The 25 Greatest Ramones Songs Ever
50 years ago today, Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny and Tommy Ramone played their first concert together at CBGB—then they spent the next two decades existing as one of the most important rock bands ever.
Photo by Roberta Bayley/Redferns
50 years ago today, Jeffrey Hyman, John Cummings, Douglas Colvin and Thomas Erdelyi got together in Forest Hills, Queens and played their first-ever show together as a band at CBGB. They called themselves the Ramones, adopted pseudonyms ending in the surname Ramone (inspired by Paul McCartney’s longtime alias Paul Ramon) and soon started rambling through the New York City punk scene alongside bands like the New York Dolls, the Dictators, Blondie and Television. When we think about what Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny, Tommy and, later, Marky, Richie and CJ, accomplished as the Ramones, it’s easy to see that they were, perhaps, the most influential group to come out of that scene five decades ago.
From the release of their self-titled debut in 1976 to their farewell concert in Los Angeles 20 years later, the Ramones hit the ground running and kept their foot on the gas well into the 1980s. They had one of the greatest five-album runs in rock ‘n’ roll history, spanning from Ramones through End of the Century, and even continued to unleash nuggets of rock ‘n’ roll goodness well into the more middling years of their career. And few bands have ever so perfectly meshed the beauty of an American pop standard with blistering, pedal to the metal punk rock quite like the Ramones did. In an effort to pay respect to one of the best and most influential American rock bands ever, we’ve gone ahead and ranked the Ramones’ 25 greatest songs of all time. Hey, ho, let’s grab our leather jackets, ripped jeans, glue and go!
25. “Mama’s Boy” (1984)
Joey Ramone doing his best Ian Curtis impression shouldn’t work, but it does. “Mama’s Boy,” the tone-setting intro track on Too Tough to Die, is ferocious and maddening. The Ramones turned down the tempo and, instead, focused on making Johnny’s guitars sound more crunching and more thunderous. While taking a line like “I don’t want to work in a hot dog stand” seriously is a tall order, “Mama’s Boy” straightens out when Joey sounds like he’s staring straight into the camera lens. “You’re an imbecile, you’re an ugly dog, there’s nothing to gain,” he deadpans. “You couldn’t shut up, you had a bad, bad brain.”
24. “I Wanna Be Sedated” (1978)
I live happily in the “‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ is overrated” camp, but there’s no denying that it’s one of the best-sounding Ramones songs ever. Marky was drumming in the group now, and their hooks were far more polished than ever before. “I Wanna Be Sedated” channels the intensity of Ramones, but it doesn’t sound like it was recorded inside of a trash compactor anymore. Instead, Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Marky bring a fancy edge to their once-raw-hemmed noise. There’s something rapturously fun, too, about a song that levels its aim at taking some feel-good drugs before a flight or before a show. The “20, 20, 24 hours to go” line is symbolic in Ramones lore, but “I can’t control my fingers, I can’t control my brain” is an equally memorable lyrical standout.
23. “Pet Semetary” (1989)
As Paste‘s current assistant editor Olivia Abercrombie pointed out in her Brain Drain review, “Pet Semetary” is the album’s “only saving grace.” The Ramones wrote it for the film of the same name, which was based on Stephen King’s novel—and it became one the band’s most commercially popular song upon release, peaking at #4 on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart. Written by Dee Dee, “Pet Semetary” features one of the Ramones’ greatest choruses (“I don’t want to be buried in a pet cemetery, I don’t want to live my life again.” Formulaic, yes, but Joey makes it all sound heartfelt and powerful. While the back-half of the band’s catalog is very hit or miss, “Pet Semetary” exists as a reminder that, even 13 years removed from turning the punk world inside out, the Ramones could make a damn good rock song.
22. “Teenage Lobotomy” (1977)
While Ramones is the record that went on to define the band’s legacy and place within the punk echelons, it’s time we all get on board with a different truth: Rocket to Russia is their best album. There are quite a few gems in the tracklist, and we’ll be hitting a number of them before this list is over, but “Teenage Lobotomy” is the one Ramones song that feels like a Ramones leftover—and I mean that as sincerely as possible. Joey’s snarl is particularly perfect here, as he celebrates being “a real sickie” and admits that he’s “got no mind to lose.” “All the girls are in love with me, I’m a teenage lobotomy,” he yells out. I love it when the Ramones put such out-of-pocket language in their songs. Only they could have cooked up a verse with snails, slugs and the word “cerebellum” in it.
