Aside from love, one of the ripest sources of lyrical inspiration for popular music is, you guessed it, Satan. Tales of the devil have provided endless material and resulted in some of history's most memorable songs across nearly all genres: country (Charlie Daniels "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"), jam (Grateful Dead "Friend of the Devil"), pop (INXS "Devil Inside"), rap (Three 6 Mafia "Long Nite"), rock (Van Halen "Runnin' With the Devil"), Christian (Stryper "To Hell With the Devil"), blues (Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues") and, of course, metal. The subject has been mined so deeply, and produced so many standout tracks, that we were having trouble reaching consensus as to which song is the single best representation of the form. So we asked you to weigh in. Below, are the ranked results.
5. Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven" (Played Backwards)
Evangelical Christian groups have a long history of "discovering" hidden Satanic messages in popular rock songs — ranging from the Eagles' "Hotel California" to Queens' "Another One Bites the Dust" — that only reveal themselves when the blasphemous track is played backwards. By far the most famous of the purported devil-worshipping tracks is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," which was unexpectedly thrust back into the spotlight in the early Eighties (nearly a decade after its original release) when televangelist Paul Crouch asserted that the section beginning with line "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow" was actually a cover-up for a reversed demonic valentine that finds singer Robert Plant proclaiming: "Oh here's to my sweet Satan/The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan/He will give those with him 666/There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan." Years later, in an interview with Musician Magazine, the band's guitarist Jimmy Page deemed Crouch's allegations "very sad," going on to remark, "as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that's not my idea of making music." Bummer.
4. Behemoth "O Father O Satan O Sun!"
Look, if you're an extreme-metal band that bases their entire output around the dark lord Satan, you better be the best at what you're doing. Luckily, blackened-death metal band Behemoth are one of the finest in their lane, and "O Father O Satan O Sun!" — from their appropriately titled 2014 album The Satanist — is an absolute crusher of a song. In the song's darkness, it's able to find room for plenty of kick-ass guitar solos, spoken word sections, and pure enlightened evil.
3. Iron Maiden "The Number of the Beast"
Can you imagine how many teens in 1982 started scrawling 666 all over their text books after Iron Maiden released "The Number of the Beast"? Not only was it the best possible vehicle for Bruce Dickinson's introduction to the metal world at large as Iron Maiden's new singer, to this day it remains one of the band's greatest songs. After a truly memorable and instantly recognizable spoken-word intro (cribbed from Revelation 12:12 and 13:18), the band catapults into a straight-up riff fest, wherein Dickinson is able to weave between both sinister and triumphant vocals. Who knew hailing Satan could be so much fun?
2. The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards penned this brilliant ode to the devil for the Stones' classic 1968 record Beggars Banquet. Written in first-person narrative style from the perspective of Satan himself, the lyrics recount tales of the "man of wealth and taste" as he surreptitiously travels through human history and influences some of its darkest moments: from the death of Christ and the bloody Russian Revolution to the Holocaust and the Kennedys' assassination. The chill-as-fuck samba rhythm and conga drums lay a perfectly decadent bed for the Stones' sordid tale (accented throughout by shrill, spine-tingling lead guitar work), which has inspired many spirited covers by other artists, including Motörhead, Janes Addiction, Guns N' Roses, and, naturally, Ozzy Osbourne.
1. Black Sabbath "Black Sabbath"
Is it the ominous bell? Or Ozzy's "Oh no no please god no" cackle? Or the rain samples? Tony Iommi's doomed riff? There is no one thing on the classic Black Sabbath track that you can pinpoint as the root of all evil, but the parts all contribute to create one giant, red, pitchforked and horned whole. There are very few songs that existed before "Black Sabbath" that could immediately send chills up the spine quite like this song — and in the close to 50 years since its release, there haven't been many more, either. And to answer Ozzy's super foreboding question that opens the song: what stands before you is one of the greatest songs ever made. And definitely the scariest.
