Supertramp's top 10 songs, ranked

24 February 2025, 09:56

Supertramp's classic lineup from left to right: bassist Dougie Thomson, drummer Bob Siebenberg, saxophonist John Helliwell, singer/guitarist Roger Hodgson, and singer/keyboardist Rick Davies. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images). Picture: Getty

By Thomas Edward

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They were certainly out of the ordinary, but there's no doubting that Supertramp knew how to write a hit.

Though, that might not have been the case had the band pursued their initial musical course.

Forming in 1969, singer and founders Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies became Supertramp's fulcrum due to their songwriting prowess, eventually propelling the prog-pop outfit to international success.

In the beginning however, the band were far more experimental, akin to an adventurous early Pink Floyd. In those days, they didn't achieve much recognition beyond cult status.

That was until they relocated overseas to Los Angeles and leaned into their poppier sensibilities - it paid dividends as history tells us.

With a slew of top ten international chart hits, the band's principal creative partnership of Hodgson and Davies went their separate ways in 1983. Davies continued under the Supertramp moniker whilst Hodgson briefly pursued a solo career before joining Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band some years later.

They've reunited on several occasions, and with 60 million albums sales to their name, their commercial success didn't come by chance.

That said, we've ranked the ten very best Supertramp songs in order from top to bottom:

'It’s Raining Again'

Supertramp - It's Raining Again

By 1982, Supertramp weren't quite the sure-fire hit-making rock group they were just a few years earlier, but still knew how to craft radio-friendly hooks.
Case in point with 'It's Raining Again', a bouncy soft rock song that showed the band's sensitive side, mainly because Roger Hodgson was feeling glum when he wrote it.
"I wrote "It's Raining Again" on a day when I was feeling sad because I'd lost a friend," he revealed about the song which featured as a single on the band's 1982 album Famous Last Words, Hodgson's final contribution.
"I was in England looking outside the window and it was pouring rain and literally, the song came to me. I started playing these chords on this pump organ and I just started singing "It's Raining Again"."
'Fool’s Overture'

Supertramp Fool´s Overture 1979 Live in Paris´79 Concert The Pavillon

Supertramp had an arsenal of musicality in their locker, that went far beyond penning concise pop hits that were bound for the airwaves.
Their progressive tendencies never left them, like on 'Fool's Overture' which sees Hodgson musing over the end of mankind throughout the ten minute epic.
"History recalls how great the fall can be, while everybody's sleeping, the boats put out to sea," Hodgson recalled about his idea for the song. "It was very much the way I was perceiving life, that people were in denial of the way we were heading and the way the planet was heading."
'Fool's Overture' wasn't a single, but closed out their landmark album Breakfast In America in quite opulent fashion.
'School'

Supertramp - School (Official Video)

The opening track to Supertramp's 1974 breakthrough album, Crime Of The Century, 'School' also served as a set opener for most of the band's concerts.
Credited to both Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies, the lyrics were inspired by Hodgson's experience in boarding school which he found alienating, which affected him for years after.
"Basically, it's saying that what they teach us in schools is all very fine," he said in an interview some years later, "but it's what they don't teach us that creates so much confusion in our being."
"They don't really prepare us for life in terms of teaching us who we are on the inside. They teach us how to function on the outside, how to be intellectual, but they don't tell us how to act with our intuition or our heart."
'Bloody Well Right'

Supertramp - Bloody Well Right (Live In Paris '79)

The sister track to 'School', 'Bloody Well Right' again tackles Britain's obsession with class warfare, conformity and confusion, particularly in the school system.
It also sees the band teeter toward hard rock, though they balance out the rocking guitar riff with twinkling keys and Rick Davies' skittish be-bop vocals.
'Bloody Well Right' was Supertramp's first charting hit in the US, one that would start nearly a decade of success on the other side of the pond.
It didn't fare as well in the UK however - "bloody" though meek by today's standards still caused enough offence to be ignored by the British public en masse.
‘Take The Long Way Home’

Supertramp - Take The Long Way Home (Official Video)

Despite the bumbling countrified rhythm coupled with the squawking harmonica that makes 'Take The Long Way Home' a finger-snapping train ride of a track, it's actually one of Supertramp's deepest songs.
The lyrics detail a character who doesn't want to return home so he can keep living out his dreams, not knowing where his home really is.
"Talking about not wanting to go home to the wife, take the long way home to the wife because she treats you like part of the furniture, but there's a deeper level to the song, too. We all want to find our home, find that place in us where we feel at home. Home is in the heart and that is really, when we are in touch with our heart and we're living our life from our heart, then we do feel like we found our home."
It was another angle on the question that ran deep inside me, which is, 'Where's my home? Where's peace?' It felt like I was taking a long way to find it."
'Goodbye Stranger'

