Popular music swings and sways with the changing times for sure. Being by definition popular, it can also become pretty pedestrian and collectively uninspiring for years at a time. However, every once in a while, a song hits the charts (or not) and it seems to just erupt from the airwaves. It (typically) becomes wildly popular, and as a result, shifts everything afterward in a different direction – or maybe it simply opens up more directions in general. However you choose to define the impact, certain songs and recordings carve out echoes and reverberations, and in doing so, they earn added social relevance and attain some deeper meaning.

Most often, these songs will be loved and imitated and a ripple occurs in the way a lot of people pursue, consume and even think about popular music forever afterward. In this way, a recorded song can become a marker of change, a signpost of abrupt or gentler social shifting. The songs in retrospect, are like breadcrumbs marking our footsteps and former paths, they are milestones of our very culture whizzing by.

While the following six songs are not any kind of exhaustive list, they are undeniably songs that helped to shape-shift, punch-mold, and directly impact the direction of popular music in the later half of the 20th century, and ever-onward.

1. Heartbreak Hotel – Elvis Presley, 1956.

Though not his first recording, this was the King’s first song to bring him nationwide opposed to regional attention. And indeed, if you think about the cornpone sounds of records being played on the radio in 1956, there was truly NOTHING that sounded even remotely like this single at the time…not that I was there myself, but I have been told by multiple people who were. And I have owned a lot of the records that were out then, and heard even more of them.

Check the charts for ’56 though, and you will see Perry Como, Doris Day, Pat Boone and more vocalists that were indicative of the type: talented but not challenging, super squeaky clean, and 100% pedestrian. It is really no surprise The King dominated the year-end charts, despite his hurdles and the odds piled against him. People were ready for it, and his earliest records are pure energy, talent and power. Oh, and sex too – lots of sex. Steamy, sultry, sexy-Elvy-hotness. A sound like no other, though.

The use of tight slapback echo was something pretty new to popular music, and its eerie effect on Elvis’ voice on this single is no less powerful today. Les Paul may have been dabbling with this echo effect as much as ten years prior, but the sparse, jazzy-piano  arrangement of Heartbreak Hotel with the use of that voice-echo seemed to take a vocal performance into a completely new atmosphere, and Elvis was clearly the captain of the ship carrying us all there.

The guitar solo also employs the tight, slapback echo effect – and Scotty Moore bends a few simple notes to make them plaintively howl, brokenly crying the melody like a Memphis bluesman. Offset by the always light, jazzy piano and a steady throb of a slow-shuffle rhythm, this sparse recording was/is a lovely balance of swing and rock, and a delightful public introduction to Elvis’ range and power.

The impact of the way Elvis sang this song was also undeniable: you can hear imitators springing out of the hills almost immediately afterward, particularly in rockabilly and in the emerging vocalists of rock-and-roll.  His impassioned vocal stretched across an impressive couple octaves, and allowed him a ton of opportunities to add physical flourishes during live performances (enter, The Pelvis). Listening to it today, you can easily picture him windmilling his arms and making those incendiary hips gyrate in pure animal fashion, accenting the staccato beat of the verses and soaking teen and pre-teen panties everywhere.

All across the US, kids were indeed hypnotized, lust-crazed, hyperventilating and energized by The King. Across the pond, young Brits were also spinning this early Elvis outing beside new records by Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, and were quickly enthralled to the point of strapping on their own guitars and sowing the earliest seeds of the upcoming British Invasion.

The impact of Heartbreak Hotel probably cannot be overstated, or even properly understood any more – it was truly nuclear, globally. It was kicking-off a new chapter in rock-and-roll; it was a grand and glorious party and every kid in town was invited.

Elvis had many incredible recordings both before and after Heartbreak Hotel, yet this record was one that truly made the world stop, and pay attention…and things were happily, never quite the same afterward.

