Rolling Stone‘s released a new “500 Best Songs Of All Time” list for you to get mad at
The new list updates the publication's previous version, which was released in 2004
Music Features Songs
In acknowledgement of the fact that someone needs to give the internet its weekly bucket of low-stakes material to get all worked up over, Rolling Stone has decided to redo its list of the “500 Best Songs Of All Time.” The updated version arrived today and, even without opening it, we’re pretty sure you think it’s completely wrong and that everyone involved with making it ought to be fired.
Starting with Kanye West’s “Stronger,” a placement that’s bound to send someone off to Twitter completely fuming with indignation, the list moves on to include tracks like Miles Davis’ “So What” at 492, Prince’s “1999" at 339, Neil Young’s “Heart Of Gold” at 259, Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” at 178, Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five’s “The Message” at 59, and on and on.
The real meat meant to chum the online waters, though, is the top 10 “Best Songs Of All Time.” This part of the list runs through Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” at 10 and 9, respectively, then on down through Missy Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On,” The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone,” Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power.” The final entry—the inarguable best song ever recorded—is Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.”
The comments section is already off to a good start, readers letting the publication know that its subjective effort to highlight 500 culturally worthwhile songs is “perhaps the most out of touch list ever published by Rolling Stone.” (That comment’s author: “WhatASadList.”) Someone else is upset that the numbering means Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” is now eternally “better” than “House Of The Rising Sun.” Another person complains about The Beatles. Someone else sums up every reply to come by responding to a complaint with “Not enough boomer rock or too much?”
Expect this discourse to continue for at least the rest of the day before vanishing forever into the digital ether. If you’d like to get in on the action before then, check out the entire list over here.
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191 Comments
I would have sworn they made this list every year if not once a month.
They put out a new one while you were typing.
All time is such an impossible thing to measure when comparing genres and eras of music.
Literally every comment currently visible when you first open the site is a complaint about some aspect of the list. They have to know what they’re doing at this point.
Okay before we even get started I’m going to need an exhaustive definition of “Greatest”.
Imagine thinking “Strawberry Fields Forever” is the best Beatles song.
I haven’t looked at it yet, but I’ll probably agree with some of it, hate other parts, and then ultimately not give a shit about any of it.
Almost like a human being with a palate and opinions based on art, media and culture you have experienced intimately or peripherally…
I went through the entire list so I’ll save you the trouble: you’ll probably agree with some of it, hate other parts, and then ultimately not give a shit about any of it.
wtf is Rolling Ztone lol
Now I want the ultimate team-up: Pizza Hut’s Rolling P’stone.
“Imagine” in the top 20? Get the fuck out of here.The other 499 songs, however, are perfectly selected and ordered and I applaud Rolling Stone’s diligence and impeccable taste.
At least “Number 9″ isn’t number nine.
‘Imagine’ is absolutely the worst song ever recorded
That Cotton Eye Joe song would like to have a word with you. The song is vastly overrated just like Lennon’s solo work.
Christmas Shoes is the worst song ever by a mile, followed by I Love This Bar, then Cotton Eye Joe
I don’t know, compare the joy produced by ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ in Swiss Army Man to the vitriol produced by Gal Gadot et al’s version of ‘Imagine’. I’d say that cheesey as ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ is, its had a more positive impact on the world.
I guess people still have fun with it. Like many other awful songs with dances to them
I guess people still have fun with it. Like many other awful songs with dances to them
McCartney’s “Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time” is worse than like ten Hitlers’.
I’ve heard better covers. It’s all in his poor choice of synthesizers. If only he made a Naked version like Let it Be
I mean, not to interrupt the crowd attacking “Imagine” for being ludicrously straightforward and naive compared to a modern culture bathed in nihilistic cynicism, but to me the the greatest travesty is the inclusion of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” at #497, when that might be the ugliest song ever recorded.
Ahh, to be young.