Goodbye Stranger - Supertramp | The Midnight Special

Rick Davies takes on vocal duties for the matter of fact 'Goodbye Stranger', which sees the narrator enjoying the freedom of having one-night stands with random women.
Doing away with the dense concepts of previous albums, Breakfast In America saw the band having more lighthearted fun in their music, which coincided with more commercial success coming their way.
Writing from the perspective of a drifter loving the unpredictable life, 'Goodbye Stranger' drifted through the charts until it peaked at No.15 in the US, Hodgson's sumptuous guitar solo and Davies' falsetto proving too irresistible.
"Just the thought of those sweet ladies sends a shiver through my veins." No wonder.
'Breakfast In America'

Supertramp - Breakfast In America (Official Video)

'Breakfast In America' became the title track for Supertramp's best-selling 1979 album, as it details a young man pursuing his dream of conquering America and becoming famous. Precisely what happened to the band.
A whimsical Hodgson was coy about whether or not the song was directly about his own dreams and ambitions however:
"The line 'playing my jokes upon you,' I think that kind of sums up the song. It was just mind chatter. Just writing down ideas as they came – fun thoughts all strung together."
"And I do remember The Beatles had just gone to America, and I was pretty impressed with that. That definitely stimulated my dream of wanting to go to America. And obviously seeing all those gorgeous California girls on the TV and thinking, Wow. That's the place I want to go."
He did just that. Hodgson has lived in California since moving there in 1973.
'Dreamer'

Supertramp - Dreamer (Official Video)

'Dreamer' - one of Supertramp's most beloved songs - pre-dates the band's formation, as Roger Hodgson wrote it when he was just 19.
"I am, and I definitely was even more back then," he said when asked if he was a dreamer. "I was a teenager, I had many dreams. And I feel very blessed that a lot of them came true."
"But that song flew out of me one day. We had just bought our first Wurlitzer piano, and it was the first time I'd been alone with a Wurlitzer piano back down in my mother's house. I set it up and I was so excited that that song just flew out of me."
The second single from their 1974 album Crime Of The Century, 'Dreamer' broke the top 20 in the UK and set the band on their course for chart success.
Fun fact: 'Dreamer' was one of Princess Diana's favourite songs, and would dance around the room to it with her sons Prince William and Prince Harry.
'The Logical Song'

Supertramp - The Logical Song (Official Video)

The sentiment of 'The Logical Song' is something that resonates with everyone - how life can be so exciting and exuberant each day with the naivety of youth and young wonder.
That's until you grow older, and wonder gives way to worry and cynicism with adult life.
It was this sentiment - along with the song's gorgeous melody and instantly iconic keys - that echoed far and wide with listeners, catapulting Supertramp into the big leagues of pop chart triumph.
'The Logical Song' reached the top ten of the charts in both the UK and the US, but more importantly to Roger Hodgson, it reached the imagination of school children.
"I hear it all the time, it's quoted in schools so much," Hodgson said in a 2012 interview.
"I've been told it's the most-quoted song in school. That may be because it has so many words in it that people like to spell. But I think it also poses that question, and maybe stimulates something with students."
'Give A Little Bit'

Supertramp - Give A Little Bit (Official Video)

Whilst it may have not been the band's highest charting song, time has been kind to the evergreen 'Give A Little Bit' - aging like a fine wine, the song's endlessly optimistic nature feels as hopeful now as it did in 1977.
Released as the lead single to 1977 album Even in the Quietest Moments..., the song was written long before it hit the airwaves.
Roger Hodgson wrote 'Give A Little Bit' when he was a teenager, revealing it was was "written at a time when writing simple songs was very easy because I didn't over-think them."
"It actually took me six years before I even brought it to the band," he shared in a 2012 interview. "But I wrote it I think around 1970. That time, the late '60s, early '70s, was a very idealistic time, one of hope, a lot of peace and love and the dream of the '60s was still very alive and maturing, if you like."
"The Beatles had put out 'All You Need Is Love' a year prior to that. I believed in love - it was always for love - and just felt that was the most important thing in life."
Naturally, because of the song's message, it has since been used as the soundtrack to various charitable campaigns. Hodgson regretted that he never got to play it to his biggest fan however: Princess Diana.
"I was kind of sad that I never got to actually play for the princess while she was alive but I was very, very happy that the princes invited me to play for her honour ten years after her death to celebrate her life," he later said.
Ultimately, 'Give A Little Bit' - which failed to reach even the top 20 of the UK and US charts upon its initial release - remains to be a slice of grandious poptimism that Hodgson himself can't help but get caught up in. Especially when he performs it live:
"I look out and people just start smiling straight away and sometimes they hug each other and they start singing with me. It's a very unifying song with a beautiful, simple message that I'm very proud of and really enjoy playing today."