2. You Really Got Me – The Kinks, 1964

The music swirling out of everywhere in 1964 was pretty amazing, and England was no exception. The cross-pollenization between the UK and the US was happening more and more frequently, with the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys and Motown gleefully having multiple early hits landing on both sides of the drink.

The Kinks were on their third try for a solid single in this musically energetic landscape, and their label was growing tired of them failing at it. It was ‘do or die’ for the young band, and thankfully, they were up for the challenge.

There is a perfect storm of sorts happening in this Ray-Davies-penned song, which is clear from the tone, approach and overall feel of the opening guitar riff. Distorted, concise, and knuckle-draggingly simple, it screams one word, clearly: POWER. With a noisy sound that is simple yet infectiously driving, the riff lays down the foundation of the the next 2:20 minutes, assuring the listener they are in for a ride they have not yet experienced in 1964. More on this crucially important guitar sound, later.

When the drums and the rhythm join that now legendary guitar sound, it is also jarring and powerful, and even more noisy and unlike anything else that was happening at the time, sonically.  Producer Shel Talmy said, “I used 12 microphones to record the drums – which was unheard of then – so they would sound like they were bouncing off the walls.” Though Talmy was instrumental in pushing this song into the world, he did not create the unique guitar sound.

17-year-old Dave Davies famously cut the speaker cone of one amplifier and then wired it directly through another one to get that fuzzy, distorted sound, which was a more aggressive guitar sound than ever before used on a pop record. Nasty, rattling, broken, noisy, disjointed – it was unsaddled POWER.

The guitar solo also rips and tears out of the speakers with an aggressive sound/style that was seemingly birthed right on the grooves of this record. Though it was long rumored to be someone else playing, it was definitely teen-aged Dave who was setting the bar high with this solo. He attacked his guitar like he was in a street fight, and the result is simply pure rock-and-roll, and the perfect pathway for all who would follow.

It is a little ironic that the Kinks tried, and worked very hard to reach this seemingly sloppy and carefree sound. There was actually nothing sloppy nor care-free about it. There is deft multi-tracking, and carefully specific aural sweetening everywhere. Pure craft.

As noted earlier, You Really Got Me clearly had some stiff chart competition that year. Yet it still managed to rise to number #79 for the US year-end chart (after hitting #7), and claimed the year-end #26 spot in the UK after locking on #1 there for two solid weeks. And though the song was an almost instant hit elsewhere around the world as well  (successfully launching the Kinks as stars), it was definitely over time that the true impact of this song could be seen. Why? POWER.

Without trying, the band and their producer had created a blueprint for contemporaries (like the Who), as well as garage bands and later punk bands to emulate forever. The formula was not terribly complicated: simple and relatable lyrics, driving drums (that sounded like they were bouncing off the walls, perhaps), three to five aggressive sounding power chords and accompanying screaming, street-fight solos, but most of all: passion. Loose approaches to an otherwise tight-assed music scene. Intentional sloppiness, encouraged mayhem…an ability to let a shredded amplifier speaker be a plus, not a minus.

I am not going to get into the travesty that Van Halen later made of this song…though the fact that they could chart with it 14 years after the Kinks did and also launch their own careers, proves that the song itself had some solid mojo as well. Not even the talent-chasing David Lee Roth could hurt it with his goofy, spandex-clad shrieks. The Van Halen version makes author Ray Davies laugh though, so it’s all good. And to be fair, I loved the Van Halen version when I was a kid and it came out – it was an interesting arrangement to be sure.

But to me, the power of this song comes truly from that 1964 recording – there was NOTHING that sounded like it at the time, and it made everyone pay attention. Its raw energy and pure POWER were inspiring, as were the simple chords and no-bullshit lyrics. The sound was an assault – it bounced, and echoed and rubbed the fur against the grain. It was fun, most of all, something so many bands lose sight of in time…even the Kinks.