Come now, there’s the entire Led Zeppelin catalog to consider first. To say nothing of most songs by Ray Stevens.
Shit, I’ll take Ray Stevens over Stevie Ray Vaughn any day of the week.
Amen, brother. I really miss some of the Old AV Club, specifically, “Hatesong,” which was always entertaining. Frank Turner spoke about “Imagine,” and he said this: It’s a Hallmark card set to music. There’s a pretty high dose of hypocrisy in here as well. For a man who had a dedicated, refrigerated room in his New York penthouse apartment for storing his fur-coat collection to sing “Imagine no possessions” takes a fair amount of chutzpah. I mean, I have no problem with the man collecting fur coats. Whatever floats your boat. But there’s a certain strain of material disdain that can only result from being really fucking rich, which is intensely patronizing. Aside from that, well, the ’60s revolutionaries had some interesting things to say and valid criticisms to make, but it’s an insult, in my opinion, to boil it all down to this soupy mush. Listen to Phil Ochs instead. https://www.avclub.com/british-folksinger-frank-turner-on-why-he-hates-john-le-1798233794
A Hallmark card set to music is exactly it.
My favorite Hatesong article remains Jon Daly describing “American Idiot” as a song an oil company exec would listen to while driving around in his Hummer, all the while thinking “This song rocks! I’m going to go home and beat my son!”
Every time I hear about that article (and I agree that it’s great, if a bit cringe-y), I hope against hope that it’s John Daly, the golfer, and they misspelled the name.
I enjoyed Hatesong, and this was one of the best. “It’s so beige.”
It just might be what killed the hippie movement and set back leftist politics, he made the fatal mistake of not going after the big corporate overlords (many of whom befriended him) but instead sneered at the Little People and told them they suck for living their lives and believing in any god but him. What I’m saying here is LENNON WAS A CIA PLANT!
Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls was recorded last I checked.
Second Worst; unfortunately, John Lennon also recorded “Merry Xmas (War Is Over),” a song that implores us “For the Yellow and Red ones” to “stop all the fight.” It’s all the odiousness of “Imagine” mixed with holiday treacle.
At least it’s only played in December
I still don’t get what “War is Over (If you want it) means” Does it mean “If you want war, sorry it ended an hour ago” or “War is over if you want it to be over” or “ War is over our heads and missed us, so don’t worry!” or “OMG War is SOOO last week!” Also, while I’m not at all pro-Vietnam war (not that I was alive for it) when the war ended hundreds of thousands died, so it’s not like just ending it made everything A-OK.
I think it’s supposed to mean that “war will end if you want peace enough to stand for it”. Like, if you want peace enough you’ll turn the other cheek and try to ignore those impulses that lead you to support or want to inflict violence on others, you’ll stand up against people who try to start wars, you’ll protest wars, and if you do it enough and enough people (presumably on both sides) join you there’ll be no way to have a war. That sort of thing.So, really hippyish and idealistic and pie-in-the-sky like “Imagine”, but it’s also a Christmas song, and Christmas is that “peace and love towards all” time of year, so it’s season appropriate at least.
The fact that Fleetwood Mac is that high in there says you (and Rolling Stone) is wrong.
I don’t care enough to look through the whole list to see if there’s anything by Fleetwood Mac Sex Pants on there.
Oh, how quickly these kids forget the “Agadoo”. (So I kind of replied to the wrong post here, just pretend that this is in direct response to one of those kids — and yes, I’m pretty sure they’re kids — being all “Imagine is the worst song ever recorded!”.)
Literally old enough to have owned Agadoo (and Superman, which was much worse). The thing is, nobody ever pretends Agadoo or Cotton Eye Joe or the works of Jive Bunny are great songs. Celebs don’t do mournful a capella versions of Agadoo to inspire us. Agadoo is not on this Greatest Songs list. Imagine is constantly held up as a great artwork, when it in fact sucks ass.
