Most influential rock songs

Maybelline

"Black Sabbath," by Black Sabbath. This song is the point where Metal became a branch off the Rock and Roll tree. You can virtually trace the entire lineage of the genre of Heavy Metal -- and specifically the subgenres of sludge, doom, and stoner rock -- to the first song of the first album from the blues-rockers, Black Sabbath. The clashing thunder; the pouring rain; the tolling bell; the flatted fifth (the Devil's Interval)......"What is this that stands before me?"

"Foxy Lady" by Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix didn't invent the dominant 7th sharp 9th chord, but his use of it starting with "Foxy Lady" ensured forevermore that, despite it's popularity in rock, it would be known as the "Hendrix chord."

"Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (aka Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm). Experts have pointed at many records as being the "First Rock and Roll Record." But "Rocket 88" is perhaps the most accepted. Possibly the first recorded distorted amplification of a guitar.

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"Black Sabbath," by Black Sabbath. This song is the point where Metal became a branch off the Rock and Roll tree.

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Good point. I'd call Blue Cheer a sort of metal precursor, popular several years before Sabbath recorded. However, the big Sabbath difference--and distinction from all other bands of the period--is the emphasis on deviltry ("Black Sabbath"), mental disintegration ("Paranoid") and apocalypse ("War Pigs") that formed the core of their music. A very welcomed, if bracing, change from the sentiments of hippie music.

Johnny B Goode - got to be near the top of the list
Smoke on the Water - the riff every aspiring rock guitarist learned
The entire Beatles catalog

Cliche as hell, but the song that REALLY got me into rock.....

Smells like teen spirit


Heard it for the first time in the summer between 5th and 6th grade. We had a great, albeit short lived, radio station that played it a good bit. That, Enter Sandman, Self Esteem, Spoonman, Dammit (hey...they were popular at the time), RHCP....all sorts of good 90s shite with some modern thrown in. Imagine "The Buzz" compilations as a radio station. I actually ended up winning an early release copy of By The Way by RHCP on that station.

Gouge Away - Pixies

"I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it. When I heard the Pixies for the first time, I connected with that band so heavily that I should have been in that band—or at least a Pixies cover band. We used their sense of dynamics, being soft and quiet and then loud and hard." - Kurt Cobain

First song that really caught my attention - "Black Diamond" on Kiss Alive...I was 9 and thought the energy was amazing. My friends thought the only real music was AM radio. The first album that blew me away was A Night at the Opera/Queen.

The Beatles "I Feel Fine" - One of the first songs ever to intentionally utilize feedback.

The Kinks "You Really Got Me" - While not the first ever documented case of distortion, it is the first to demonstrate the power which can be generated from an overdriven guitar sound.

Video Killed the Radio Star- The Buggles