10 Perfect Songs That Started Hard Rock

When the British Invasion was just getting started, the traditional rock single tended to be simple and to the point. All you needed was a good hook to reel people in, have a decent guitar driving everything forward, and you'd get in and out of there in just a little under 3 minutes. The Beatles may have seemed clean cut around this time, but the Kinks were looking to get a little bit more nasty on You Really Got Me.

Which is strange because the original version of this song wasn't meant to be proto-hard rock or anything like that. When Ray Davies started to write the song, he had envisioned a horn section playing the original lick, until his brother decided to take things in a bit of a different direction. Sticking to the power chords that he was learning at the time, the gamechanger was what happened once he plugged into his amp after cutting it with a razorblade, making for a sound that felt like the guitar was snarling out of the speakers.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity, this ode to infatuation turned into something a lot more carnal on this track, making it a garage band staple and being reinvented decades later when Van Halen brought it to stadium like proportions all around the world. The future of the Kinks may have been in the lush environments of songs like Waterloo Sunset, but we could all take a few cues from the more stone age sounds of rock and roll.