This song was almost singly responsible for filling garages everywhere full of hopeful, energetic and passionate (if not polished) musicians – ready to go out there, and get some for themselves. That mattered a great deal to the evolution of recorded and performed pop music in general, and happily, the Kinks launched a long, well-deserved career with it, too.

3. Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin, 1971.

Crazy as it sounds, this monumentally popular song was never released as a public single (though there was a label promo released in ’72). A strategy of the band’s to make the public buy the entire album, this 8:02-minute, epically sweeping song remains unlike most things you will ever hear on popular music channels still today. Why? Because the composition itself has movements more similar to a classical piece than to anything common in pop music.

And it’s so long. Most pop songs are (and were) clocking-in around three minutes or less, while this one more than doubled that norm. 8:02? Jeez Louise…that’s almost three songs, stacked.

One thing that definitely helped to push this long-ass song over the hump into mainstream consciousness, was the growing popularity of FM radio. It might even be accurately said that FM’s increasing reach was wholly responsible for this song’s popularity and lasting impact. It was often joked that some FM DJs would play it just so they could go take a pee.

Unlike earlier and later radio stations, FM rock stations in the 60s and 70s were not limited in what they could play, allowing DJs to explore deeper, longer and clearly non-commercial album cuts. ‘Stairway…’ was a an album song custom made for this expanding audience of stereo-band listeners who were also tuned-in and turned-on by songs with increased depth and complexity. This audience was not satisfied with songs about girls and cars, but more often sought songs about mysticism, consciousness and stars…so in this regard, Stairway to Heaven was a perfect fit for the times.

It’s also important to consider the timing of this release, in comparison to other influential yet non-traditional pop works. If you think of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (released, May ’66) followed by the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (released June, ’67) , you can see that the listener’s pump was well primed in ’71for a popular song that bent the rules in production and lyrical depth. The world was ready by 1970, for accepting something more “meaningful”…hungry for it, even.

The Byrds and other L.A.-area bands had taken Dylan’s cue, and led the charge introducing poetry-thru-pop in the early 60s.  By the late 60s (spilling into the 70s), pop songs and albums were filled with additional attempts to break out of pop music’s previous lyrical and structural confines.

‘Stairway…’ was lyrically elegant compared to many other radio hits of ’71, though the lyrics were also scoffed at by many critics as being pretentious. Critics overall were very slow to warm-up to this song, but that is why it is called ‘pop’ music – it is popular no matter what the critics say.

To me, Stairway to Heaven was not really as influential in inspiring musicians to play (like Heartbreak Hotel or I Wanna Hold Your Hand or You Really Got Me were), as it was to the listening public in general. It was a song MADE for headphones, which were increasing in popularity. And weed, which was also popular, but still all full of sticks and seeds back then.

‘Stairway…’ did bring Led Zeppelin to a wider audience for sure; its gentler beginning and overall flow would have interested folks who were not as in-tune with Zep’s more standard, hard-rocking fare up to that point. In more sexist terms, there were some recorders in there, so chicks would dig it.

Led Zeppelin IV was a different type of album for the band at its release, partly because of taking risks in an unconventional song or arrangement like ‘Stairway…’ or ‘Going to California.‘ In time, it was gamble that certainly paid-off handsomely for the group, but it took a while for the true impact of Stairway to Heaven to show. It was not a chart hit, by any means.

I do think however, that the song’s success certainly inspired other bands at the time (especially prog-rockers) to explore more with unique time signatures, sectional movements, and lyrical freedom – think of Bohemian Rhapsody coming out in ’75 for example, and you can see where the collective attention spans in pop were turning. Navel gazing and pomposity in your writing was not frowned upon, it was instead encouraged until punk finally slapped some sense into everyone in ’77.

I honestly think, you had to be around in the 70s to understand the true pervasiveness of this song. It was ubiquitous with FM radio, played multiple times every day on almost every FM rock station across the dial. In readers’ polls anywhere, this song consistently would defy critics, and be rated as “The BEST Song EVER” by the public…it will always rank highly that way, it seems. In the same way it grew to legendary status because it was artistically ambitious, so too, did it become an emblem of bloated 70s corporate rock to punk rockers and new wavers who later musically mopped-up the decade.

