Throwback Thursday: Ten Genres, Ten Decisions That Could Have Gone the Other Way
Launching Throwback Thursday with ten records across ten genres and fifty-four years — each one famous for a call that very nearly went differently.
By Song Reviews · August 20, 2026
What Throwback Thursday Is
Every Thursday, Song Reviews looks backward: one short retrospective per major genre, deliberately jumping between decades instead of camping in one. These entries are not graded. The artists we cover on a Thursday are settled business — the argument about whether the record is good ended before most of our readers were born — so the Review Score box carries the Song.Reviews mark and the words Greatest of All Time! rather than a number, on every Thursday entry, every week. The writing still has to earn its place. “This is great” is not a piece of criticism.
Today’s Run
Ten genres, ten records, fifty-four years:
| Genre | Year | Record |
|---|---|---|
| Jazz | 1959 | So What — Miles Davis |
| Country | 1963 | Ring of Fire — Johnny Cash |
| Soul / R&B | 1968 | I Heard It Through the Grapevine — Marvin Gaye |
| Reggae | 1974 | No Woman, No Cry — Bob Marley & The Wailers |
| Rock | 1976 | Hotel California — Eagles |
| Metal / Hard Rock | 1980 | Crazy Train — Ozzy Osbourne |
| Pop / New Wave | 1985 | Take On Me — a-ha |
| Hip-Hop | 1994 | Juicy — The Notorious B.I.G. |
| Grunge | 1994 | Black Hole Sun — Soundgarden |
| Electronic / Dance | 2013 | Get Lucky — Daft Punk |
What Connects Them
Nothing about genre, era, or nationality. What these ten share is that every one of them is famous for a decision that could very easily have gone the other way — and in several cases nearly did.
- Somebody said no first. Motown’s quality-control board rejected Marvin Gaye’s “Grapevine” and buried it on an album; radio DJs overruled the label. a-ha released “Take On Me” three times across roughly a year before anything happened. Anita Carter recorded “Ring of Fire” first, and it went nowhere until Johnny Cash added trumpets he’d heard in a dream.
- Somebody chose the harder version. Don Henley made Felder and Walsh play the ending exactly as demoed instead of the better thing they were improvising. Daft Punk hired Nile Rodgers to actually play the part rather than sample it. Miles Davis removed the chord changes instead of adding more.
- Somebody hired the wrong-sounding person. A fired Ozzy Osbourne took on a classically trained guitar teacher, which is why the most recognisable riff in metal moves like an étude. Puff Daddy put a Brooklyn death-obsessed debut single over a soft 1983 R&B record and got mocked for it.
- Somebody hid the real subject. Chris Cornell put dread inside a lullaby and never explained it. Bob Marley put his name off a song so the royalties would keep a Trench Town soup kitchen open.
Ten canonical records, and not one of them was inevitable. That’s the argument Throwback Thursday exists to make.