10 Perfect Rock Songs That Don't Have Any Lyrics

In the stone age of rock and roll, fans didn't really concern themselves with what the artists had to say. Even though Chuck Berry ended up writing some of the greatest bite sized stories in rock and roll, the primary focus was just to keep the good times rolling while the rest of the party got started in the background. When things shifted to surf music though, Dick Dale's take on the traditional song Misirlou was one of the heaviest riffs that the rock scene had heard at the time.

Then again, that's not really saying much these days, since we've all gotten used to the sounds of metal on the charts every now and again. For the time though, hearing this kind of grimy guitar sound banging out every note was a bit of a change of pace, going up and down the scales and creating something that sounded a lot more exotic than the kind of 12 bar blues that most of us were used to out of our rock stars.

Whereas people like Jerry Lee Lewis and even Elvis Presley were making songs that had some power behind them, they were still rooted in the kind of traditional sounds that everyone else was doing. By the standards of rock, Dale had hit upon something different, and the surfers were in for a big surprise. Wipe Out may be the safer pick, but this was the beginnings of what the darker side of rock and roll had to offer.