21. “You Should Have Never Opened That Door” (1977)
If we were doing a list of the single greatest years for bands, the Ramones’ 1977 output would be near the top of it. Between releasing Leave Home and Rocket to Russia within 10 months of each other, they capitalized on the momentum of their self-titled debut by putting out two terrific, dynamic records. Leave Home’s closing track, “You Should Have Never Opened That Door,” is one of Dee Dee and Johnny’s best collaborations, neck and neck with another song from the same album that’s only a few places higher on this list. This song, however, blisters at a break-neck pace of 114 seconds. “You don’t know what I can do with this axe,” Joey belts out. “Chop off your head, so you better relax.” Johnny’s chords might sound like a machine gun, but it’s Joey’s singing that sharpens like a guillotine.
20. “Howling at the Moon (Sha-La-La)” (1984)
Too Tough to Die was the first Ramones album featuring Richie on drums and is, by my account, the best of the band’s later records. In fact, you could argue that Too Tough to Die marked the beginning of the end for the Ramones as we knew and loved them. The heavy riffs were more streamlined and their edge was trimmed by a squeaky-clean production tone. But “Howling at the Moon” is what the Ramones wanted to be: a scathing punk band backed by girl group-style harmonics. While Too Tough to Die is considered a reactionary album in the wake of the burgeoning hardcore punk scene, “Howling at the Moon” is an air-tight pop gem with bombastic guitar-playing from Johnny that, at the end of the day, sounds as good as anything the Ramones made after End of the Century.
19. “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment” (1977)
“Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment”—goodness what a tune! One of the best songs the Ramones ever made, it is, like “You Should Have Never Opened That Door,” a crisp token of Dee Dee and Johnny’s songwriting collaboration. There’s such a great measure of charm and wit on this one, especially when Joey parades around the recording touting that “peace and love is here to stay and now I can wake up and face the day.” The best Ramones songs come barrelling at you with a wink—until the guitar riffs start bubbling like a pressure cooker ready to blow.
18. “The KKK Took My Baby Away” (1981)
If you think Fleetwood Mac’s interpersonal band troubles were bad, then maybe you should sit with “The KKK Took My Baby Away,” perhaps the all-time greatest diss track a musician has ever written about his own bandmate. Johnny started dating Joey’s girlfriend, so the latter wrote a song about it and likened his longtime collaborator to the Ku Klux Klan. At the time, it felt like a truly out-of-pocket comparison. But, knowing that Johnny was a lifelong Republican and knowing what the Republican party has become in the 43 years since “The KKK Took My Baby Away” came out, it’s not so far-fetched anymore. Honestly, it makes Joey’s digs sink all the more deeper—and “Ring me up the FBI and find out if my baby’s alive” is one hell of a line to sing about your guitarist and ex.
17. “Blitzkrieg Bop” (1976)
Few bands in the history of rock ‘n’ roll have announced themselves like the Ramones did in 1976 when they kicked off their eponymous debut album with “Blitzkrieg Bop,” a two-minute nugget of punk royalty that has long been considered not just one of the band’s best tracks, but one of the most important rock songs of the last 50 years. Known famously for its “big dumb chant,” even the most novice Ramones enjoyers know that “Hey! Ho! Let’s go!” line anywhere. No one can say for sure what “Blitzkrieg Bop” is about, though Tommy Ramone, who wrote the song, said it was about a young crowd at a rock concert. That part doesn’t matter, really, as the crude, bombastic tower of sound is what stands out on every subsequent listen. It’s the most influential Ramones song for a reason, regardless of whether or not you think it’s their greatest. “Blitzkrieg Bop” will forever be enshrined in the halls of rock immortality, and for that we must bow down to its power.
16. “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” (1980)
The opening track to my favorite Ramones record, the Phil Spector-produced End of the Century, “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” was a swift introduction to the punk crew’s big foray into overdubs, echo and pop orientation. Pairing arguably the greatest pop producer with a band as repetitive and structured as the Ramones may have been a bold leap—confirmed by the subsequent panning of End of the Century—but the collaboration works, and “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” shines because it sounds so horribly forced. The Ramones may have had an affinity of their own for sugar-sweet Top 40 hits, and their blitzkrieg musical prowess may have been just a little too brash for Spector’s vision, but hearing them get syrupy and try their hand at jukebox rock sounds especially good when Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Marky all harmonize with each other like they’re the Ronettes.
