“Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple

Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water", from the 1972 album Machine Head, is hard rock as reportage: it tells the true story of the fire that swept the Montreux Casino in Switzerland in 1971, set to a riff as blunt and sturdy as a brick.

All five members share the writing credit, and you can hear all five pulling their weight. Ritchie Blackmore's electric guitar carries the riff, Jon Lord's Hammond organ growls right alongside it, Roger Glover's bass and Ian Paice's drums lock the groove down like a pile driver, and Ian Gillan tells the tale like a man reading out the news with his sleeves rolled up. The band produced it themselves, with Martin Birch at the desk as engineer.

It became their signature song, and the list-makers have never let it go: Total Guitar ranked the riff number 4 among the greatest ever, Q slotted the track at number 12 of its 100 greatest guitar tracks in March 2005, Rolling Stone had it at 434 in its 2004 roll call of the 500 greatest songs, and in 2017 it went into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

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