To me, both takes on it are true: it is an awesome song and artistically ambitious especially for its time, but it is also every bit a silly, navel-gazing, pretentious pile of monkeyshit that I NEVER have to hear again. Why? Because I was there all through the ’70s, hearing it every day almost everywhere I turned the radio dial. It was one of the first songs we ever tackled in a garage band, if you can believe that…but we were echoing what we heard, like we thought we had to.

Whether I wanted to or not, I had to let this song get all into my world and influence everything…but by the mid-part of the decade, I was already completely over it. It actually made me kinda hate Led Zeppelin for a number of years, which thankfully, has melted completely in time. I don’t even hate this song anymore.

But this song was so much in my face growing-up that I more-or-less turned on a perfectly awesome band, despite loving so much of their other work. So I think I’ve earned my freedom from this song now…I’ve paid my penance.

I do respect it much more now than I did, but I’ll leave it alone for the rest of you to love, honor and cherish. I skip over it on the album, turn the radio to something else if it comes on. I truly never have to hear this song again, ever.  As grand as it is, I must join those critics who tend to see it as super-sissy-ego-lofty-twaddle, despite the talent and power of the band playing it, and the impact it has everywhere. Oops- sue me.

4. Blitzkrieg Bop – The Ramones, 1976

Hey ho, let’s go…the chant from this anthemic song’s drum-driven beginning is well-known by most anyone today. But like Stairway to Heaven, it took many years for Blitzkrieg Bop‘s popularity and impact to be truly appreciated. Unfortunately, by the time the fame and recognition finally happened (and all the residual money, too), about all of the original band members were dead.

‘Cause that’s rock-n-roll, baby!

And this song, played with so much drive, chunka-chunka power and raw intensity, clocks in at just over two minutes. It is essentially the polar opposite of Stairway to Heaven in complexity, delivery, intent and effect.

A smasher with only about four power chords and a wash of distortion, paper-thin drums that are completely unrelenting, lyrics that sound like they are being mumbled from a glue-soaked rag somewhere on a bench in the short bus, Blitzkrieg Bop is like tapping into pure adrenaline while putting an electric shaver in your ear. Acoustic rhythm? Hand claps? Soaring melodies? Bah, humbug. We’ll take the pulsing, semi-retarded sounds of glue sniffing NYC guttersnipes instead, thanks.

While Led Zeppelin’s pop-art-rock stance appealed to many folks in the mid-70s, the Ramones were  the antithesis of that. Ramones fans instead received straight ahead, simple songs played with no fluff, sheer energy and raw power. Distortion, cheap-ass speed and beer, fistfights, leather and sweat. Turned up to 11. Live shows were frenetic, and paced like no other band at the time. Or since, even, to be fair. Kinda like an explosion, these guys were – and Blitzkrieg Bop deftly encapsulates this feeling.

Make no mistake: though these are attacked with an aggressive manner that was unique to the band, at their core the songs the Ramones played were mainly just simple pop songs. 3 chords, boy meets girl and laments. Or, like in this song, a bunch of kids are going to a show and go crazy. The basic stuff of Americana songwriting. Joey truly believed they were going to be the next big thing, because their pop appeal was undeniable.

The Ramones’ songs had more in common with 50’s pop than anything else, but it was also an intentional push away from the Led Zeppelins, glam rock and the disco bands of that time. There was clearly established popular music in 1976, but NONE of it looked or sounded like the Ramones…not by a long shot.

And though I didn’t mention it much about the earlier songs, by 1976, how you looked could certainly impact your record sales. It did for Elvis, it did for Led Zeppelin, it did for so many others too – and the Ramones definitely used image as part of the whole package deal. A distinct “no image” approach actually produced what is now an iconic look to them.

