My Top 100 Prog Songs

Hello, everyone on PA, I'm a new user who has lurked on this website long enough and finally made an account, and this is my first post. My username came to me all of a sudden on a road trip where I was playing a playlist of my favorite songs, from 100 down to 1, and I thought, "I wonder if anyone on Prog Archives combined the titles of the three great epics of prog rock in their username". So eventually, I decided to stop waiting to join in fear of someone taking this perfect username! Anyways, I thought my top 100 prog songs would be a fitting first post, and since this list changes practically every week, I thought this would be a good snapshot in time of my favorite songs from prog rock, since it is bound to change as I listen to more songs! Without further ado, heres the 100 best prog songs (imo)
Honorable mentions: "Impressioni di Settembre" (Premiata...), "Pilgrim" (Uriah Heep), "A Louse is Not a Home" (Peter Hammill), "Valentyne Suite" (Colesseum)

1 Close to the Edge
2 2112
3 Shine On You Crazy Diamond
4 Supper's Ready
5 Wish You Were Here
6 Time
7 The Spirit of Radio
8 Child in Time
9 The Great Gig in the Sky
10 Us and Then
11 Roundabout
12 And You and I
13 Epitaph
14 Heart of the Sunrise
15 Starless
16July Morning
17 Dancing With the Moonlit Knight
18 Echoes
19 Thick as a Brick
20 Brain Damage
21 Dogs
22 Suite Madame Blue
23 Freewill
24 Song for America
25 Firth of Fifth
26 Gates of Delirium
27 Siberian Khatru
28 Xanadu
29 Red Barchetta
30 Pigs (Three Different Ones)
31 High Hopes
32 Fool's Overture
33 Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
34 Aqualung
35 Nights in White Satin
36 In the Court of the Crimson King
37 The Musical Box
38 21st Century Schizoid Man
39 Icarus (Borne on Wings of Steel)
40 Lady Fantasy
41 Natural Science
42 Phoenix
43 Look At Yourself
44 Breathe (In the Air)
45 Starship Trooper
46 The Cinema Show
47 Karn Evil 9
48 One More Red Nightmare
49 Lamplight Symphony
50 Locomotive Breath
51 A Farewell to Kings
52 Perpetual Change
53 In the Cage
54 Nimrodel/The White Rider/Procession
55 Awaken
56 Air Born
57 In the Wake of Poseidon
58 Jacob's Ladder
59 Salisbury
60 School
61 Eclipse
62 Watcher of the Skies
63 Fallen Angel
64 Sheep
65 Journey from Mariabronn
66 Minstrel in the Gallery
67 Hide in Your Shell
68-Baker Street Muse
69 The Afternoon
70 Song Within a Song
71 Miracles out of Nowhere
72 Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres
73 A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers
74 Song of Scheherazade
75 The Return of the Giant Hogweed
76 Appena Un Pò
77 Eldorado
78 La Villa Strangiato
79 The Trees
80 Never Let Go
81 Long Distance Runaround
82 Sunrise
83 Camera Eye
84 Welcome to the Machine
85 Tarkus
86 In a Glass House
87 Hopelessly Human
88 Bird of Prey
89 A Trip to the Fair
90 Lizard
91 Heavy Horses
92 I've Seen All Good People
93 Islands
94 The Pinnacle
95 Childhood's End
96 The Fountain of Lamneth
97 The Endless Enigma (Part One)/Fugue/The Endless Enigma (Part Two)
98 Ripples
99 Images (Chapter 1)
100 Fracture

Plenty of great tracks in there. 

Hey, iluvmarillion, (great username btw, I love Marillion too). I definitely like songs that are not prog (Waterloo Sunset is a good song), but this list was about prog songs. I don't believe those two albums constitute as prog. I was debating putting songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and Stairway to Heaven (which are my two favorite songs in all of music) in the list, but I realize that most people don't think they are prog songs, so I didn't include them. Thank you for commenting though, (and realizing that this took a lot of work) message me anytime you want to ask about my prog preferences.

Hi there and welcome to PA

Pretty cool list. Just to throw you a curveball: I count less than 20 different artists here. How would it look if you had to make one with one tune per band?

It certainly takes a lot of time to compile a top 100, and if I were to do it I'd use one of those "sideways trees" sort of thing (I think). I'm too lazy to do that and instead have compiled a list in a spreadsheet. This was solely for the intention of picking stuff to load up into a portable mp3 player. This still hasn't happened, I still don't have an mp3 player, and the spreadsheet now has 2535 songs in it (and is still growing). 

Nice selections. Looks like about 70 -80% of that would be on my list as well.

Edited by Argo2112 - November 27 2017 at 11:21

A+ list. 

How do you make a top 100 list. I couldn't order my favourite 10. I might say my very favourite... not even sure if they would be my favourite songs, but at least the ones I think are really the most special ones, are: Shine on you Crazy Diamond (all parts together), Ommadawn (side 1), Awaken, and Histoire sans Paroles. Beyond that... I just wouldn't be able to make my mind.

Flamin' captcha crap...

Let's try that again:

Welcome long-named person!  I couldn't begin to compile a top 100 list, but if I did it would certainly have some of your songs on it.  However, your list does seem to be rather '70s-centric, and I would encourage you to embrace "modern" prog (although I did spy Childhood's End!)

Perhaps you don't like the more modern stuff.  Or perhaps you haven't dabbled.  Based on your list, I would nominate the music of IQ as a great place to start...

And if I changed my username, I guess I would have to be StrangeOctavariHarvest, or something like that...

Pink Floyd song is what I meant, but I agree about Camel's song (it's probably around 120 on an expanded list.) Echoes by Pink Floyd is a such great song, so it's strange that no other songs from the same album appear on my list. It's a very one-song centered album just like Tarkus is. One of These Days is the next best song on Meddle but very far down from Echoes.