The 10 Best Ian Gillan Songs, Ranked

Ian Gillan belongs on a 70s music site for a simple reason: before the solo records, the voice was already part of the soundtrack. As the singer on Deep Purple classics such as “Smoke on the Water” and “Highway Star,” Ian Gillan became one of the defining hard-rock voices of the 1970s. That connection matters because the solo career did not arrive from nowhere. Listeners brought years of familiarity with them, and the best post-band recordings often work because they carry recognizable instincts into a different decade.

Gillan’s post-Purple work is spread across the Ian Gillan Band, the group simply called Gillan, and records under his own name. That makes the catalog slightly messier than a conventional solo career, but the musical identity is clear: hard rock, jazz-rock detours, humor, blues, and one of the most distinctive high-register voices in the genre. This ranking treats those Gillan-led projects as the solo chapter outside Deep Purple.

This ranking focuses on Ian Gillan as a solo artist. Band recordings are left out so the list can show what changed once the name on the record was his alone. The production, collaborators, and radio landscape may have shifted, but the personality that made the earlier work memorable is still there. These are the 10 best Ian Gillan songs, ranked.

#10 Scarabus

Album: Scarabus
Release year: 1977
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, Ray Fenwick, John Gustafson, Mark Nauseef, Colin Towns

“Scarabus” comes from the jazz-rock side of Gillan’s post-Purple career. The Ian Gillan Band used more intricate rhythms and fusion textures than many fans expected, and the title track shows how willing he was to take the famous voice into unfamiliar territory.

The experiment did not become his permanent direction, but it remains an important part of the solo story.

It earns the opening spot because a Top 10 should do more than stack the obvious hits. This is the kind of recording that helps explain the shape of the catalog: where the artist was going, what he was willing to leave behind, and why the solo years deserve to be heard as more than an appendix to the band.

#9 Sleeping on the Job

Album: Glory Road
Release year: 1980
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, Colin Towns

“Sleeping on the Job” is compact, fast, and full of the cheeky energy that made the Gillan band such a strong live act. The song avoids the grand scale of Deep Purple and goes for something closer to a hard-rock sprint.

Gillan sounds amused and aggressive at the same time, a combination that suits his personality particularly well.

Placed here, the song also shows how quickly a solo identity can become recognizable. The production belongs to its era, but the phrasing and melodic instincts connect it to the singer listeners already knew. That tension between familiarity and change is one of the pleasures of revisiting these records now.

#8 Trouble

Album: Future Shock
Release year: 1981
Songwriters: Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller

Gillan’s cover of the Leiber-Stoller song “Trouble” became one of the band’s most accessible singles. He takes material associated with Elvis Presley and pushes it through a hard-rock arrangement without losing the swagger of the original.

The cover works because Gillan understands the rock-and-roll roots beneath heavy music rather than treating them as separate worlds.

This is also the sort of track that benefits from distance. Without the pressure of being the biggest single, it can be heard as part of a larger body of work, and the details in the arrangement become easier to appreciate. It is a strong reminder that the solo catalog has more depth than a greatest-hits playlist suggests.

#7 Unchain Your Brain

Album: Glory Road
Release year: 1980
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, Bernie Tormé, John McCoy

“Unchain Your Brain” opens Glory Road with immediate force. Bernie Tormé’s guitar, John McCoy’s bass, and Gillan’s vocal attack create a leaner, more frantic sound than Deep Purple’s 1970s heaviness.

It became one of the key tracks of the Gillan era and shows how successfully he rebuilt himself around a younger, rougher band.

At this point in the ranking, the separation between band history and solo identity becomes especially clear. The song does not need to reference the past directly. The connection comes through the voice, the melodic choices, and the confidence of a performer who already knew how to command a record.

#6 Restless

Album: Double Trouble
Release year: 1981
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, John McCoy

“Restless” puts melody at the center of the Gillan band’s hard-rock attack. The chorus is direct, the guitars stay sharp, and Gillan uses his range without turning the song into a technical exhibition.

That economy makes it one of the group’s more durable songs and a good entry point for listeners who know only the Purple years.

What pushes it into the upper half is durability. Plenty of records from the same period were built around fashionable sounds that aged badly; this one still has a musical center strong enough to survive the production choices around it. The song remains satisfying even after the era-specific gloss becomes part of the nostalgia.

#5 Future Shock

Album: Future Shock
Release year: 1981
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, John McCoy, Bernie Tormé

The title track of Future Shock captures Gillan at his most urgent. The song is short, tense, and slightly futuristic, with a hard-edged arrangement that reflects the changing rock landscape of the early 1980s.

