Algorithm
Muse's Simulation Theory opener imagines an intelligence realizing it lives inside a system built by someone else -- a theme that got an uncomfortably literal real-world sequel eight years later.
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Rock
Greatest of All Time!Dreams
Fleetwood Mac's only Hot 100 No. 1 had been off the charts for 43 years when a skateboarder drinking cranberry juice to it on TikTok sent it back into the top 10 in 2020.
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Greatest of All Time!Nights in White Satin
Throwback Thursday, 1967: a keyboard built to imitate a real orchestra, doing most of the work a real orchestra gets credited for.
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Greatest of All Time!Show Me the Way
Throwback Thursday, 1976: a guitar signal routed through a plastic tube and a Nashville pedal-steel player's decade-old trick, turned into rock's most recognizable talking instrument.
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Greatest of All Time!Walk This Way
Run-D.M.C. covered a fading rock band's decade-old album cut in 1986 and accidentally revived both careers at once -- 40 years later, it's still the template for hip-hop/rock crossover.
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Greatest of All Time!White Wedding
'White Wedding' needed several chart runs to become a hit -- bubbling under in 1982, No. 36 on the Hot 100 in 1983, No. 6 in the UK in 1985 -- for a song Billy Idol built on his sister's shotgun wedding.
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