Bob Seger’s Greatest Hits, Ranked: 15 Tracks Proving He’s Still the King of ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’
We’re taking the Detroit rocker’s best records off the shelf and celebrating some of his most iconic tunes.
When it comes to singer-songwriters who are admired by artists of every genre, young and old, count Bob Seger among the most popular. Jelly Roll — fresh from being crowned Best New Artist in both the country and pop categories at the 2024 iHeart Radio Music Awards on April 1 — celebrated with his wife, Bunnie Xo, by hitting a Tennessee bar and belting out one of Bob Seger’s greatest hits, “Old Time Rock and Roll.”
The red-hot Jelly Roll even recently told Billboard that Seger is one of his favorite artists, and he’d love to cover “Against the Wind” … but he might be too big a fan of the original.
“I’ve thought about it, but man, I just don’t know that I could do anything for it,” Jelly Roll shared. “Those songs that meant the most to me I’m petrified of.… I’m just petrified to even pretend to sing ’em.”
Last fall, Seger was a surprise guest at the Country Music Hall of Fame inductions in Nashville. The Detroit legend, who duetted with inductee Patty Loveless on his 1996 song “The Answer’s in the Question,” showed up to honor Loveless by doing a rendition of her “She Drew a Broken Heart.”
As thrilled as she was for the unexpected honor, Vince Gill couldn’t resist joking about his frustration with the situation. “I’m a little pissed off. I just found out I have to follow Bob Seger,” Gill quipped.
As fellow Michigan export Kid Rock put it when he inducted Seger into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, “The most underrated singer, songwriter, and performer has been Bob Seger. He is the beautiful loser who has sold 50 million records [and he’s] paid more dues than all of the artists in the current Billboard Top 40 combined.”
Seger, who at one point in his career had seven straight Top 10 platinum-selling albums in a row, “set the bar for all singers and songwriters from the Midwest,” Kid added, noting, “Bob Seger is the voice of the working man and the living proof of the American dream.”
Though the man himself has (mostly) been retired since 2019, his music is timeless. This is proven by the fact that Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band’s 1994 Greatest Hits reentered the Top Rock Albums charts just this month, while also moving up on the Top Rock & Alternative and Billboard 200 charts as well.
“You know, I’ve had a great life, oh my goodness,” Seger once told the Detroit Free Press about his long career. “I loved what I did. Never worked a day in my life, really. The hard parts were in sleeping in hotels, having rotten food.”
And it was all worth it for the music, which he never rushed in terms of creating. “The writing dictates that,” Seger once told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “If I feel I have a good bunch of songs, I’ll put them out. But I wait for the spirit to strike. I write all the time.… For me, the lyrics come out of the feeling of the music. Sometimes, I’ll think of a great title [first], like ‘Night Moves.’ I write by hand, and I don’t commit it to computer for a long time.”
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Once they’re done, though, they’re beloved by his fans forever — and audiences were never shy about letting Seger know which ones they wanted to hear in concert.
“I tried not to play ‘Turn the Page’ for a while — and [that] lasted about three shows!” Seger shared with a laugh. “We had to put it back in. ‘Old Time Rock and Roll’ is like that, too. We play it very well, but I’m very tired of it. [But audiences] just love it and sing along.…[and] it’s their show.”
There is, of course, no shortage of Bob Seger’s greatest hits that fans will want to keep replaying. Just take a listen to some of the rock legend’s best, below, and you’ll understand why.
15. “The Fire Inside” (1991): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
“I was trying to get right down to the ‘nut’, right down to the passion. I was trying to get to some truth,” Seger told In the Studio With Redbeard about this title song from his 1991 album, which touches upon a one-night stand as well as larger, complicated issues about fidelity.
“We all walk that fine line between temptation and ethical moral choices, staying true to somebody or longing for something more. It’s a constant dilemma,” Seger shared.
14. “Rock And Roll Never Forgets” (1977)
“A song like ‘Rock and Roll Never Forgets’ is just slammin’. When we play that song live people go nuts,” Seger told Louder’s Classic Rock. “It’s a grateful song. I’m grateful to all the people I played for in those small clubs, on the top of cafeteria tables, in gymnasiums and in hockey rinks. Suddenly all those people came out and bought my records and said: ‘I remember him. I saw him at the high school or hockey rink.’”
13. “Wait for Me” (2006): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
“I will answer the wind, I will leave with the tide. I’ll be out on the road, every chance I can ride,” Seger sings on this late-career tune, which was released when he was in his early 60s. “And I’ll fight for the right to go over that hill, if it’ll only mean something to me. I will not be persuaded I won’t be still,” the legend continues. “The contemplative ballad…is up there with his very best songs,” Louder insists. “This is the sound of a man completely comfortable with who he’s become.”
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12. “Shakedown” (1987)
This Grammy-nominated song off of the soundtrack to 1987’s Beverly Hills Cop II starring Eddie Murphy also earned a nod for Best Song at the Oscars. Seger stepped up to the mic on this one when friend Glenn Frey (who scored big with “The Heat Is On” in the film franchise’s first installment) was sidelined with laryngitis. It became Seger’s sole No. 1 hit.
11. “Mainstreet” (1977): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
A female dancer that a young Seger would sometimes see in the window of an Ann Arbor, Michigan, club served as inspiration for this sentimental classic. “The club was very lively, and to a 12, 13-year-old, that was pretty cool,” Seger told Classic Rock. “I would sit out there and watch through the window and listen to this great R&B. I’m looking and I’m listening and thinking this is what I wanna do with my life.” The rest, they say, is history.