A friend of mine recently attended an 80s festival with her daughter. When Black Lace did Superman, all the over 50s stopped what they were doing, faced the stage and started doing the actions. Her daughter will take years of therapy to deal with the experience.
Hahaha holy shit, poor kid
I mean… yeah. I was just making a bit of a joke about you saying that Imagine is “the worst song ever recorded” by dropping a song that even you kind of admit is leagues worse than “Imagine” into this thread.Plus, the sadist in me kind of gets off on inflicting “Agadoo” on unsuspecting AV Club commenters. It’s a sick thrill, I won’t deny.
Ha, Jarvis Cocker from Pulp acknowledged at a festival that it was possible they would only be remembered for Common People, and that was okay because it’s a good song.
“Black Lace are only ever remembered for Agadoo, so it could be a lot worse.”Here it is, at Reading. Never a bad time to jam to a little Common People…
Indeed Imagine is the worst, here’s my story:I graduated from high school in *cough* 1989, and my Southern school was 65/35 white people to Black people. We had to pick our “Senior Song,” and after a few elimination rounds, they took a vote. Apparently, the white vote split between Ramble On by Led Zepplin (thanks burners) and Imagine (thank you lame white people generally), and the Black vote went to “It Takes Two” by Rob Base, making it the winner.It Takes Two is obviously the best song of the three, but the white administrators flipped out and declared a previously-unannounced “run-off” between Imagine and It Takes Two, and if you know the whites, you know what happened next.On graduation day were were given our diplomas, and instead of walking off to a goddamned certified party anthem that equally matched our celebratory mood, we were instead forced into a morose death march to one of the most saccharine, maudlin, boring, trite and contrived pieces of shit songs that was ever recorded. At bottom, fuck Imagine, and fuck White people for always ruining shit.
Clearly Rolling Stone has no idea what they’re doing as they didn’t even format the list as a 500-page slide show.
They could’ve made so much from pop up ads
Ooh, you think I’m mad now? Wait’ll I read the damn list!
Those not expecting an excess of boomer rock going in are not familiar with Rolling Stone, though they can be forgiven for that. Dreams does kick ass though.
WHERE DA FUK IS BABY SHARK DOO DOO DOODOO OK BOOMERS?!?!
It’s now officially “Jamie Tartt.” No. 434.
Till he misses a penalty kick, then it’ll be “Jamie’s Shart”What, you think Ted Lasso won’t go there?
Gen X is too depressed to comment…dude.
I can finally say that I’m too old to be suckered into these lists, anymore. When you are young, they can be an important step to discovering great music but, after that, it’s just a sad attempt to provoke your readership for views.
I read the first ten and just realized that I don’t care what Rolling Stone thinks. It’s not that I was angry or anything, I was just bored.
Yep.SEE ALSO: the “how DARE you dislike this thing I love!” impulse. Which, really, is kinda consciously chosen (and thus dumb) past a certain point.
All I ever use them for is to scraping them for books/movies/music blindspots that I should check out. My personal hit rate is about the same as just grabbing whatever looks interesting, but I probably experience a wider variety of things, which is nice. Getting emotionally invested in them is madness.
I’ll always have a soft spot for them, given how important RS and VH1’s best songs lists were to me discovering a lot of different music as an impressionable preteen. So in that sense, maybe they are worth arguing about. Because do you really want the youth of tomorrow getting the idea that “Dreams” is a better song than “Rhiannon”? Really??!?lol, no, seriously, I couldn’t give a shit. Suck it next generation.
glad to see i’m not the only Rhiannon > Dreams guy!
I’ve also reached the point where I’ll look at new band, and no matter how good they might be, I still see a bunch of kids with preconceived haircuts trying to look surly. I mean, that’s the game. But when you get to a certain age – and I got there a while ago – you can’t help but roll your eyes over the whole thing. That’s fine, though. Let somebody else have some fun with it.
