“Knockin' on Heaven's Door” by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan wrote "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" in 1973 for the soundtrack of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and it went out as a single a couple of months after the film opened. It became a hit around the world and one of the most popular and most performed songs of his later years.

There's almost nothing to it, and that's the point: two short verses that speak straight to the scene it was written for, a dying frontier lawman, played by Slim Pickens, talking to his wife as the light goes. Dylan sings it slow and plain over a gently swaying groove, letting the repeated chorus do the mourning. In 2004 Rolling Stone put it on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.