AC/DC Best Songs Ever – The Top 10 Songs, Ranked!

Australia has a lot of musical icons, like the Bee Gees, INXS, Cold Chisel, and Kylie Minogue, but few acts have dominated the international stage like AC/DC, who have been sending their unique brand of high-voltage rock ‘n’ roll all over the world for almost 50 years. So, out of the 16 studio albums and thousands of songs that Acca Dacca has made since 1973, what are their biggest hits? This list ranks the top 10 songs by AC/DC.

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Ac/Dc Songs: #10 It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll) (1975)

How do you even begin to explain the song that has become the anthem of struggling musicians all over the world? The famous bagpipe call and response shows that both lead singer Bon Scott and the band’s founders, the Young brothers, are of Scottish descent. “It’s a long way to the shops if you want a sausage roll” is an Australian schoolyard song that makes fun of this. And then there’s that famous music video where they were riding around Melbourne on the back of a flatbed truck and making a lot of noise (fun fact: in 2004, a nearby laneway was named after the band as a tribute).

Ac/Dc Songs: #9. Jailbreak (1976)

Like much of AC/early DC’s work, Jailbreak wasn’t heard outside of Australia for years after it came out. The single wasn’t rushed into US stores until the early 1980s, after the band’s international breakthrough album Back in Black, which came after Bon Scott’s tragic death in 1980. All in the name of liberty!, a story about a failed prison break that was set in Australia, was a big hit with local audiences.

Ac/Dc Songs: #8. T.N.T. (1975)

Acca Dacca were chanting “Oi! Oi! Oi!” years before British punks did, led by guitarist Angus Young, whose croaky grunts were as much of a trademark as his duckwalk and sweaty schoolboy uniform. This explosive song has the dirty, blue-collar sound that AC/DC is known for. It has been a crowd favorite at concerts for more than 40 years.

Ac/Dc Songs: #7. Whole Lotta Rosie (1977)

This song is not safe for work or school. Bon Scott’s long list of lovers is told in dozens of AC/DC songs, but none of them are as popular as Rosie, a big woman who surprises Bon with her skill and energy in bed. When they play live, the crowd chants “Angus!” as soon as they hear that energetic riff, and there’s also a huge inflatable Rosie that, well, doesn’t really have a name.

Ac/Dc Songs: #6. Hells Bells (1980)

The first thing you hear on the Back in Black album is the sound of church bells. This is a sound that both mourns Bon Scott’s death just a few months earlier and welcomes a new era for the band with new frontman Brian Johnson. Back in Black, which is more radio-friendly, was AC/big DC’s commercial breakthrough overseas. It sold 50 million copies, which made it the second best-selling album of all time, behind only Michael Jackson’s Thriller. It all started with the song “Hells Bells.”

Ac/Dc Songs: #5. Thunderstruck (1990)

The rest of the 1980s were terrible for AC/DC. Drummer Phil Rudd was fired in 1983 after he got into a fight with Malcolm Young, and critics didn’t like Blow Up Your Video, Fly on the Wall, or Flick of the Switch because they didn’t live up to Johnson’s debut album, Back in Black. But the band got back on track with 1990’s The Razor’s Edge. The album opened with Thunderstruck, a fast-paced song that sounds just as electric as its name suggests.

Ac/Dc Songs: #4. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (1976)

Maybe record executives thought the subject matter was too gruesome for puritanical American ears, because this great song about a cheap hitman didn’t come out in the US until 1981, five years after it came out in Australia. It took the huge success of Back in Black to get it there. Even though the song has violent lyrics, live performances of it these days are more funny than scary.

Ac/Dc Songs: #3. You Shook Me All Night Long (1980)

If a song about a hitman made the executives at the record labels feel queasy, this cheeky song about a different kind of dirty deeds would have given them hives. Even though the lyrics are a bit racy (“She told me to come, but I was already there”), this song is by far AC/biggest DC’s radio hit because it’s easier to tap your toes to than a lot of the band’s earlier, harder music.

Ac/Dc Songs: #2. Highway To Hell (1979)

It may take a long time to get to the top, but things aren’t always great when you get there. Angus Young called AC/hard DC’s touring schedule in the late 1970s a “highway to hell,” which inspired this classic song. The lyrics “No stop signs, speed limits, nobody’s going to slow me down” took on a darker tone when Bon Scott was found dead in a friend’s car in London just a few months later. He had died of acute alcohol poisoning.

Ac/Dc Songs: #1. Back In Black (1980)

If this isn’t the most famous guitar riff in rock history, it has to be in the top three, and that’s not the only reason Back in Black is AC/biggest DC’s hit. The title track of their hugely successful comeback album after Bon Scott’s death was the band’s way of paying tribute to their late frontman. Cats eyes. Abusing all of them and running wild,” but also by showing that the band still had a lot of life in it with a new lead singer who could fill Bon’s big shoes.

Topic: AC/DC Best Songs Ever – The Top 10 Songs, Ranked!

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