From its launch in 2005 to its eventual decline in the mid-2010s, Guitar Hero was in service of celebrating bangers. Even after all these years, it’s hard not to think about Guitar Hero when hearing songs like Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality,” Ozzy Osbourne’s “Bark at the Moon,” or Heart’s “Barracuda.” Though the early editions featured covers of these popular songs rather than the originals, they honored the spirit of playing a real rock gig while giving us a selection of songs new and old to obsess over.
But as rock music transformed throughout the late 2000s, so did the entertainment landscape. By the turn of the decade, the market was incredibly oversaturated with games similar to Guitar Hero; the 2010 game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock fell far below expectations, and concurrently, the rise of the iPhone, the increased emphasis on online gaming, and the lingering effects of the financial crisis put the franchise on hold. They’d release their final game, Guitar Hero Live, in 2015, and by 2018, they had shut down their servers for good.
As we’ve seen in the entertainment realm over the years, though, previously-successful endeavors like Guitar Hero are often on the table for revivals and remakes. Games with similar mechanics — like Beat Saber or the more on-the-nose Clone Hero — are still revered, but in the last 10 years, no video game company has really attempted to stage a Guitar Hero comeback. Dare we say the time is right for Guitar Hero 6?
Let’s pretend there’s a new game on the way, with a brand new selection of songs to choose from. Of course, we’d select the standard guitar anthems of yore — original Guitar Hero favorites like Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” Foghat’s “Slow Ride,” or Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.” But a lot of great music has come out since Guitar Hero shut down their servers in 2018. Knotty post-punk had a thriving moment, Olivia Rodrigo emerged as the newest pop-rock hero, and ’90s and 2000s stalwarts like Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, and Jack White have continued serving up guitar-forward ragers.
So, we’ve assembled a list of 20 tracks that we think would be solid, enjoyable editions to Guitar Hero if they made a new version of the game in 2025. We’ve arranged them similar to the structure of old — four songs for each tier of rockstar success, complete with an encore at the end of each round. There are countless songs to choose from, and if we were making the game ourselves, we’d be very tempted to put DragonForce’s “Through the Fire and the Flames” at the end again, just for old times’ sake. Quite a few of these picks aren’t exactly family-friendly either — but hey, a little bit of censoring can go a long way.
Read on for our roundup of 20 songs we’d put on Guitar Hero if they revived the game in 2025.
— Paolo Ragusa
Live Music Editor