This year, 102.5 WDVE listeners said, “Won’t you fly high, Free Bird?”
For the first time since the countdown returned in 2019, the 1973 Lynyrd Skynyrd tune “Free Bird” sat atop the radio station’s Memorial Day 500. The countdown of the top 500 rock songs of all time deviated from a three-year-strong tradition of placing “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin at No. 1.
This also marks the first time since the countdown’s return that an American act has ranked highest.
Fans flocked to their radios at 8 a.m. Friday when the station began to play through the list, which ended a lot earlier than last year — with the final guitar strains sounding just before 5 p.m. Monday. Last year, with a later start time and a plethora of long songs, No. 1 wasn’t announced until close to 11 p.m. Monday.
It was an interesting ride along the way. A new song made its way into the top 10 — Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” which had a previous peak at No. 16 in 2025. Lovers of The Boss were still riding the high after his PPG Paints Arena show last week.
Here was the top 10 in full:
- “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd
- “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin
- “Back in Black” by AC/DC
- “Hotel California” by the Eagles
- “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen
- “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd
- “Baba O’Riley” by The Who
- “Layla” by Derek and the Dominos
- “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen
- “Sympathy for the Devil” by The Rolling Stones
A total of 185 different acts had songs on the list this year, while just 33 artists accounted for more than half of the list (262 songs).
As is tradition, Led Zeppelin had the most, with 20 — but that’s a big drop from last year’s record high of 27. A few Zeps that dropped off this year list included “Ten Years Gone” (146 in 2025), “Fool in the Rain” (212 in 2025) and “The Battle of Evermore” (249 in 2025).
Other acts with the most songs in 2026 were The Rolling Stones with 17; AC/DC and Pink Floyd, tied at 13 each; and the Beatles with 12.
But what of Journey? Last week, we pondered whether the voters who made 2025 a banner year for the outfit would return for 2026. The answer was yes, although only 11 Journey songs played over the weekend versus last year’s dozen. The group made their top 20 debut with “Don’t Stop Believin’” at No. 12 (up from its previous high point at 24).
Countdown naysayers often claim that there isn’t much movement from year to year, but this past weekend proved that untrue. The biggest riser was “Strawberry Fields Forever” by the Beatles, which jumped up 390 spots from 497 in 2025 to 151. On the other end of the spectrum, Journey’s “Stone In Love,” which debuted at 43 in 2025, sunk to 433.
This was the second year that listeners got to submit their ballots to form the countdown, and apparently those listeners took notes after last year. While there were a total of 61 new songs that had never touched the 500 before, a whopping 132 songs were back on the 500 after having missed last year’s countdown — including “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger at 64; “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin at 56; and Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and “I Won’t Back Down” (58 and 40, respectively).
In fact, Petty represents one of the biggest corrections; he had only seven songs on 2025’s list, but he ramped it back up to 10 this year. Last year, his highest song (“American Girl”) sat at 56; this year, it climbed to 31.
The highest-ranked new songs this year was “Jungleland” from Bruce Springsteen at 171, followed by Uriah Heep’s “Stealin’ at 199 and “Hold the Line” by Toto — in their first ever 500 appearance — at 231.
Local favorites also had a big year. The Clarks boasted four songs — “Mercury” (479), “Better Off Without You” (180), “Born Too Late” (114) and “Cigarette” (42). Donnie Iris had three songs, with “Agnes” kicking off the countdown at 500, “Love is Like a Rock” at 273 and “Ah! Leah!” at 45.
The Steelers fans in town came out in force too — “Renegade” by Styx scored the No. 30 slot, up from its peak at No. 44 in 2019.
Now that this year’s Memorial Day 500 is over, it’s time to think about the future. This year’s list saw a record low number of songs from the 1960s (51) and a record high number of songs from the 1990s (54) and 2000s (5). “Numb” by Linkin Park and “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes tied for more recent release year at 2003.
What will next year bring? We’ll all be tuning in to find out.