music question

Nope. That's not even the best song of the 70's.

According to Rolling Stone magazine, the best song is Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone."

So there you go.

I did say contender...

I'm funny about this sort of question because it's so subjective - and I don't even agree with myself in other moods other days. But if you had asked me in the 70s I would have said Stairway to Heaven, I think.

If I was going to try and set up an objective way of determining it might be tempting to look at the number of cover versions as a way of measuring a songs over all impact - note that, to me, a song is different from a 'performance' of a song. So 'All along the watchtower' is a good song because two different performances of it (Hendrix and Dylan) were good.