15. “Something to Believe In” (1986)
Fit with the same bell-tolling as “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg,” “Something to Believe In” is the heartfelt closer on Animal Boy. Dee Dee and Jean Beauvoir co-wrote it together, and it’s got some terrific synth work in there (courtesy of Beauvoir). Joey warmingly sings of loneliness and the imperfections of fame, as if the Ramones had finally made it to a place where celebrity could no longer outmuscle a longing from within. “If I was stupid or naive, trying to achieve what they call contentness,” he admits. “If people weren’t such dicks and I never made mistakes, then I could find forgiveness.” The electronics blend into Johnny’s chords with ease, as Joey announces an aching plea: “Take my hand, please help me, man.”
14. “Glad to See You Go” (1977)
After setting the punk world ablaze with Ramones, the band sought out their next turn: Leave Home. The album’s first track, “Glad to See You Go,” carries a similar chord progression as “Blitzkrieg Bop” but packs a far more melodic wallop. That “Glad to see you go, go, go, go, goodbye” line from Joey is a lyrical sibling to the “Hey! Ho! Let’s go!” emblem that remains synonymous with the Ramones’ existence. But, what sets “Glad to See You Go” apart from “Blitzkrieg Bop” is the obvious uptick in production quality. The tempo remains just as fast, while Joey’s singing is as frenetic as ever. Dee Dee wrote the tune about his then-girlfriend Connie, who was infamous in the NYC punk scene for trying to cut New York Dolls bassist Arthur Kane’s finger off, as well as slicing Dee Dee’s ass with a beer bottle. With context, the spite in Joey’s voice sounds even more poisonous. Without context, “Glad to See You Go” is a splendid punk opener.
13. “You Sound Like You’re Sick” (1981)
With an opening riff that Green Day would certainly rip off 13 years later, “You Sound Like You’re Sick” is the epic barnburner that Dee Dee wrote for Pleasant Dreams in 1981. He also penned the very good “All’s Quiet on the Eastern Front,” but this is the moment on the record where his penchant for juxtaposing brutality with pop splendor is on full, glorious display. “Everybody knows you’re a hopeless problem,” Joey sings out, as Johnny’s guitar swirls and swirls around the pounding of Marky’s snare drum. If Neil Young was the “godfather of grunge,” then the Ramones were the godfathers of pop-punk on a song like “You Sound Like You’re Sick.” All of the bands that broke out on the coasts in the 1990s have them to thank for that. Pleasant Dreams, despite not living up to the hype of its predecessors, was a blueprint for one of the most important musical movements of the last 30 years. “You Sound Like You’re Sick” was the first brick.
12. “Baby, I Love You” (1980)
Made famous first by the Ronettes in 1963, “Baby, I Love You” is one of the best pop songs of its time—due in large part to a combination of Ronnie Bennett’s vocals, Phil Spector’s arrangements and instrumentation by the Wrecking Crew. However, in May 1979, the Ramones covered the song for their 1980 LP End of the Century and completely rewrote the book on it. At the time of its release, critics hated it. Kurt Loder wrote in Rolling Stone that it was a “sludged-out rehash of the Ronettes antiquity.” Contemporary assessments are more of the same, with Evan Minsker of Pitchfork calling it a “pound-for-pound attempt to relive Spector’s golden years.” I disagree, though. I think it’s one of the most charming takes on a pop classic—emphasized even more by the fact that a punk band is responsible for it. I’m not saying a full Ramones record of doo-wop tunes would’ve been a whopping success, but I can’t lie: Joey Ramone sounds incredibly good here as he labors to get the words out. With a string arrangement and some ensemble handclaps wisping around Joey, “Baby, I Love You” is an all-time entry into the Ramones’ canon.
11. “Beat on the Brat” (1976)
Ever since I heard “Beat on the Brat” in the Billy Madison soundtrack for the first time, I’ve loved it dearly. God, what a tune. It’s a shame that Ramones gets remembered for “Blitzkrieg Bop” first and foremost. If I had been some music industry overlord in 1976, “Beat on the Brat” would have been my pick for the song that first made the Ramones immortal in the echelons of punk rock. Of course, the “beat on the brat with a baseball bat” repetition is what endures, but I very much love the way that Joey sings “What can you do, with a brat like that?” It sounds like such a beautiful kiss-off. The song is as nonsensical as it is ferocious—not uncommon when Joey, Tommy, Dee Dee and Johnny are involved—but that’s why we love it.
