{"id":70104,"date":"2026-08-07T15:50:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/07\/the-100-best-grateful-dead-songs\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T15:50:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T15:50:38","slug":"the-100-best-grateful-dead-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/07\/the-100-best-grateful-dead-songs\/","title":{"rendered":"The 100 Best Grateful Dead Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tThe Grateful Dead are one of the great American adventures \u2014 an outlaw band from the psychedelic frontier of the Haight-Ashbury streets, doing everything their own way. The magic they made onstage every night, improvised without a net or a set list, was a freewheeling 30-year collaboration with their audience. That\u2019s why the Dead\u2019s music remains so fiercely alive, now more than ever. As Jerry Garcia told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 1971, \u201cWe\u2019re trying to guide ourselves into a place where we can become more music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Dead have always shared a special bond with Rolling Stone<\/em>, and our histories are intertwined. The band and the magazine both rose out of the heady days in San Francisco in the 1960s, flipping off the establishment way of doing things. It was in our pages that so much of the world followed the Dead\u2019s prankster journey from afar, before the internet or the tape-trading network, from Garcia\u2019s epic interviews to our iconic photos. And both managed to keep evolving through the decades, living up to that not-fade-away spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Dead gave the world a beautifully chaotic body of music, never slowing down long enough to let anyone pin them down. So let\u2019s celebrate that with our tribute to the 100 best Grateful Dead songs. It\u2019s all here: their rock hollers, their ballads, their brain-melting electric jams, their country-folk hoedowns, their jazzy excursions, their covers. Hell, a few of these songs were even hits, though never on purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of these 100 tunes are classics from the Garcia\/Robert Hunter or Weir\/John Perry Barlow songbook; some are traditionals older than anyone in the band. But what all have in common is that the Dead took these songs somewhere different every night. We\u2019re releasing our list during the Days Between, a sacred time for Deadheads that honors the period between the day Garcia was born (Aug. 1) and the day he died (Aug. 9). We made the list by taking a pole of longtime Dead fans. You can see who voted here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Grateful Dead took the longest, strangest trip in rock, and invited the world to follow along, show by show, song by song. Jerry Garcia, Bobby Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Ron \u201cPigpen\u201d McKernan, Donna Jean and Keith Godchaux, and so many of their kindred spirits \u2014 they kept telling their story as they went along, never dreaming that the story would just keep getting bigger and crazier over the decades. But thanks to the music they made, their story will never end. And just like that weeping willow beside the river, it will grow, grow, grow.<\/p>\n