I’m not saying it’s a song for buskers.
But your notion that it’s all about production is bullshit.
It’s a production driven song. It’s dependent on two very particular guitar sounds - the wah-wah-wah-wah part as you hear at the start and then “deee-nehhh-neeeeeehhhhh” bit that follows.
Many or most great songs/tracks from the late 1970s/early 1980s on were production driven rather than song driven, dependent on the particular sound production teams or self taught geniuses could extract from whatever machinery was at their disposal and the knowledge of how to use it. That isn’t a criticism, it’s fact. It’s technoloigical evolution.
Even going back to the early 60s The Beatles were to an extent production driven, or at least they were distinguished from their peers by production. She Loves You wouldn’t have been as successful as it was had it not nailed what came to be known as the Liverpool sound. You know what that sound is.
If you hear some of the demos from the Oasis Definitely Maybe sessions with a guy named Dave Batchelor who was the originally assigned producer, they sound crap and have none of the turbo punch that the record that eventually came out did. It was only when Mark Coyle and Owen Morris came in and turned Bonehead’s guitar way up and threatened to blow the speakers that the production started coming together.
For about 20 years from 1977-ish to about 1997-ish, production and songwriting largely complemented other. Good songwriting amplified good production and good production amplified good songwriting.
At some point towards the end of the 1990s, songwriting in the general music scene started to fail to keep pace with production and they divided - much like the graphs of productivity and returns to ordinary workers in society divided - and music gradually became a largely production dominated form of art without the songwriting to back it up.
The music snobs going at it hammer and tongs 
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There you have it now. The greatest song of all time has to be playable by buskers.
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Yes, pretty much. The greatest pop songs are the greatest form of art precisely because they can theoretically be made by anybody and are accessible for anybody to play. The greatest genius in art is in uncovering the genius that seems simple to have uncovered in hindsight. The greatest pop songs have the greatest effect on the most people’s lives and on the popular cultural imagination at large. But few people can ever write these songs because few people have the talent to do so.
When Oasis released Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger some people panned them saying they were Beatles knock offs and that what Noel Gallagher was doing in writing these sort of songs was easy to do. 30 years later, nobody else has even come close to doing what he did, which is to write something that becomes so culturally important and so inescapable and so widely loved and so undeniably fucking brilliant that it’s hard to imagine a world in which these songs did not exist.
I’m gonna nominate Madonna “like a prayer”
Not my favourite song but universally well known and loved …has stood the test of time. An absolute banger of a pop song
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That’s the way it’s gone now shur
A classic.
The nominations dont have to be for pop songs fyi. The OP asked about the greatest song… which is a fairly broad field admittedly.
There’s guys trying to reduce it to what goes well on a karaoke night out but we can surely do better than that.
I haven’t checked back the whole thread but Joy division, Prince, Michael Jackson, the beach boys, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bowie et al probably dominate
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I know that but I wouldn’t have a massive knowledge of the blues or reggae or 50s rock and roll
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I’d prefer Borderline but that’s a good tune alright.
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You’re getting some education here so
Any song that isn’t on the Rocky 4 soundtrack can forget about it
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“There is a light that never goes out” still sounds fantastic
Morrissey and Marr nailed it.
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No I think @Cheasty is trying to change the direction of the thread so he can shoehorn plodders like Oasis in.
You’re the fella who thinks Imagine is a ball of scutter. A very popular professional contrarian opinion in a conformist sort of way but in reality the musical equivalent of Eamon Dunphy trying to claim Michel Platini was not a good player.
Sorry I couldn’t work in a plodding B-side from 1972 by Neu or Can into the conversation.
That’s ok pal. There’s no need to apologise.
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One for Joe Player
In Dreams
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Great song. The Big O one of the all time great singers.
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The syllables Maynard sings in the first verse follow the first six numbers in the pattern, ascending and descending in the sequence 1-1-2-3-5-8-5-3. “Black (1), then (1), white are (2), all I see (3), in my infancy (5). Red and yellow then came to be (8), reaching out to me (5). Lets me see (3).”
In the next verse, Maynard begins with the seventh number of the Fibonacci sequence (13), implying a missing verse in between. He descends back down with the following pattern; 13-8-5-3. “As below so above and beyond I imagine (13). Drawn beyond the lines of reason (8). Push the envelope (5). Watch it bend (3).” The second verse adds the missing line to complete the sequence; “There is (2), so (1), much (1), more that (2), beckons me (3), to look through to these (5), infinite possibilities (8).” 1-1-2-3-5-8-5-3-2-1-1-2-3-5-8-13-8-5-3.
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