A bass line sticks when you can sing it without the rest of the song. These ten still do that.
10The Police: “Walking on the Moon” Sting’s line on the 1979 single is mostly space. The notes are few, the gaps are the hook, and the reggae lift is played by an English band that had just learned how much air a bass could hold. You hear three tones and the hook is already there.
9Rush: “Tom Sawyer” Geddy Lee’s figures on the 1981 track are a lead instrument that happens to sit low. The synth and the bass trade the same attitude. It is prog you can whistle, which is less common than the time signature suggests. The line is not decoration. It is the other half of the riff.
8Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Give It Away” Flea’s slap on the 1991 single is hard, and it sounds like he is enjoying it. Recorded for Blood Sugar Sex Magik in the mansion with Rick Rubin, the line jumps, sits, jumps again. It is funk that does not sit in the background. The song is the bass part.
7Queen: “Another One Bites the Dust” John Deacon wrote the 1980 line on bass first, a disco figure sturdy enough for a rock band and for half of hip-hop afterward. The kick locks to it. Freddie sings around it. Take the bass away and the title is just a sentence. With it, the sentence is a march.
6Michael Jackson: “Billie Jean” Louis Johnson of the Brothers Johnson played the 1982 line, a walk that never quite resolves, under Quincy Jones’s production. The song is a denial. The bass is the evidence, and it repeats without settling. Dance floors still answer it before the vocal arrives.
5Chic: “Good Times” Bernard Edwards, 1979, wrote the line that Rapper’s Delight would carry into the Sugarhill Gang and into the birth of recorded hip-hop. The octave jumps are tight, and they sound glad. Later samples point back to this take. The original still sounds like a full room that does not thin out.
4Pink Floyd: “Money” Roger Waters’s 7/4 line on The Dark Side of the Moon, 1973, rides the cash-register rhythm, and it swings. The odd meter should make it awkward. It does not. You can count it. Gilmour’s solo comes later. The bass has already set the song.
3The Beatles: “Come Together” Paul McCartney’s low, muddy line opens Abbey Road in 1969, low, slow, and slightly menacing under Lennon’s murmur. It is not a busy part. It sets the mood. Fifty years of covers have tried to add notes. The right version still leaves most of them out.
2Marvin Gaye: “What’s Going On” James Jamerson played the 1971 line with the freedom Motown usually hid, sliding under a song that was asking a country a question. The bass does not march. It sounds uneasy. You can follow it without the vocal. That is the point: a sideman’s part carries the record’s question.
1Queen: “Under Pressure” Deacon again, this time with Bowie in the room at Mountain Studios in 1981, a two-note descent that Vanilla Ice would later deny and then admit. The line is smaller than the voices. It outlasts them. Hum it in a shop and someone finishes the title. Two notes, and the song is already named.