I’m not too old for new music. I still get excited with new bands and new musciicans, preconceived haircuts and all. I don’t begrudge an artist their conceits, nor the young for being young.
A critic, though? Somebody telling me what is the absolute best? Getting in the game of comparing my opinion with somebody else’s over the course of 500 entries? Nah.
A band? I can’t remember the last time a band of musicians got together. Rockers shouldn’t have been so dismissive of disco because karma really bit them on the ass.
Yep. Older age has its plusses, and realizing that best-of lists (and ALL awards) are meaningless horseshit opinions is a big one for me as well.Lists that are made to point out great work are OK – there’s SO much I don’t know, about everything, after all – but even the Sight & Sound list fails when it says that “Vertigo” is #1 and “Tokyo Monogatari” can be compared with it and be declared less great.Of course, Rolling Stone has always been a piece of shit, in every way. The younger version of faked, white-boy “cool” that Playboy magazine was to white men of the 50s and early 60s.Can ANYONE imagine saying some song was better than some other song by referring to RS’s list!!!
All of these lists are interesting in the bottom half when interesting and relatively unheralded stuff can sneak in, deathly boring when you get to the top and everything gets extremely predictable.
It’s not even what Rolling Stone thinks. It’s a poll of a ton of people.
When I was 13 or something in 1984 I had a treasured copy of Dave Marsh’s Book of Rock Lists. It was a great source for understanding pop music from the 1950s to 1970s. It pretty much stopped caring about anything after Iggy and tne Stooges though except Springsteen, this being Dave Marsh, who got his own chapter along with Dylan and the Beatles.
Is there just the one token jazz work in there, the same way that lists of the greatest athletes of all time usually toss in Secretariat around #60?
There really is something quite liberating when you reach an age / life-point where you realise you don’t have to worry so much about being cool as you once did. You can just like the shit you like and if other people like it as well? Hey, sweet, bonus.
I remember such lists from when I was young and those stuck in my head. Some songs will always hold a place in my heart because they were once voted one of the greatest songs ever by a magazine I love. But, yeah, I’m getting too old for this shit.
Couldn’t have said it better. No account for taste and all, but then again, maybe there should be? Rolling Stone represents the whole idea of boomer sellout to me. Once great, but now irrelevant.
Chalk it up to JOMO. I have JOMO to the point of wanting someone to invite me somewhere, just so I can say no. Not really, but really.
Did Rolling Stone invent trolling with these lists?
If WAP isn’t number one, then this list is invalid.
Oh…oh god…are we all doomed to just disappear into the digital ether one day?! Is that…is that all there is?
Respect is a pretty good choice for Number One.
1- Respect (Aretha Franklin)2- Respect (Otis Redding) 3- With a Little Help From My Friends (Joe Cocker)4- With a Little Help From My Friends (Beatles)5-35 Locomotion35-980 Dancing in the Street980-10,295 Yesterday10,296- Hurt (Johnny Cash) 10,297- Hurt (NIN)
The Power of Love – Huey Lewis and the NewsThe Power of Love – Frankie Goes to HollywoodThe Power of Love – Jennifer Rush
Also- The Power of Love- Celine Dion
I think that’s a cover of the Jennifer Rush one?
1) Head over Heels – The Cure (1985)
2) Head over Heels – ABBA (1981)
3) Head over Heels – The Go-Gos (1984)Even better, they’re not covers – just three completely different 80’s pop songs with the same name!
Forgot one: https://youtu.be/CsHiG-43Fzg
I would plug all 256 versions of Because The Night somewhere in before or after Dancing in the Street.
If by “pretty good choice” you actually mean “total shit”, then you are correct.
Have the Rolling Stones killed
But sir…
I think they liked us!
Go to hell you old bastard!
It’ll be easier now that Charlie died of his own volition. But that won’t make it any easier to kill Keith.
::checks 10-1::I mean, alright. Polly Wolly Doodle is timeless. I’ll allow it.