10. “Still The Same” (1978)
“There you stood; everybody watched you play. I just turned and walked away. I had nothing left to say.” Burn! It’s a true talent to pen lyrics so biting and still sound so triumphantly cool delivering them. “People have asked me for years who it’s about. It’s an amalgamation of characters I met when I first went to Hollywood. All ‘Type A’ personalities: overachieving, driven,” Seger revealed in the liner notes to his 1994 greatest hits collection.
9. “We’ve Got Tonight” (1978): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
Seger’s shared that this song was inspired by a scene in The Sting in which Robert Redford’s lonely character looks to a waitress at 2 a.m. for one night of, well, you know. “That just hit me real hard,” Seger explained to the Detroit Free Press. “The next day I wrote ‘We’ve Got Tonight,’ this song about two people who say ‘I’m tired. It’s late at night. I know you don’t really dig me, and I don’t really dig you, but this is all we’ve got, so let’s do it.’ The sexual revolution was still going strong then.” Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton scored big with their 1983 remake of the song, which went to No. 1 on the country charts.
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8. “Katmandu” (1975)
Seger’s road to success was a long one, and this tune touches on his leaner years. “It’s an exasperated song. It’s like: ‘I’m never gonna make it, I’m just gonna go to Katmandu,’” the singer-songwriter told Classic Rock. “In the song ‘Katmandu’ I still had some of that defeatist mentality and you can hear it in there.” While that might be true, it rocks and rolls among his best. Cash Box’s review praises the track’s Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and “classic Chuck Berry-style guitar, down-home rockin’ piano and fine vocal stylizing.”
7. “Beautiful Loser” (1975): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
“[Sometimes] I’ll just sit down and say, ‘I wanna write a song called this.’ That’s how ‘Beautiful Loser’ happened,” Seger told Music Connection. “I just loved the title, which I got from a book of poetry from Leonard Cohen called Beautiful Losers, with an ‘s,’ and I thought it was a really cool title.” The song, which took him about four passes to write, wasn’t an instant winner when it was released on his same-titled 1975 studio album. Fans and critics really came around to it, though, when radio DJs played a concert version back-to-back with “Travelin’ Man”, both off of his 1976 album ‘Live’ Bullet.
6. “Old Time Rock and Roll” (1979)
If you haven’t at some point danced around the house lip-synching to this in your underwear a la Tom Cruise in 1983’s Risky Business, did you even live through the 80s? Three songwriters share credit for this tune (George Jackson, Thomas E. Jones III, and Chuck Crozier), but Seger has said he rewrote all of the verses without taking a co-writing credit for himself, calling it “the dumbest thing I ever did.” Some have countered his claim, saying Jackson did the bulk of the writing, however. Either way, this is a song that audiences can’t get enough of, even if he grew a bit weary of performing it. “I’m sure there are songs that Billy Joel and the Eagles are also tired of playing,” Seger once shared.
5. “Hollywood Nights” (1978): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
The songwriter was out driving in the Hollywood Hills when the lyrics for this song just “came out of nowhere,” he told Rock Cellar. “So I turned right around and drove home and I’m singing this in my head thinkin’, ‘Don’t forget it, don’t forget it! Don’t turn on the radio!’,” he added with a laugh, revealing he sang “it into my little cassette recorder” as soon as he got home. “It’s high energy and it’s gonna be fun and the girls are gonna sing it like crazy,” he thought, referring to his longtime backup singers, Laura Creamer and Shaun Murphy, whom he enthusiastically thanked when he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, calling them “wonderful singers…I’m a very fortunate guy to have those gals down through the years.”
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4. “Like a Rock” (1986)
“I was 18, didn’t have a care. Working for peanuts, not a dime to spare. But I was lean and solid everywhere. Like a rock.” This gem “was inspired partly by the end of a relationship I had that had lasted for 11 years,” Seger told The New York Times. “You wonder where all that time went. But beyond that, it expresses my feeling that the best years of your life are in your late teens when you have no special commitments and no career. It’s your last blast of fun before heading into the cruel world.”
3. “Against the Wind” (1980): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band took home the Grammy in 1981 for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal for this song. “I always say it’s human nature that people are gonna love you sometimes and they’re gonna use you sometimes. Knowing the difference between when people are using you and when people truly care about you, that’s what ‘Against the Wind’ is all about,” Seger told Rolling Stone of the hit. “The people in that song have weathered the storm, and it’s made them much better that they’ve been able to do it and maintain whatever relationship. To get through is a real victory.”
2. “Turn the Page” (1973)
This fan-favorite off of 1972’s Back in ’72 album wasn’t originally released as a single, but it was after it gained radio airplay after its inclusion on Seger’s 1976 concert album ‘Live’ Bullet.
The song tackles “the real weariness of the road and I tried to capture that. I think I captured it for truck drivers. I think I captured it for traveling businessmen. And I think I just captured it for people who have to travel a lot and just plain miss home or family or both,” the artist told Rock Cellar, adding that he was a little surprised audiences rallied so strongly behind such an emotionally “down” tune.
“I never thought [it] would last as long as it has,” he said of its popularity. “That’s one of the songs we must play or people get very agitated. If we don’t play that the fans are definitely disappointed.”
1. “Night Moves” (1976): Bob Seger’s greatest hits
“[This] was the easiest song in the world to write but the hardest song to finish. It took me six months to finish it,” Seger has said of this tune, which American Graffiti helped to inspire, as did Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland,” as it had a double bridge.
“I never thought of two bridges in one song. So I have two…in ‘Night Moves.’ People at Capitol Records told me after they heard the song…that I had a ‘career record.’ They said: ‘This is a song that you’re gonna have to play for the rest of your life.’” They were right, as fans surely never seem to tire of it. Faithful Friends viewers will no doubt spot Matt LeBlanc as the male lead in its 1994 video, opposite Melrose Place’s Daphne Zuniga.
