10 Famous Rock Songs Written So Fast You Won't Believe
Whenever somebody tells you not to rush, show them this list and that should shut them up.
Writing great music is no easy feat. You only have to have a quick glance at today's charts to realise that.
Songwriting is a challenging, emotional task. You must look deep inside yourself to find the perfect lyrics, spend hours messing around on an instrument to find the perfect chords, and then spend even more time attempting to intricately piece it all together.
Or, if you're any of this lot, you just bash something out in a couple of minutes and it becomes a worldwide hit.
The following ten songs are all massively popular and were all conceived in about the time it takes to watch an episode of Succession.
We're not saying that they went from an idea to the finished article in that time - that would be impossible. However, a lot of these first drafts weren't all that different from the released version and they were all created in under an hour.
Hopefully you enjoy this list and it doesn't make you regret all the time you spent playing Angry Birds when you could have been cranking out hit singles.
Shame on all of you.
10. That’s Entertainment - The Jam
You know that picture of the different stages of human evolution? Well, The Jam are whatever bit comes between The Beatles and Oasis.
Heavily inspired by both the mod movement of the 1960s and the contemporary punk scene, The Jam presented a more radio friendly version of the young lads with mohawks screaming about how much they hated Thatcher.
One of their most successful and beloved songs is 1980's That's Entertainment, from the album Sound Affects. No, that's not a typo, it's just a very clever title.
The song reflects on the humdrum nature of every day working class life with Jam frontman Paul Weller musing on such topics as cold flats, boring Mondays, and feeding the ducks.
Yep, that's Britain summed up right there.
Weller said in an interview that he wrote the song in "10 mins flat" and that he was able to do this because he was drawing inspiration from his own life. The actual music of the song is pretty straightforward, so it's no surprise that he was able to bash it out in such a short space of time.
That's not a dig, by the way. This song rules.