BEST OF THE BAND

Music / Songs / Songs A-Z

Every Essential Band Song, Explained Track by Track

Ten studio albums, three live records, and a handful of songs that outgrew all of them. This is the full index. Start with whichever song you came here for.

Music from Big Pink (1968)

  1. Tears of Rage, the Dylan and Manuel co-write that opens the album
  2. Chest Fever, Garth Hudson's organ showcase, later known live as The Genetic Method
  3. We Can Talk, three singers trading lines at once
  4. Long Black Veil, the one true cover on the record
  5. The Weight, the song that outgrew the band that wrote it
  6. I Shall Be Released, Manuel's falsetto closing the album

Full album details, personnel, and chart data are on the Music from Big Pink page.

The Band (1969)

  1. Across the Great Divide, the album's loose, rambling overture
  2. Rag Mama Rag, the group's best-ever UK chart single
  3. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Robertson's Civil War masterpiece
  4. Up on Cripple Creek, the band's highest-charting single ever
  5. Whispering Pines, Manuel's most haunting ballad
  6. King Harvest (Has Surely Come), a farmer, a union, and one of the group's best songs

Full album details, personnel, and chart data are on the-band album page.

Stage Fright (1970)

  1. The Shape I'm In, Manuel's exhausted, self-lacerating turn
  2. Stage Fright, Danko's vocal on a song about the terror of performing
  3. The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show, Helm's childhood Arkansas, put to music

Full album details, personnel, and chart data are on the Stage Fright page.

Cahoots (1971)

  1. Life Is a Carnival, the start of the group's collaboration with Allen Toussaint
  2. When I Paint My Masterpiece, a Dylan song the band made entirely its own
  3. 4% Pantomime, an unplanned duet with Van Morrison

Full album details, personnel, and chart data are on the Cahoots page.

Northern Lights–Southern Cross (1975)

  1. Forbidden Fruit, the opener widely read as commentary on the band's own drug use
  2. Ophelia, a full horn section that was actually Garth Hudson alone
  3. Acadian Driftwood, the true story of the 1755 Acadian expulsion
  4. It Makes No Difference, Rick Danko's finest recorded vocal

Full album details, personnel, and chart data are on the Northern Lights–Southern Cross page.

Non-album single

  1. Twilight, a Northern Lights-era outtake Danko made his own, released only as a B-side

Notes

This index covers the essential catalog rather than every song on all ten albums; later records like Islands, Jericho, High on the Hog, and Jubilation are covered on their own album pages under Studio Albums, with individual song pages for those tracks added here over time.