"Tribute" is the first single of Tenacious D's self-titled debut album. It was released July 16, 2002. "Tribute" was the most requested video on Kerrang! TV in 2002. The song is a tribute to what Gass and Black refer to as "The Greatest Song in the World" (often confused as the song's title), which Tenacious D themselves came up with, but have since forgotten. It was released as a downloadable track for Rock Band in addition to appearing as a playable track for Guitar Hero Live.

Tribute was the first song Black and Gass played live as Tenacious D. The song, like many other songs that were recorded on Tenacious D, was originally played on the TV series. During earlier performances of this song Kyle Gass played the opening to "Stairway to Heaven". The two songs are both in A minor and have very similar chord progressions, and critics have said the songs sound alike. A slightly different version of the song first appeared on the band's TV show on HBO.

The song chronicles the band members' encounter with a demon who demands the duo play "the best song in the world" or have their souls eaten. Having nothing to lose from trying, they play "the first thing that came to our heads", and it "just so happened to be the best song in the world."

Given the "Stairway to Heaven" interlude in the original TV series version, along with the similarity of the chord progression in both songs, Tribute at first implies that the best song in the world is indeed that song. However, the lyrics make clear that Tribute sounds nothing like the song they came up with to please the demon; as Black describes: "And the peculiar thing is this my friends: The song we sang on that fateful night it didn't actually sound anything like this song."

In an interview the band claimed that the inspiration from the song came after Jack Black played Metallica's "One" for Kyle Gass, describing it as "the best song in the world", leading to a failed attempt to themselves write an even better song, and a discussion of the meaninglessness of labeling any song that way. Tribute was written as a paean to the impossibility of reaching musical perfection, making the claim that the greatest song in the world had in fact been theirs, but that they had forgotten it.

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Wikipedia