Classic rock songs that people are tired of hearing on the radio
173 is the place the hit “Stairway to Heaven” landed on classic rock radio’s 2025 airplay chart. The Mediabase data, reported by Ultimate Classic Rock, has six other Led Zeppelin songs ahead of it.
Ask listeners which songs they’re sick of, and the same few come up. Here’s the bigger surprise: 26 of the 40 most-played songs in 2025 came out in the 1980s. Only 13 came from the ’70s.
Six songs follow. For each one, we check the complaint against the chart.
Stairway to Heaven is the song everyone names
Listeners have complained about it for decades. One American Songwriter columnist called it the most overplayed song in classic rock.
Even Robert Plant, who sang it, gave up on it. In 1988, he told the Los Angeles Times he’d “break out in hives if I had to sing it every show,” Louder reported. In a 2002 NPR interview, he said he’d pledged money to a community station, KBOO, after it promised never to play the song, per Guitar Player. He’s called it “that bloody wedding song.”
The chart says otherwise. “Black Dog” ranked 29th. “Immigrant Song” ranked 67th. In 2023, Plant sang “Stairway” at a charity concert, his first time in 16 years.
Hotel California gets the same complaint
It’s on every “overplayed” list. American Songwriter named it, with “Stairway,” as a repeat offender.
In 2025, the song ranked 37th, down two spots. The Eagles had seven songs in the top 500. The next-highest, “Life in the Fast Lane,” came in at 176th, per the chart.
Don Henley’s solo hit “The Boys of Summer” ranked 62nd, higher than all of the other Eagles songs.
Free Bird is the song fans shout as a joke
On the chart, it came in at 131st. Ultimate Classic Rock’s own comment: “seems kind of low.”
The joke has a start. On Lynyrd Skynyrd’s 1976 live album, Ronnie Van Zant asks the crowd what they want to hear. They shout back: Grunge notes. In the late 1980s, Chicago radio host Kevin Matthews told listeners to yell it at a Florence Henderson concert. It was “meant to be yelled at someone really lame,” he said.
Here’s the twist. The label, MCA, didn’t want it on the debut album. At 9:08, it was too long, Powerpop reports.
The song radio plays most is a 1986 Bon Jovi hit
“Livin’ on a Prayer” was No. 1 in 2025. “You Give Love a Bad Name,” from the same album, ranked 4th. “Wanted Dead or Alive” ranked 22nd, per the chart.
Jon Bon Jovi almost left it off the album. In a 2019 Q&A, he said he was “kind of indifferent.” The song has more than two billion streams on Spotify and has sold over 10 million copies in the U.S.
Nobody calls it overplayed in the lists above. It’s played more than all of them.
Queen’s two stadium anthems are almost tied
“We Will Rock You” ranked 8th. “We Are the Champions” ranked 9th. Both are from 1977’s “News of the World.”
Over the whole year, “We Will Rock You” was played 66 more times, Mediabase’s count shows. That’s a tiny gap for two songs that are almost always paired.
Sweet Home Alabama is the top Skynyrd song by far
It ranked 11th. “Simple Man” was 89th, and “Free Bird” was 131st.
The song has its own feud. It name-checks Neil Young, who had written songs about racism in the South. Gary Rossington later said Van Zant took offense and did it for fun. He said the band always loved Young.
The bottom line
“Stairway to Heaven” ranked 173rd on 2025 classic rock radio. “Livin’ on a Prayer,” released in 1986, ranked first.
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