens this song was a siren call that Pearl Jam was back and ready to rock as this angry protest song was the advance release single to the band's best album in more than a decade. In my opinion, the band has always been great, but this is among their best straight-forward rock song of all-time and their best of it's kind since Vitalogy.

#323 - "Feel The Pain" - Dinosaur Jr. - Without A Sound - #1/1 - It seems like a shame to only have one Dinosaur Jr. song on the countdown, but this is definitely their signature song and their only song that's ever gotten serious radio airtime with it's Sonic Youth tone and it's as usual outstanding guitar work from leader J. Mascis.

#322 - "She Sells Sanctuary" - The Cult - High - #2/2 - "Sanctuary" is a tremendously important song in the history of alternative rock as it's one of the first times that a song of it's kind crossed over to mainstream success. The sweeping guitars and intense vocals kicked the door open for the R.E.M.'s, the Cures and the Smiths would follow in to even greater success.

#321 - "Sober" - Tool - Undertow - #5/9 - An early hit for the band from back in the days when they still got mainstream radio airplay (the industry changed, Tool did not), this song, with it's brilliant lyrics and climactic chorus, would help to propel the band to the top of the metal scene in the 21st Century.