Here again, perspective into time is necessary to clearly understand the actions and their impact. In ’76, the simple look of leather jackets over t-shirts with jeans and boots and long hair was one that was perpetuated by hoodlums, bikers and dock workers. Yet compared to Bowie, Elton, Donna Summer, Kiss, Leo Sayer or any other popular artist at the time, it was a real “fuck you” put there, as far as an artist’s statement. Entertainers in 1976 were supposed to fully look and play the part, after all…and these glue-sniffing goobers from Queens were not playing along nicely…which is the essence of punk.

By ignoring trends and flipping the bird to fashion, the Ramones gave power to a classic look that until then, only greasy rockers like Gene Vincent or Lou Reed had dared to chance in music. And again, as far as lighting a fuse in other kids, it went very far in time, indeed. Rockers ever since can simply don the same look, and a firm, punky ‘fuck you’ is instantly offered to the establishment…it is now understood in a glance: Jeans+tshirt+boots+leather jacket=anti-establishment.

So too, was the innate power and long-term influence of Blitzkrieg Bop.

This song opened the debut album for the band, and when they traveled to UK to perform in their first (and now legendary) show, they singlehandedly lit the fuse for punk rock to explode in the UK, pumping-up the Damned, the Sex Pistols and the Clash with one show.  So in effect, it opened their album, and it also opened up punk rock to the rest of the world.

I would argue, they weren’t really the first punk band, but they were the first ones to bring it so loudly to an audience that needed to hear it…which was really everyone, everywhere. But particularly those kids in the UK, right then.

The Ramones in ’76. They did what they did, and said fuck you to everyone else…they made no apologies. They didn’t even like each other, but played together for years.

…then later, they died.

And after they died, this song of theirs got appropriated by commercial ventures everywhere. It became a staple in stadiums as football, baseball, soccer, and likely even canasta fans tried to focus their energy. “Hey Ho – Let’s Go!”  became as infectious as it was intended, and about 5 years after all of them were dead, it made a ton of money. For someone.

And now that all of the original band members have passed on by, the money still keeps on a-rolling right on in. It has been in movies and TV shows, it has become a commonplace reference in pop culture.

Hey Ho – More Dough.

The original Ramones never even got a sliver of what they truly deserved before they all died. Blitzkrieg Bop is a song that anyone can sing along with now, because it is and was played everywhere, once punk could be bought and sold in the mall and all those scuzzy original band members properly died out of the way.

Maybe it would have been better if they had all died together, like in a flaming clown car accident or in something broken that slid down a mountainside. Instead, mortality crept up on them slowly, like it would to anyone else, Drugs, sickness, and old age just melted them down like sidewalked crayons. Death finally eased into all of the Ramones, and so it was, for ‘the world’s first punk band’ or whatever title truly fits. Gabba gabba hey, and out.

Yet they left the world with a song, a simple legacy.

Blitzkrieg Bop has become an anthem of a generation, and well deserved. It is the song you sing when it is time to raise your fist – be it in celebration, revolution, or pure abandonment. It has become every bit what Joey dreamed it should be.

5. Walk This Way – Run DMC and Aerosmith – 1986

1986 was not a great year in pop music. It wasn’t even a mildly good year, when you look at it closely.

Digital music was in its infancy, and the charts and the dance clubs of the time were echoing it. The drum beats were vapidly simple, the production techniques were over the top and terrible (I’m looking at YOU, Phil Collins), the samples were obvious and ham-fisted, and even the rhymes in the emerging hip-hop music were lacking any kind of true sophistication or rhythmic magnetism.

Hair metal had also just about run its course, and though Bon Jovi and Whitesnake were still charting, grunge was starting to rumble up in Seattle and would soon lay waste to all the leftover lipstick and spandex that the L.A. scene had littered everywhere.

In a word, 1986, musically, was pretty ucky.

