“Search And Destroy” by The Stooges

The Stooges cut "Search and Destroy" for Raw Power, their third album, in 1973, with Iggy Pop and James Williamson sharing the writing credit. Pop borrowed the title from a Time magazine column heading on the Vietnam War, which suits a song this full of scorched-earth menace.

David Bowie mixed the original release. In 1997 Pop and Bruce Dickinson went back and remixed and remastered it with the rest of the album, and what came out was far nastier and pared right down. Proto-punk, garage rock, hard rock, even glam: it's been called all of them. Rolling Stone placed it at 468 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004, and VH1 named it the 49th best hard rock song ever in 2009.

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