“Smokin'” by Boston

"Smokin'" rode along on Boston's 1976 debut album, and it first reached listeners as the flip side of the band's first single, "More Than a Feeling". Unlike most of that record, it wasn't Tom Scholz's work alone: the guitarist and bandleader wrote it with Brad Delp, the singer he had recently hired, one of just two album songs Scholz didn't write solo.

Its roots go back to Scholz's basement in the early '70s, years before any record deal. A 1973 version called "Shakin" survives from the Mother's Milk Sessions, and that tape shows the song once meant something else entirely. Critics split on it: Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times dismissed it as flat, uninspired ZZ Top-style boogie, but rock radio adopted it as a staple, and in 2008 the Arizona Daily Star's Kevin Smith called it a radio standard.

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