This made it a year ripe for something new to come along, and as mentioned, grunge was still in the incubator. Aerosmith was hardly something new to rock and pop music, or even the big hair popular at the time, but they were definitely ready for a rebirth in ’86.

After shifting some band members in-and-out and suffering other drug-stoked mishaps, the original line-up of this 70s arena mainstay had reformed in 1985 and were trying to reconnect to an audience. However, they were not exactly setting the world on fire: their latest record was weak by any measure, and pretty much stalled as soon as it was released. They were old dudes in a young man’s game it seemed.

Hip hop culture was still very young and blossoming in 1986. Though the music was born in NYC in the early 70s, it was finally reaching-out in the early 80s on tiny, regional labels to find more, and wider audiences. Pioneers in the industry were taking chances, and sometimes being rewarded handsomely… but more often, not making much of a dent anywhere. Yet tours and packaged shows were drawing always-bigger crowds, and rap acts like the Fat Boys, Whodini, Grandmaster Flash and more were starting to gain a surging momentum everywhere.

But they were still not very well-known, especially compared to other contemporary musicians.

Run DMC had released two rap/hip hop records by this time, and were working on their third. Producer Rick Rubin was brought on as producer, giving the rappers a harder edge than some of their contemporaries. The samples of rock music and screaming guitar solos they used helped them do pretty well in bringing more people toward hip hop – it was teen-boy bait.

So for this third LP, Aerosmith and Run DMC recorded Walk This Way, Aerosmith’s radio hit from 1975. The song lent itself to Run DMC’s back-n-forth pattered vocal approach, and the inclusion of Aerosmith’s Joe Perry and Steven Tyler was Rubin’s stroke of genius. Of course these old dudes were into something to push them into the spotlight again…but no one knew what an impact this combo was truly going to have.

You have to think of how 1986 was, compared to now. Music videos, still in their relative infancy, were having their glory days as the new medium was putting television screens EVERYWHERE. Bars were getting screens to show more than occasional sports or local news programs. MTV, which was not even yet 5 years old, was incredibly popular – able to break new bands and shape influence like never before. Money was flowing, and videos were the way to spend, and make more of it. MTV and video music were everything, in 1986.

Run DMC and Perry/Tyler made a video for Walk This Way – which when viewed and evaluated by today’s standards, is pretty goofy. However, at the time, it had an amazing impact – it exploded this song, and with it, the careers of Run DMC, reborn Aerosmith, and so many hip hop performers after them. Why? Suburban white kids were immediately buying the shit out of it – they couldn’t get enough. It crossed over – it was the magic ingredient needed to bring hip hop out to the masses.

The use of a well-known rock staple was perfect to bring hip hop out to Tommy Teenager – and Tommy had lots of money to spend. His girlfriend Tammy was spending all of her money on Madonna and Janet Jackson at the time, but now hip hop was going to be pouring out of the speakers in Buicks, Rabbits and muscle cars everywhere…

I was working in a record store when this came out, a senior in high school. Because I worked there, we already knew about rap and Run DMC before this record was released (hip hop was coined years later) – and a couple of my co-workers were wiggling all over with how much they loved Raising Hell and Walk This Way when they came out. Not me, so much.

As a punky drummer then, I hated drum machines a LOT and early hip hop drum programming could’ve all been done by 10-year-olds, to me…this was no exception, even with Aerosmith in it. But I was not like my contemporary 18-year-old boys in this regard – not hardly. Most 18 year olds were finding something new and exciting here – hip hop was for everyone now, not just the hip kids in the inner cities. Tommy and Tammy Teenager were buying cassettes by the truckload, and suburban tastes were changing.

Raising Hell was the first rap (hip hop) record to go platinum, which happened in only three months from its release.

