Godzilla (Blue Öyster Cult song)
song by Blue Öyster Cult
"Godzilla" is a single by U.S. hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, the first track on the band's fifth studio album Spectres. The lyrics are a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the popular movie monster of the same name. The single release had a picture sleeve featuring a promotional still from the movie Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Despite its failure to chart, the song received significant airplay on rock radio stations and soon became a sleeper hit. The song, along with "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Burnin' for You," is one of the band's best-known songs and has become a staple of its live performances. It has been covered by bands such as moe., Racer X, Fu Manchu, The Smashing Pumpkins, Sebastian Bach, Double Experience and Fighting Gravity.
Reception
Cash Box called it "a clever rocker tale of Godzilla...with a strong, catchy hook, excellent guitar and special effects." AllMusic called it a "sturdy, tongue-in-cheek rocker" and said "[t]he melody captures the bombast of old-fashioned monster movie music [...]".
History
In response to the song's absence from the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack, Blue Öyster Cult members Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma created their own parody called "NoZilla", released only to radio stations.
It was the walk up song for New York Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui from 2003 to 2009.
“Godzilla (Blue Öyster Cult song)” enters the record as song by Blue Öyster Cult. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Godzilla, Blue and Öyster can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Godzilla (Blue Öyster Cult song)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Godzilla, Blue and Öyster provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5577027. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998, 2003 and 2009.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Godzilla (Blue Öyster Cult song) primary sources, Godzilla (Blue Öyster Cult song) archive and Godzilla research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Godzilla (Blue Öyster Cult song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.