Camptown Races was robbed though!
Kinda hard to get mad at list that seems generated almost randomly.
Millions of guys with turntables are currently asking you to hold their beers.
PBR, to be precise.
Getting mad at a subjective list is all kinds of stupid.
What they should’ve done: expanded to more small, unnoticed artists. What they did instead: pander to black pop music because it gets clicks and so the mind goes, the most money. Black pop music is often just as lazy and crappy as disco or American boy bands. I can’t see a single reason for this list. At least P4K throws some good unnoticed recs in there. They’re at least not a total Billboard sellout for advertising.
lmao what the fuck are you talking about
All most of the songs singles?
yikes.
knowing hotel california is not in the top 200 i can sleep at night. That song played nearly hourly on classic rock stations is one of the may reasons I stopped listening to classic rock stations. (still looking at 201-500)
rats 311
Yeah, I was pretty disappointed to see 311 on this list too.
311 is the shittiest number ever and doesn’t belong anywhere near this list. 613 should be there instead — a much better and hugely underrated number.
The classic rock radio death spiral was sad to watch (hear?). Stations pay less royalty playing one song five times than five songs one time. People get sick of that song and quit listening. Station makes less off advertising, cuts costs more, trims song list further. Rinse repeat until even acts with massive high-quality backlogs like Zeppelin only get three songs in the rotation.
I think a better title for these types of things would be “A List of 500 Songs.”
I mean, you could probably get death threats just by posting “An Unnumbered List of 500 Unrelated Things”. Provoking controversy on the internet is like stealing poop from a baby.
It’s not really stealing. They’re giving it to you as a sign of their affection for you. Oh, also to punish you for helping destroy the planet one screaming little asshole at a time.Yeah, I said it.
Gross, and ultimately unsatisfying for everyone involved?
Unconnected and free, no relationship to anything.
Strangely, this new list is nothing but Foo Fighters songs.
Well I would list 500 songs
and then I’d list 500 more
Just to be the mag
who lists a thousand
songs for you to argue more
I’d appreciate these lists more if the methodology was truly robust. Like, show me some spreadsheets, man! I want to see decimal scores to ten significant digits!
Hungry Like the Wolf is 398? How can Hungry Like the Wolf possibly be at 398!?! Are they insane? Clearly it should be ranked at least 395.
80s pop was really not on this list much. I am ok with that I did not like 80s pop during the 1980s.
“Take on Me” never really got great until about 2003.
Duran Duran is feeling so clean like a Money Machine.
Get real, it doesn’t even belong in the top 400 on the list.
Get Ur Freak On is not a good song.
Right! It is a GREAT song! I saw that in the top 10 next to Teen Spirit and have to admit this list is not totally insane.
What, yes it isedit: Wait, I was thinking of “Work It”
i mean work it is better but they’re both really good songs
I like Eels cover though.
Get Your Hair Did.
I tried to listen to a Missy Elliot album once. It’s was nothing but “back with some new shit” and “time for some 2004 shit”. Like every song was about how she was back and awesome, but she never got around to actually being awesome.
I will not stand for your Huey Lewis erasure
Has anyone studied the psychology of our obsession with rankings? Is it more an American thing or is it just basic human nature at work? I couldn’t give you a Top Ten “best” songs that would remain consistent from week to week.Is there any value to these types of rankings?
I’m not going to die mad about it, but “Strawberry Fields Forever” isn’t even a top ten Beatles song.
I like When I’m 64 more to be be honest. Paul was better then John.
No he wasn’t. Paul wrote a lot of “granny sh*t” as John rightfully called it. He had some amazing songs but far more bad songs than John did with the Beatles. And “When I’m 64” isn’t even a top 10 song on Peppers
When I’m 64 is twee rubbish.
Counterpoint: Yes, yes he was.John tried to hard to be fookin’ weirdo. And got pussy whipped by an all time ugly woman.Paul’s had numerous smokin hot ladies.Paul wins.
