AC/DC — Highway to Hell

Forty-seven years on, this Bon Scott–era cornerstone is tracking across 84 country and platform charts today after a brief 16-day absence. Written by Angus Young, Malcolm Young, and Scott as a tribute to the band's relentless touring grind, the song became the defining hard rock anthem of its era — and arguably the template for every riff-first stadium rock single that followed. Scott's delivery, part bravado and part prophecy given his death less than a year after the album's release, gives the track a biographical weight that separates it from the genre's more anonymous entries. Per Songfacts, the song shared the Iron Man 2 soundtrack in 2010 — a film whose soundtrack was composed entirely of AC/DC material, a placement that introduced the track to a generation too young for 1979. The RIAA has certified it Diamond, among the most-certified singles in U.S. chart history. Few catalog tracks sustain this kind of global floor without a specific weekly trigger; this one has made permanence its baseline.