The Doors — Riders on the Storm

The final song Jim Morrison ever recorded is broadly charting today, tracked across 140 country and platform charts. The seven-minute closer of L.A. Woman, released weeks before Morrison's death in July 1971, remains one of rock's most atmospheric productions — its electric-piano drift, Robby Krieger's clean guitar figures, and the actual rain and thunder layered beneath Morrison's near-whispered vocal, a texture Uncut called a new dimension in the band's sonic landscape. It has lived a long second life in film, notably underscoring The Basketball Diaries in 1995. Producer Paul Rothchild famously dismissed it as "cocktail music" and quit the sessions; half a century on, it endures as the band's eeriest statement.