Godzilla

"Godzilla" appeared in 1977 as the first track on Spectres, the fifth studio album by Blue Öyster Cult, and was issued as a single from that record. The lyrics offered a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the famous movie monster, and the single's picture sleeve carried a promotional still from the film Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. The song failed to chart, yet it drew significant airplay on rock radio stations and soon became a sleeper hit for the Long Island band, who had formed in Stony Brook in 1967 and would go on to sell 25 million records worldwide.

Critics took to the track. Cash Box described a clever rocker tale with a strong, catchy hook, while AllMusic called it a sturdy, tongue-in-cheek rocker whose melody captured the bombast of old-fashioned monster movie music. Alongside "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Burnin' for You," it became one of the band's best-known songs and a staple of their live shows. A long list of acts covered it, including moe., Racer X, Fu Manchu, The Smashing Pumpkins, Sebastian Bach, Double Experience and Fighting Gravity.

The monster connection endured. When the song was left off the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack, Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma recorded a parody called "NoZilla", released only to radio stations. From 2003 to 2009 it was the walk up song for Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui, and in 2019 a cover sung by Serj Tankian played over the credits of Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the first time the song appeared in a Godzilla film.