10. “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” (1985)
Heard first by me while watching School of Rock almost 20 years ago, “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” is a unique piece of the Ramones’ catalog, if only because it was one of the band’s most political numbers. It’s funny, considering that Johnny identified as a Republican, but Joey and Dee Dee (and Jean Beauvoir of the Plasmatics) wrote “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” as a critique of then-president Ronald Reagan, who’d recently visited an SS soldiers cemetery in the titular German city. Johnny wanted to call the song “My Brain is Hanging Upside Down” on the album-version and he got his way, but “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” exists in all of its glory perfectly. The phrase was coined by protesters who denounced Reagan’s visit, as there were members of the atrocity-committing Waffen-SS combat arm buried in the Bitburg cemetery. Joey, a Jewish man, famously said of Reagan’s visit: “How can you forget six million people being gassed and roasted?” As funny as it is seething, the Ramones blow the president to smithereens—giving a wink and a snarl while doing so. “You’ve got to pick up the piece, c’mon, sort your trash better” is one of the best opening lines the band ever dropped.
9. “Judy is a Punk” (1976)
Ramones is a perfect album. “Judy is a Punk” is a big reason for that. Maybe you’re like me and heard it for the first time when you watched The Royal Tenenbaums, which was sometime after I bought a Ramones shirt from Hot Topic and wore it around like I was their biggest fan. “Judy is a Punk” is a minute-and-a-half long, and all 95 seconds of it can reconfigure your understanding of rock ‘n’ roll in an instant. The Ramones were so good at packing tight punches into minimalist lyrics that it feels like a tectonic shift when Joey enunciates “Ice Capades” in the second verse (same as the first). The “perhaps they’ll die, oh yeah” line is out-of-pocket but hypnotically fun (especially once you realize Joey is not singing “ra-ta-da”—and sensical, given that, well, Jackie was a punk and Judy was a runt. But who knew a punk track about two people joining the SLA in San Francisco could be so catchy?
8. “Oh, Oh, I Love Her So” (1977)
An underrated gem from the Ramones’ second album, Leave Home, “Oh, Oh, I Love Her So” arrived straight from a ‘60s teen beach movie. It’s so bright and sits in stark contrast to some of those Ramones cuts that dare to split your skull. The way Joey sings the track, putting a feather on the end of his syllables and riffing on meeting a date at the Burger King and then riding the Coney Island coaster, it’s so perfectly intimate and earnest. “No one’s gonna ever tear us apart, ‘cause she’s my sweetheart,” Joey announces to the world, and you know he means it. That final guitar strum from Johnny, which sounds lifted straight from an Eddie Cochran track, is the kiss on the lips of “Oh, Oh, I Love Her So” and its pleasurable pop-rock sweetness.
7. “Questioningly” (1978)
When Tommy left the band, there was an immediate shift in their sound—as he was the architect of their incredible balance of Wall of Sound pop and marauding coastal punk. Road to Ruin, though not as tough or eternal as the previous three Ramones albums, is all the more enchanting and pensive. The band injected the tracklist with ballads and acoustic guitars, stripping the product of Johnny’s typical penchant for soloing. It’s how something like “I Wanna Be Sedated” becomes so anomalous for its chaos, and it’s how you get a career-best song like “Questioningly,” a sugar-sweet tune strung together by Dee Dee and turned immortal by one of Joey’s best-ever singing performances. “Aren’t you someone that I used to know, and weren’t we lovers a long time ago?” remains a potent couplet, one that the Ramones rarely lived up to after Road to Ruin.
6. “Danny Says” (1980)
Written about their manager Danny Fields, “Danny Says” is the Ramones’ lament of their time spent on the road. Joey sings about going to Idaho when it’s -20 degrees outside. “Soundcheck’s at 5:02, record stores and interviews,” he logs. “Oh, but I can’t wait to be with you tomorrow, baby.” The song is full of nods to Get Smart, Los Angeles hotels and spending Christmas on the hot west coast. “Danny Says” is full of juxtapositions you can only get when you’re criss-crossing the country over and over. Pair that tender longing with Phil Spector’s perfect production, which includes an incredibly ornate ensemble of acoustic guitar and a lingering, distorted electric axe that crawls to the song’s surface, and “Danny Says” is a sublime nugget of heavy, poppy punk that sounds like the $200,000 it cost the Ramones to make the album in the first place.