Gillan did not try to recreate 1972. He found a faster, more contemporary band and let the voice adjust to it.

The No. 5 position is where the catalog’s strongest themes start to concentrate. This track combines a memorable hook with a performance that reveals something about the singer beyond simple technique. It is the point where the solo career stops feeling merely successful and starts feeling essential to the artist’s larger story.

#4 No Easy Way

Album: Glory Road
Release year: 1980
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, John McCoy, Bernie Tormé

“No Easy Way” gives the band room to stretch, combining a strong vocal line with heavier instrumental passages. It feels closer to the long-form hard rock Gillan’s older audience knew while still carrying the attack of his new group.

The song became a live favorite because it gave every member space without losing the central hook.

A song this high has to do more than trigger recognition. It needs to represent a distinct piece of the solo identity, and this one does. The writing, arrangement, and vocal all point in the same direction, giving the record a sense of purpose that has held up long after its original radio moment.

#3 New Orleans

Album: Future Shock
Release year: 1981
Songwriters: Frank Guida, Joseph Royster

Gillan’s version of “New Orleans” is pure rock-and-roll fun. The Gary U.S. Bonds song is faster and heavier in his hands, and the performance shows how naturally his voice could move from hard rock back toward the genre’s early roots.

The single was a major UK hit for Gillan and remains one of the most immediately enjoyable records of his post-Purple career.

By No. 3, the argument is less about whether the song belongs and more about how high it should go. This is one of the recordings that can stand beside the best-known band material without needing the comparison to justify it. It has its own atmosphere, its own emotional logic, and its own reason to last.

#2 No Laughing in Heaven

Album: Future Shock
Release year: 1981
Songwriters: Ian Gillan, John McCoy, Bernie Tormé, Colin Towns, Mick Underwood

“No Laughing in Heaven” is Gillan’s humor and theatricality at full strength. The lyric imagines an afterlife that turns out to be far less fun than expected, and the band gives the concept a dramatic arrangement with room for character acting as well as singing.

It is unmistakably Gillan: irreverent, loud, technically impressive, and never too serious about its own virtuosity.

The runner-up spot goes to a song that could easily be No. 1 on a different day. It captures nearly everything that made the solo career worthwhile: a distinctive voice, a strong melodic idea, and enough personality to separate the record from the artist’s earlier band identity. Only one song edges it out.

#1 Child in Time (Live, Ian Gillan Band)

Album: Live at the Budokan
Release year: 1977
Songwriters: Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice

Gillan’s solo-era performances of “Child in Time” inevitably reach back to Deep Purple, but the Ian Gillan Band’s live treatment places the famous vocal showcase inside a different, jazzier musical setting. It demonstrates how strongly the song remained associated with Gillan himself.

It takes No. 1 as a performance rather than a new composition: the clearest bridge between the voice that defined his 1970s reputation and the adventurous career he pursued after leaving the band.

That is why it finishes at No. 1. The best solo song is not necessarily the loudest, the most technically impressive, or even the biggest chart hit. It is the recording that most completely explains why the artist needed a solo career in the first place. This one does exactly that.

What Did We Leave Out?

Strong omissions include “Vengeance,” “Mr. Universe,” “Mutually Assured Destruction,” “Night Ride Out of Phoenix,” “Men of War,” “Born to Kill,” and material from later records under Gillan’s own name. Fans of the fusion-oriented Ian Gillan Band could build an entirely different Top 10.

Deep Purple studio recordings are generally excluded. The one live exception acknowledges how central “Child in Time” remained to Gillan’s identity, but the real purpose of the list is to explore what he built away from Purple.

Why Ian Gillan’s Best Solo Songs Still Work

Gillan’s solo work lasts because he never behaved as if a famous voice required one fixed musical setting. He tried jazz-rock, stripped-down hard rock, old rock-and-roll covers, theatrical humor, and heavier 1980s production while remaining instantly recognizable.

For 70s hard-rock fans, the catalog fills in an important gap between Deep Purple chapters. It shows a singer who kept moving, kept forming bands, and kept testing how far that extraordinary instrument could travel.

The post-Purple years also show how much Gillan valued the chemistry of a working band. Even when the projects carried his name, he surrounded himself with musicians strong enough to challenge the famous frontman rather than simply support him. Bernie Tormé, John McCoy, Colin Towns, Mick Underwood, and others gave the Gillan records an identity that was faster, stranger, and often more humorous than Deep Purple. That collaborative energy is one reason the best tracks still feel alive. They are not vanity recordings with a celebrity singer placed on top; they sound like groups of players pushing material together, which is exactly the environment in which Gillan has historically done his best work.