A bass line becomes myth when you can sing it without the song. These ten still walk in on their own.
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 you are already off the ground.
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 that you can whistle, which is rarer than the time signature suggests. The line does not decorate the riff. It is the riff’s other half.
8Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Give It Away” Flea’s slap on the 1991 single is a grin with calluses. Recorded for Blood Sugar Sex Magik in the mansion with Rick Rubin, the line jumps, sits, jumps again. It is funk that refuses to be background. The song is the bass, and the bass knows it.
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, repeating like a thought you cannot drop. 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 joy with discipline. Every later sample is a footnote. The original still sounds like a room deciding to stay.
4Pink Floyd – “Money” Roger Waters’s 7/4 line on The Dark Side of the Moon, 1973, is a cash register that learned to swing. The odd meter should make it awkward. It makes it inevitable. You can count it on a bar tab. Gilmour’s solo comes later. The bass has already made the argument.
3The Beatles – “Come Together” Paul McCartney’s swampy line opens Abbey Road in 1969, low, slow, and slightly menacing under Lennon’s murmur. It is not a busy part. It is a temperature. 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 worries, beautifully. You can follow it with your chest. That is the myth: a sideman’s touch becoming the conscience of the record.
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. That is as mythic as a bass gets.
