Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

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Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by jdstamper » Sat Sep 18, 2021 5:59 pm

What did you think of the new Rolling Stone list of the 500 greatest songs ever?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... e-1224767/
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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by Zaychi » Sun Sep 19, 2021 3:53 am

Kind of a ridiculous list. It seems some kind of mixture between obvious entries like Imagine, Bohemian Rhapsody, Satisfaction, Teen Spirit, Purple Rain, then some "Hey you may have missed these" listening advices (including some I never heard before) and some "Look how sophisticated our taste is" type songs (Radiohead, Velvet Underground, Billie Holiday).

In my opinion, for a list like this, ALL songs should be in the first category - either huge hits at the time or gradually becoming iconic later on. Way too much "Ah yes... vaguely..." songs on this as it is.

Still it is of course a fun list to browse and wonder about things like, how could Public Enemy ever make it to #2... which is probably how it was intended anyway.

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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by jdstamper » Mon Sep 20, 2021 11:52 am

Well said!

I'm sure it's an impossible job to compile a list like this. There are a lot of great deserving songs on the list, and like you said, very fun to browse and maybe discover some new treasures.

What bothers me is that many of my old favorites were probably bumped by lesser songs.

Just one example is "Old Town Road" ... now, I love to listen to this song, it's a lot of fun. But is it one of the 500 greatest songs ever ... will it stand the test of time? (Did anyone read the lyrics? :lol:)

Or "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan ... I think it's good but it's the only Steely Dan song on the list, so Is it the best Steely Dan song ever?

I'm OK with including more obscure songs, as long as they're great songs ... but if they're so great, why are they obscure? :?

Here's the Rolling Stone list, nicely presented with descriptions and playable samples! https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... r-1224837/

Also, this is a helpful table of the full Rolling Stone list https://stuarte.co/2021/2021-full-list- ... e-updated/

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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by jdstamper » Tue Sep 28, 2021 7:38 am

Over the past week I've caught a couple of podcasts about the Rolling Stone top 500 list. One of the podcasts was from Rolling Stone itself, it may have even been the authors of the list. They talked about the Fleetwood Mac song Dreams being very high on the list now, because of the recent TikTok boost, and the song didn't even make it onto the prior list at all.

So however Rolling Stone put the list together, it seems influenced more by recent times versus the greatest songs of all time. And that's a criticism I heard in other podcasts. I think people have a problem that Rolling Stone has been such a heavyweight of opinion in the music industry, yet this top 500 list seems so arbitrary. Are they trying to curry favor with younger music fans? (So Rolling Stone can continue to survive, who could blame them?)

Another criticism I heard is if a band has only one song on the list, shouldn't it be their best song? That's the same feeling I had about Steely Dan's Deacon Blues, mentioned above.
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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by superblonde » Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:16 pm

Zaychi wrote:
Sun Sep 19, 2021 3:53 am
Kind of a ridiculous list.
I agree and there are so many criticisms about Rolling Stone in many other ways and in many other prior years. It is interesting they seem to be incorporating recent metrics into their list, however their entire editorial process has shown to be compromised in so many other ways. None of it matters except that Rolling Stone's opinions show up in music history textbooks now, along with Billboard data. In some cases where it seems obvious the author of the music history textbook is out of their genre expertise, they seem to rely solely on the opinion of these rags. The Covach rock history textbook "What's that Sound", for example, completely misses the mark in some periods and genres.

It's fine for Rolling Stone to be ridiculous on their own, it's not fine when musicologists use their biased reporting as a legitimate gauge of music quality.

#1 on the list should be "Peace Sells, but Who's Buying?".
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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by Patrick » Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:13 pm

I'd go with these numbers for these five decades...

50's -Everly Brothers 'All I Have To Do is Dream'

60's- Hendrix 'All Along the Watchtower'

70's- Al Stewart 'The Year of the Cat'

80's- Tears For Fears 'Woman in Chains'

90's- Radiohead 'Just'

I stopped inputting music after 1999. ;)

So ya'll give me your own picks from the fifties to the nineties.
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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by superblonde » Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:23 pm

Patrick wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:13 pm


So ya'll give me your own picks from the fifties to the nineties.

"Hallelujah" is a song written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, originally released on his album Various Positions (1984). Achieving little initial success, the song found greater popular acclaim through a recording by John Cale, which inspired a recording by Jeff Buckley.
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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by Zaychi » Mon Oct 25, 2021 2:41 am

Patrick wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 9:13 pm
I'd go with these numbers for these five decades...

70's- Al Stewart 'The Year of the Cat'
Wow, really? Do you think that's a higher ranking song than, just to name a few, Bohemian Rhapsody, Heroes, Bridge over Troubled Water, Dancing Queen, I Will Survive, and Anarchy in the UK?

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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by Patrick » Mon Oct 25, 2021 7:43 am

Hi Zaychi,

These are songs I'd choose if I were King and you were all ants in my sugar cave. :lol:

I know there are much bigger tunes from those eras, but I just picked my faves. My idea was to throw out sales rankings...etc....and just get participants to state their preferred tracks from those decades.

I dunno. Year of the Cat...the vibe...the feel...just patiently waiting for those beautiful parts to kick in....kinda summed up the 70's, at least for me anyways.

So go ahead. Name your top 5 from the 1950's to the 1990's.
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Re: Rolling Stone Lists the 500 Greatest Songs

Post by Zaychi » Mon Oct 25, 2021 9:36 am

We can go personal? Really??

50's: Screamin' Jay Hawkins - I Put a Spell on You

60's: The Stooges - No Fun

70's: Joy Division - She's Lost Control

80's: The Birthday Party - Jennifer's Veil

90's: The Afghan Whigs - My Curse

None of those in the Rolling Stone list, just guessing here...

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