The Nirvana thread got me thinking about the most influential songs of the recent past. I'm going to define "modern" era as songs released since 1975, or about 50 years. I'm not talking about favorites or best or underrated or popular. I mean songs that changed a dynamic.

I'm going to start things out by offering up two from bands featured in that thread.

Agreed with your two choices...for me, this was a game changer for hip-hop. Seeing this as an 11 or 12 year old blew my mind and I fell in love with the similar West Coast stuff that would follow...

When these two songs came out, they were played on every single station. I know for a fact Lose Yourself was played on alternative rock radio stations. I can't remember if Hey Ya was as well, but it was one of those songs that crossed genre boundaries. And I didn't listen to rap or hip hop then, and nor do I now.

This basically killed gangster rap as pop music and led to the rise of our current iteration of soft rappers:

I think you could make the argument that 808s and Jay-Z's "Black Album" are the two most influential rap albums of the last 20 years.

I hate this song, but it did introduce rap to white people

Straight Outta Compton
Billie Jean
Bohemian Rhapsody
Welcome to the Jungle
Enter Sandman
All I Want For Christmas Is You