Johnny B. Goode

Chuck Berry’s 1958 single is the founding document of rock guitar — its opening riff has been the first thing teenage guitarists learn to play for 65 years. When NASA launched the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 with a golden record representing human civilization, ‘Johnny B. Goode’ was one of 27 tracks chosen as humanity’s musical ambassadors to the cosmos. Faster than the average rock debut, its riff is copied by 2 million beginners annually, and it remains the only song on this list to have left Earth’s orbit.