The impact was huge, and lasting. Big labels immediately saw the dough to be made, and quickly got in on the act. Tours and venues opened up to bring more acts to more folks – for no longer, was a band needed to have a show: people were singing over backing tapes, and for the first time in history, not being clobbered for it. DJs were making names for themselves, spinning and mixing other people’s work. Clubs were increasing their opportunities and profit margins by reducing the overhead in delivering live entertainment. Local/regional cultures flourished.

It was a different world emerging with different rules, more players, and whole new ideas to drive the entertainment bus for a while.

You would have had to be around BEFORE this song broke, to understand how it affected the cultures of both heavy metal kids (who now allowed hip hop to be cool, too) and hip hoppers (who saw ‘opportunity’ as a reality, suddenly and wholly redefine itself). Hip hop going mainstream changed everything.

And while it was such an impactful and influential song, I think Steven Tyler’s performance on it should have been scrapped until he could’ve done it better – it sounds awful to me still today. Ucky. It did then, too – I never really understood the appeal of him sloppily croaking and screeching on it. I’ll take other Aerosmith, thanks. I also liked Run DMC’s earlier stuff much more than this song, and liked other rap stuff a lot more than Run DMC. But hip hop and rap were not going to wait for someone like me to get on-board…there were plenty of other teen boys ready to buy-in. The crossover train had clearly left the station, and it was a bullet train headed straight to Cashtown.

After this song blew-up everything in ’86, the genie was surely out of the bottle, and popular music and entertainment culture would be forever changed…allowing it to grow in much stronger and more confident ways while also closing a different chapter of it forever.  The proverbial blessing and curse, rolled into one. Happily, it has been a LOT more good than bad coming out, over time…things got much more interesting later on, for sure.

Hip hop today, hardly resembles the bare-bones simplistic stuff illustrated by Walk This Way and the ilk of ’86 – and I say, that is a GREAT thing for all of us. Classic rap stuff is pretty goofy by today’s standards, and it was so back then to me as well. But it had to start somewhere, and it is hard to argue that it did not find a major part of its blossom with the release of this single and its accompanying video.

6. Wild Thing – Tone Loc, 1989

It may seem strange that in a list of of otherwise influential artists, I included Tone Loc (Anthony Terrell Smith). The reason I did so, is not because I think that his music or his style influenced anyone, ever. I don’t even think of him as necessarily talented – he was simply in the right place at the right time.  However, to me his recording of Wild Thing was a very important moment in the music industry as a whole, and for hip hop specifically.

It is important to go back to consider the time when this record was released. Hip hop was still called rap, and was just gaining some of the economic power it would soon command. Run DMC had broken through in ’86 with the first rap song to be a million-plus-seller, so other independents, and most major labels were anxious to horn-in on that lucrative action, too.

Gangsta rap was bubbling up, putting the scare into parents and driving kids crazy for it. The PMRC was still raging a bit, and new advisory labels were appearing on records and tapes…there was much uproar over whether or not record stores should be selling stuff to minors (I ended up losing my record store manager’s job over this issue, but that is another story).

And while the major labels were certainly getting into the action, there was a lot of stuff from the independents that would catch hold in a club, and take-off – 2 Live Crew, or Young MC definitely come to mind here for me. I sold the shit out of their 12 inch singles, and the only place you could hear them, was in dance clubs – they were not found on any radio stations then.

So in 1989, Tone Loc was on Delicious Vinyl, which was a new independent label out of L.A. Delicious Vinyl was signing a bunch of emerging rap artists, and finding almost immediate success – including Tone Loc’s first single in ’87, On Fire/Cheeba Cheeba. But then they released Wild Thing for him in ’88, and it all went a little crazy.

The single was an IMMEDIATE smash – it was flying off the shelves faster than anything…it was like a Michael Jackson or a Bruce Springsteen thing. I remember having to get huge drop shipments from Delicious Vinyl to try to keep up with demand, because in every format (vinyl, 12 inch, and even/especially the short-lived cassingle) this song was simply crushing it. It was hard to keep in stock, and it crossed all social strata in terms of who bought it.

