10. Twisted Sister – “We’re Not Gonna Take It”
Possessing the greatest guitar solo in the history of recorded music (which is literally just the melody again with two bent notes), setting this vicious anti-establishment anthem on “Easy” would finally allow infants and animals to play the game.
9. LL Cool J – “Going Back to Cali”
Because hip-hop is a relatively new phenomenon, you’re going to have to sort of explain it to people; the green button plays the word “fly,” red is “fresh,” blue is “Cali,” yellow is “romancin’,” orange is “I’m rappin’,” and the whammy bar increases the size of your Adidas sweatsuit.
8. Pixies – “Debaser”
Two minutes of sheer brute force, padded by a five-minute game-added solo to keep it from (god forbid) being under seven minutes long. Also, after you finish the song, another character in the game rips you off and becomes a whole lot more popular, then kills himself, then reappears in the 2009 PS3 game “Guitar Hero Rocks Every Top 100 List Ever Made.” You then get really fat.
7. Kenny Loggins – Movie Medley
A rapid-fire assault of unforgettable 80s opening-sequence themes, opening with “Danger Zone” into “I’m Alright” into “Footloose” and then closing with “Danny’s Song,” which wasn’t in a movie, but, you know, who doesn’t like “Danny’s Song?”
6. Soft Cell – “Tainted Love”
There aren’t really any guitars in this song, but having it in the game would allow you to listen to a decent sound-alike of a tune everybody enjoys, and as long as you don’t play any notes, you get 100%.
5. The Replacements – “I Will Dare”
As you’re playing this jangly, upbeat alternative rocker, an actual 80s college begins to form around you; if you manage to five-star it on Expert, your character then literally attends the University of Minnesota for four years, which occurs in the game in real time, though if you’re connected online, you can swap R.E.M. and Hüsker Dü LPs with other students.
4. Miller/Boyette Productions – “Perfect Strangers” Theme Song
Got a problem with friends of yours who just don’t ‘get’ Guitar Hero? Well, everyone from our generation ‘gets’ “Perfect Strangers,” and merely reminding people of the show’s existence will allow them to play the game shamelessly under protection of a pseudo-ironic nostalgia force field. If you add the joke “In Mypos, there is only one button and it is grey,” everyone in the room will sleep with you.
3. Sonic Youth – “Total Trash”
This seminal late-80s alt-rock classic really encapsulates the simultanously angst-driven and apathetic teenage culture produced by the decade of excess, complete with an intentionally meandering verse structure and haphazard lyrics. Hitting the orange button skips to the next song.
2. Wyld Stallyns – Vaguely Futuristic Song From “Excellent Adventure”
Granted, it’ll only be a sound-alike, so it won’t actually alter the course of human society, but Wyld Stallyns embodies everything pure and good about a decade largely marred by material excess. Plus if you beat it on Expert, you unlock Dave Beethoven’s crazy keyboard demonstration outside the music store, but playing the song will get you inexplicably arrested.
1. Michael Jackson – The entire “Thriller” Video
You thought “Jordan” was a challenge? Try choreographing a multitude of zombies through a seven-minute dance break using just four buttons (red is reserved for Vincent Price’s narration). Also, all the stuff online about being able to unlock “child molesting,” “baby shaking,” and “elephant man skeleton owning” tracks are only internet rumors. But you can actually marry Priscilla Presley.