That one sucks. Paul had a phase where he was writing schmaltzy crap that were 30’s throwbacks like Honey Pie. I’d say Paul’s best was equal and sometimes better than John’s but he also was worse than John’s worst stuff. George was starting to do laps around both of them by the end and they both treated him like crap.
Sargent Pepper’s is basically a Paul McCartney solo record, and that’s why it sucks so bad.
I always find the John vs Paul arguments entertaining. One wasn’t better than the other, they were just different. It comes down to this:John Lennon was an artist. Paul McCartney is an entertainer.Yes, there is overlap between the two skills, but in the end, John wanted to reach people, make them think, shake them up, and he was damn good at it. Paul just wants to entertain people, and he’s damn good at it.
I strongly disagree with you, but I would probably die mad even if I had never heard of the Beatles.
Not a top 10 Beatles song, eh? lol…
Fitting, considering it’s on the most overrated Beatles album.
It’s a good song, and I don’t think it’s crazy for for them to rank it so highly, but off the top of my head “Yesterday,” “Something,” “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Hey Jude,” “A Day in the Life,” “Come Together,” and “Let it Be” are all superior songs.
Damn fine list.
It’s great and it stupidly annoys me that it and Penny Lane were not on Sgt Pepper because the record company wanted new content quickly.
I prefer “Penny Lane” FWIW.
i AM going to be mad about it, it isn’t even a top 20 beatles song lol
George was the best Beatle.
Yeah, not even close. Also Sam Cooke and Outkast have better songs than their top ones. And Dreams by Fleetwood Mac only made it that high because of the memes, they also have at least 5-10 better songs
Rolling Stone CEO: How can we pander to Millennials and Gen Z-ers and pretend the mass produced-shit they like isn’t mass-produced shit so that they’ll still think we matter?Executive One: In-depth interviews with artists and producers on the creative process?Executive Two: An embedded reporter with a powerhouse performer’s world tour?Executive Three: Why don’t we just make another list where we somehow put Britney Spears and Drake above Elvis?CEO: GENIUS! You other two assholes are fired.
Elvis definitely gets overhyped, but he also isn’t irrelevant like some people think, also Britney simply can’t sing.
Coincidentally, high-brow British newspaper The Guardian has a ranking of 30 Britney songs on its website today.Worse, they didn’t even have Toxic at number one.
Toxic and Womanizer are really the only ones I need at least. She sort of….caused major damage to woman-driven pop. The 90’s had such a good run until her, and the 00’s was overall a pop wasteland. Then again this was an issue for almost every genre. And for politics.
This is like NPR ranking WAP as their number one song of last year. You know not a single person at NPR felt comfortable with that song or listens to anyone that can fill a venue larger than a jazz club.
I’m mostly hung up that Dave Grohl is fighting a secret war against ISIS. Man that guy is EVERYWHERE. Incredible energy.
These lists have a value in introducing baby music lovers to a bunch of great tracks across the spectrum. But it’s dumb to literally have a ranked list – it should just be 500 songs, sorted by decade, with no hierarchy.
I agree with that.
I do got to thank list like these. I discovered a lot of music because of them.
I don’t agree with the list’s top choices, but they are undeniably great songs.
I deny them.
I refuse to read the list, and will generally not engage with it, but I am astounded at the notion that “Savage” could be “ranked higher” than “House Of The Rising Sun.” But, again, I am not engaging with this list.
I actually really like it when they update lists like this because when they redo the list in 2030 and “Savage” falls out of it completely you can really see how the recency bias works.
♫ My father was a gamblin’ man,
Classy, bougie, ratchet
One could spend all day debating this list … but I was very satisfied when I saw what was #1.
But where’s Pachelbel’s Canon?!
