One of rock's most influential song, 21st Century Schizoid Man turns 50 this year. To celebrate King Crimson set out over the year to release 50 versions of the song (one a week, with commentary from David Singleton, manager and producer of the band), and perform 50 live shows.

38 versions are out now on YouTube (see embedded YouTube playlist) and most of the live shows have already happened, with 6 shows on their South-American leg left (ticket info below). 

In celebration of this remarkable track, Rolling Stone magazine has released a two-piece deep-dive series into the history and legacy of this remarkable track which we encourage anyone to give a careful read.

The band has had various members over its 50 years history who all seem equally awe-strucked and slightly scared of the idea of performing the track. Mel Collins, a saxist says it took three months to rehearse and called it "a hell of a challenge" and when Adrian Belew joined the band in the early 80s he stated “It’s a little scary, that piece of music”.

And while countless artists have covered the songs, including Ozzy Osbourne and the Flaming Lips and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and David Letterman's house-band people have also referenced it and built on it and it's hard to measure the influence it's had.

The most notable sampling must be on Kanye West's POWER of his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album, the one he made reconciling with being a 'jackass' to use Barack Obama's phrasing after the now infamous 2009 Taylor Swift VMA incident. Somehow his callback to this intimidating and 'vicious' (to use Opeth frontman's Mikael Åkerfeldt words) not to mention complex piece of music, is perfect.

And that's not just our opinion, but co-other of the song Greg Lake actually ended up using POWER to open his shows, inpsiring true awe.