Hot Burrito #1 wins the poll, but #2 keeps its champions

By Marcus Bennett

Every writer, musician and filmmaker polled by Mitch Myers for Rolling Stone chose "Hot Burrito #1." Not one supported "Hot Burrito #2" alone. Myers posed the question to mark Gram Parsons' posthumous induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class of 2026.

The songs share a birth date. In 1969, bassist Chris Ethridge recalled showing Parsons a couple of old melodies from his youth at Burrito Manor, the San Fernando Valley, California bachelor pad shared with Byrds drummer Michael Clarke.

The two men wrote "Hot Burrito #1" and "Hot Burrito #2" together that day and recorded them that very night. Ethridge played piano on both tracks.

What separates the two songs?

"Hot Burrito #1" is a ballad of yearning heartbreak, the vulnerable register for which Parsons was known. "Hot Burrito #2" is a rocking country-soul number, built around Parsons' climactic cry of "Jesus Christ!" and Sneaky Pete Kleinow's fuzz-drenched psychedelic steel guitar. Myers calls the second song a grower in its funky, distorted sincerity.

Who chose which?

The panel divided over its reasons but not its result. Myers reported that not one respondent was willing to go on the record in sole support of "Hot Burrito #2."

• Rolling Stone senior music writer Angie Martoccio asked: "Is this something people actually debate?" She judged that "'#1' is usually seen as superior. '#2' is great, but one of many great moments on Gilded Palace."
• Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield: "'Hot Burrito #1' by a Cosmic American Mile. Gram at his most forlorn, pained, aiming for high notes he can't reach, even the mega-cringe line, just perfect."
• Filmmaker Ron Mann: "'HB#1' — the song most likely to break your heart."
• Singer-songwriter John Fullbright: "'Hot Burrito #1' please, with extra longing and a side of strange but beautiful chord progression. No fuzz."
• My Morning Jacket singer Jim James wrote in an email: "i LOVE both Hot Burritos so much!!! Grams voice is the sunrise, the glowing sound of the promise of true romance coming up over the horizon."
• Parsons' daughter Polly chose the ballad: "'One' — Written for mom."

Parsons' biographers Holly George-Warren and Ben Fong-Torres said they loved both songs but still voted for the first. George-Warren told Myers: "I love both '#1' & '#2,' but the instrumental simplicity of '#1' makes the vulnerability conveyed in Gram's vocals all the more powerful."

She added: "One of the saddest Burrito songs, it gets me in the gut every time I hear it, and the way his voice breaks in the lyric 'I'm your toy, I'm your old boy' is just heartbreakingly beautiful. You can't fake that kind of emotive singing."

Cameron Crowe, who interviewed Parsons as a teenager before he became well known, called the choice close. "I still choose '#1,' though the Sneaky Pete solo at the end of '#2' makes this a photo finish."

Where the album came from

The songs sit on The Gilded Palace of Sin, the Flying Burrito Brothers' first album, released in 1969 with Parsons and Chris Hillman on vocals and guitar, Ethridge on bass and Kleinow on pedal steel. Hillman and Parsons wrote half of its songs. The band had just come off the Byrds' country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

Myers places the record within a Southern California country-rock scene that had been brewing for a few years. He reads its so-called "Cosmic American Music" as a bridge between Nashville country and Memphis soul, and notes a pair of country-soul covers written by Memphis figures Chips Moman and Dan Penn.

Why "Hot Burrito #2" endured

The second song built a following after Parsons' death. Alex Chilton and Big Star performed it in 1973. Dinosaur Jr. and the Black Crowes have since covered it, and Emmylou Harris recorded the song for her album Evangeline in 1981.

That same year, Elvis Costello covered "Hot Burrito #1" for his country album Almost Blue and renamed it "I'm Your Toy." Myers notes that Costello renamed the song because he felt the original title was not serious enough.

What does the vote change for listeners?

Very little about either recording. The poll settles a ranking rather than a canon, and the stated reasons overlap: a voice breaking on a lyric, and a guitar solo at the end of the second number.

Myers also disclosed his own bias. He said he had always preferred "Hot Burrito #2" and described the exercise as an unconscious defense of that song. He congratulated Parsons on the 2026 induction.

Myers is a Chicago-based music journalist and the author of The Boy Who Cried Freebird: Rock & Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling. He writes the Basement Vapes column. His next comparison sets Joe Walsh and the James Gang's "Funk #48" against "Funk #49," a harder test for the panel's taste.