The difference between the success here, and that of Run DMC a few years prior, is that this was a tiny, independent label suddenly having a HUGE breakout hit. The units moved were staggering, and the money being made was all going to this tiny label – not to one of the big guys to be trickled down, like it did for Run DMC and everyone else.

To me, this was an eye-opener in the record industry: people took notice that this tiny label had this huge success, and was self producing everything. It inspired the majors to try to block them out and sign and control more hip hop artists, and it inspired more independents to pursue their own vision. The combo punch of these two things, made hip hop grow quickly and continue to mature ever-onward.

But to me, the real impact of this recording was not the impact of an independent making a huge hit, but more in the way the song was created.

Like so many of the early rap and hip hop songs, since a sampler was introduced, it was taking out fairly obvious swatches of known records to use as a foundation on which to build new music. It was certainly common for the audience in the early days of rap to listen closely and try to pick-out the specific records being sampled. Usually, it was easy to hear where they came from, and artists were brazenly grabbing whatever they wanted to riff on a new song idea.

The guys at Delicious Vinyl were fond of a trick that Rick Rubin had been pioneering, which was using well known rock records as the sampled foundation of a new song. Wild Thing used the guitar riff and drum fill from Van Halen’s popular Jamie’s Crying, and it was a sound that certainly helped this song to resonate through teen-aged suburbia and reach its success.

When the record was being made, it is reported that the label paid Van Halen’s management a flat fee of $5000 to use the sample. This was pretty standard practice for those record producers who actually informed the original artists that sampling was occurring – but just as common (maybe even more so at this time), was that the sample was simply used with no credit or attribution, and no monetary consideration to the originator. So Delicious Vinyl was doing the right thing by proactively paying Van Halen reps for the material they borrowed.

But like I said before, this song was a MASSIVE hit, which took everyone by surprise. There was a HUGE pile of money that came from it almost instantly, and none of it went to a major label. The video only cost $500 to make, and was being played everywhere. So the members of Van Halen decided they wanted a bigger chunk of the pie, and went back after the Delicious Vinyl guys in a civil suit.

Delicious Vinyl ended up settling out of court for $180,000 – which meant a lot more in 1989 than it does today. It was a huge sum of money, and it was a case that everyone in the music industry was watching closely – its results, would resonate and ultimately change things.

After the court case, rappers and hip hop artists started being much more selective and judicious in the use of samples. They were giving credit, paying original rights holders, and going about things in a much more intentional and respectful (as well as professional) manner, overall. While the origins of rap and hip hop saw the widespread and unadulterated use of other people’s work to get started, from this moment on, things started to morph and change more deliberately.

A great example of this, is in the rise of Dr. Dre in L.A. at this time. Rather than relying so much on just obviously sampled records, Dre and his artists were also playing instruments to augment a more selected (and less demanding) set of source samples. They used bits of works that did not require huge financial kickbacks (like Parliment and Funkadelic and older jazz records), and brought the whole genre a new direction to emulate.

Sampling as a practice did not slow down by any means, but after seeing Delicious Vinyl pay out Van Halen, people were certainly more aware of potential consequences, and approached it differently. This same year, Vanilla Ice put out Ice Ice Baby with an even more egregious use of unaccredited sampling, and after some legal proceedings, he had to dole out a bunch of cash and change the songwriting credits of his song. Within a couple years, more lawsuits  and larger payouts would clearly define how samples could be taken and used, and the new rules rightly modified behavior.

So again, the song Wild Thing is certainly no masterpiece of pop music. I find it just as irritating to hear now, as I did when I was putting out a million of them on the shelves and selling them out just as quickly…I never understood its popularity and don’t consider it much of anything, certainly not much of a song. However, the impact it had when it was released helped to change the direction and the future of popular music ever-afterward, and that is pretty impressive for any radar-blip or fifteen-minute author to claim.