I didn’t realize the last Top 500 list came out so long ago. I think that was the issue where I ultimately decided I wasn’t going to renew my subscription. You know what? I haven’t missed it one bit …
But number 501? You guessed it, “Far From Over” by Frank Stallone.
I only know the words “This is the end”.
I am here to say that boomer music is just better than other types of music. No need to include Lorde in your list cuz Lorde kind of sucks compared to other boomer music faves.
sarcasm? I cannot tell.
My big complaint about the original list was that they claimed the song that inspired the name for their magazine was the best song of all time which was just about the most Jann Wenner thing any simple-minded old fool could do. Now that it’s down to #4, I have nothing to say about this list. Rolling Stone sucks and I’m happy not wasting any thoughts about it.
It doesn’t help that it probably isn’t even in the top 5 Bob Dylan songs (although it’s still great).
The real meat meant to chum the online waters, though, is the top 10 “Best Songs Of All Time.” This part of the list runs through Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” at 10 and 9, respectively, then on down through Missy Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On,”Well, at least they didn’t take the bit and wildly overcorrect.
Poor Dowd—puts in all that work ranking all the Weezer songs but then Rolling Stone just had to upstage him the next day.
I swear to god, if anything by the Beatles is in the top five…
Good news – they’re not even in the top six!
I mean, one can be there. They had some good ones. And that one should be Revolution 9
The only thing more tiresome than Beatles fanboys? Beatles shitposters. We get it, your totes not mainstream.
No, a Beatle shitposter would correct your typo.
“Back That Azz Up” a higher ranked song than Miles Davis?I believe that is the Oxford English Dictionary definition of a ‘shitposting’.
Bunch of elderly white writers trying in vain to get a younger audience
They should probably separate these songs into different generations/eras. The multi-generational divide is now getting so complicated that it could affect the Earth’s gravitational pull, and that’s an incredibly dangerous thing to toy with.
It’s fun fluff, but I wish they had a search field, or a single page with just the titles. Five hundred is hard to wade through.
I just wanted to see if “Naked Eye” is on it, but I can’t be arsed and don’t really care anyway
Any list without Tiny Tim’s rendition “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” is pure horse shit.
Rolling Stone also once listed Norm Macdonald as one of the worst SNL cast members of all time. I haven’t taken their lists seriously since.
This is the second time they’ve updated the list (the other being in 2010). The 2004 version is worth reading through if only to see how void of non white artists it is. It’s easy to accuse Rolling Stone of only caring about ‘Boomer Rock’ but that ‘04 list is pretty much that to a ‘T’.
Back when the original list came out, someone created a mass upload of MP3’s for the entire list to Pirate Bay. I listened to that whole thing, found a lot of great stuff.
Those were so hard to come by pre-spotify. Now they got CVS playlists
I feel like there is a split vote issue with some of these…which version of Rising Sun? They have Aretha’s Respect but not Otis’s, they have Whitney singing “I will always love you” but not Dolly…For a good list, apart from the ranking of Weezer songs AV Club did recently, which was fun, I often like Paste Magazine’s beer rankings. I don’t know if they have done them recently, but they don’t claim to be definitive and they always at least give a reason for their rankings
Books and music are two things that I feel are pretty much useless to measure in any sort of universal way. They are far too personal, too subjective. TV, movies, and games (newer forms of media, to be sure) are much more universal.
The only thing about Rolling Stone magazine that I’m happy about is that if I run out of toilet paper. At least there’s that magazine that I can use.
Just went through the whole list, and it’s actually pretty good. Nice to see lots of genres in there and I like 95% of the tracks. I think sometimes you just have to ignore the order and realise it’s not the word of god.
I’m not mad about it. I’ll quibble with some of the ordering (Groove is in the Heart above Blue Monday was a particularly bold and puzzling choice), but I don’t think they’ve missed anything essential (other than being highly western-centric of course), nor any particularly offensive inclusions.
I can’t find an easy way to search the entire list, but if “Naked Eye” isn’t on it it’s automatically invalid