“The Final Countdown” by Europe

"The Final Countdown" launched Europe out of Sweden and around the world in 1986, the first single and title track of the album that shares its name, and the band weren't even sure about it. Singer Joey Tempest had built it on a keyboard riff he wrote back in the early '80s, a long way from the harder, guitar-driven sound they'd been making, and he took his lyrical cue from David Bowie's "Space Oddity".

That riff is pure arena pomp, a fanfare that doesn't know the meaning of restraint, and the song became a global hit anyway. Nick Morris directed the video, which has since passed 1.4 billion views on YouTube, and the band picked up the story three decades on: "Pictures", from 2017's Walk the Earth, is its sequel.

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