5. “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” (1976)
For an album like Ramones and all of its chaotic, pumped-up fury, one of its crown jewels is the down-tempo, strumming “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” The guys turn the volume knob down and unload a dashingly sweet and catchy power-pop track that combines the guitar noise of the rest of the album with the bubblegum sensibilities they’d later test out in full on End of the Century. Only a band like the Ramones could make a record with “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Beat on the Brat” and “Judy is a Punk” as its first three tracks and then, in one swift turn, drop their most syrupy tune next—and act like they didn’t just rip all the paint off the walls. Joey’s singing of “Do you love me, babe? What can I say? Because I want to be your boyfriend” sounds extra mushy when you hear Dee Dee and Tommy’s backing harmonies swirl around his lead like contagious wind. “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” is the perfect boundary-breaker on one of the greatest boundary-breaking punk records ever—a perfect encapsulation of how, beneath the genre’s riotous, angsty, hard-nosed surface, it was built on perfect melodies.
4. “Carbona Not Glue” (1977)
Arriving on the Leave Home tracklist right after “Oh Oh I Love Her So,” “Carbona Not Glue” recalibrates the Ramones into a more brasher tone—though the uptick in production on Leave Home can never allow them to fully slip back into the noisier side of their unpolished roots. If there’s one thing that’s true about the Ramones, it’s that those boys love singing about getting high off at-home products. Lamenting that there’s no more Carbona (a cleaning agent), paint and roach spray in the house, Joey admits that his mom got rid of the glue he was sniffing a year earlier on Ramones. It’s fun to hear some continuity like that, thematically on-par for a band as consistent as the Ramones were, and “My brain is stuck from shooting glue, I’m not sorry for the things I do” sounds like a hard-won and hard-sniffed battle cry.
3. “Rockaway Beach” (1977)
For many, “Blitzkrieg Bop” is probably the most recognizable Ramones song. For me, I knew “Rockaway Beach” before I knew any of their other tunes. It’s Dee Dee’s definitive song, and it’s the crown jewel of Rocket to Russia—written about the titular beach in Queens near where Joey grew up and christened as a “beachgoer anthem.” “Rockaway Beach” hit #66 on the Hot 100, and its 126-second runtime wastes no time using every pulse of its 185 BPM tempo. Johnny glides through some sped-up downstrokes, while Joey shepherds the band through idiosyncratic melodies and images of discos and surfers. With a nod to the Drifters and that singalong “Rock-rock, Rockaway Beach” chorus, you can tell just how indebted to the history of rock ‘n’ roll the Ramones were. Sounding like Little Richard and MC5 all at once, “Rockaway Beach” oozes like moon-tinted neon spilling across a boardwalk. As far as teenage anthems go, “Rockaway Beach” may be the very best of them all.
2. “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World” (1976)
The Ramones are at their best when they are wrapped up in fits of irony and pitch-black humor. You can find those moments across their entire catalog, but nothing stacks up with “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World,” the closing track from the band’s debut album. An anti-Nazi song written by Dee Dee—who grew up in Germany because his American soldier father married a German woman—as an act of rebellion against his peers who bullied him, few bands have ever had the gusto to open a song with such a swift, toeing-the-razor’s-edge declaration: “I’m a shock trooper in a stupor. Yes, I’m a Nazi.” Joey follows it up by uttering one of the funniest lines in the entire Ramones catalog: “Schatzi, you know I fight for the fatherland.” The Ramones even include their trademark “1-2-3-4” countdown in-between the chorus and outro, but this time Dee Dee sings it in German. Not only is “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World” a perfect encapsulation of the Ramones’ unrest, it captures the band at their best. Here, Tommy pounds the cymbals like his organs will fall out of his ass if he skips a beat, while Johnny’s shreds so deftly that I can’t imagine he walked out of the studios with every finger still intact. If Ramones is the album that busted NYC punk rock wide open, “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World” is the track that knocked the final hinge clean off the door.
1. “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” (1977)
Before the Ramones actually made a record with Phil Spector, Rocket to Russia was where they really took a step toward sounding like his Wall of Sound. “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” like its spiritual sibling “Rockaway Beach,” sounds like an anomaly in retrospect. While bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols were going for a grimier, unkempt sound, the Ramones were tightening themselves up. Johnny’s guitar-playing rarely sounds better than it does on “Sheena is a Punk Rocker,” and the way Joey sings “Sheena is” is such a vocal phrasing earworm that I still hum it even if I haven’t heard the song in weeks. In another lifetime, the Ramones are a doo-wop outfit getting their kicks on the revue circuit. I’m glad we got them in this lifetime, though. “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” is one of those timeless efforts that sounds effortless.