Rolling Stone: 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2021)

The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time

 

i can't even, anymore.....

 

What, no “Copacabana?” Utter nonsense!!

 

Nothing in the top hundred that I would argue against. I could also replace 90 out of 100 and still say the same.

With every year that goes by, it’s harder to do a comprehensive list like this.

 

#72: Yesterday
#10 Hey Ya!

I don’t know what I was expecting but definitely not that.

 

I'll take the Isley's original idea and execution over Public Enemy's any day of the week.

 

Totally agree with every song and it’s placing. Well done RS and it’s voters!

 

Every time one of these lists gets published, the reaction always seems to be mostly negative.

 

I'm not at all familiar with #8. Missy Elliott, ‘Get Ur Freak On’ 2001. But, a quick look at the... "lyrics" tells me what I already knew, this list is bulls**t.

 

Hey Ya is a piece of infectious magic - very clever, even innovative.

Now, when ranking songs, they could jumble up the whole list and it would still fall out in a "reasonable" place. I mean, look at three consecutively ranked songs from the Top 50, from different generations.
...
38. Otis Redding, ‘(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay’ 1967
37. Prince and the Revolution, ‘When Doves Cry’ 1984
36. The White Stripes, ‘Seven Nation Army’ 2003
...

All tier one, genius-level compositions. Impossible to actually rank in any manner that is meaningful.

 

I am loving this list. Expansive and inclusive across genres and generations. I keep going, “That’s a great record. Ooh, that is too. Oh, I forgot that one. I have to listen to that one!”

 

That is a brilliant record.

 

They would do a great service by listing the songs chronologically instead, like those 1001 Albums books do. But that wouldn’t get as many clicks or get as much conversation going.

 

seriously?

 

Radiohead's Idioteque at 48 is a curious one. Not a bad selection but people should know better than to get riled up by this stuff. It's just a bloody list...

 

There has never been a science to any of these lists. Someone can think Lorde’s Royal is a better song than Pancho and Lefty by Towns VanZandt. Or Hey Ya being better song than almost all of popular music.

One person is going to like As Time Goes By and another person is going to appreciate Ms. Jackson and Glory Days more.

 

This seems like an odd, out of leftfield choice or is there a significance to this tune that I missed?

 

It’s a good catchy song

 

The thing about this list (and lists like it) is that it’s not like 250 people simultaneously agreed that “Hey Ya!” is better than “God Only Knows.” It’s that “Hey Ya!” appeared on more people’s ballots than “God Only Knows.” I’m sure multiple people had “God…” in their top 5, if not top 3 or higher. Which is why I don’t put much stock in where songs rank on lists like these, and just study them as lists of what people believe are the great songs in the musical canon (and similar to the point @KJTC makes, I think ranking this list by when it was released would be better, but that doesn’t get conversation going/people riled up). And on that front, it’s pretty solid: yeah, there are a few songs I would classify as being released too soon to have their place properly evaluated in a historical context, but that’s offset by some unexpected and surprising (in a good way) deep cuts that were included by some GOAT artists.

 

Not to be a RS apologist, but I don't think the list is that crazy. For those who'll argue the list skews "too recent", 3 of the top 4 songs are from the 1960s... the Beatles have the most songs in the top 100 with 6, Dylan has 4, the Stones have 3. For those who'll argue there's too much rap, I count about 15% in the top 100 and that's stretching the definition to include songs like "Hey Ya!" and "Doo Wop (That Thing)". Of course I would re-arrange the order of many songs here to suit my preferences but the list is full of classics across generational and stylistic lines and I'm good with that.

 

Beatles songs on the list:

1. Strawberry Fields Forever (#7)
2. I Want To Hold Your Hand (#15)
3. A Day In The Life (#24)
4. Yesterday (#72)
5. Hey Jude (#89)
6. In My Life (#98)
7. Something (#110)
8. Let It Be (#121)
9. She Loves You (#135)
10. Eleanor Rigby (#243)
11. Penny Lane (#280)
12. Help! (#447)

 

a recent weekend-long 500 top singles of all time excluded The Beatles completely, i guess they don't need to be played any more

 

so what's the worst thing RS did this time

 

"Hey Ya" is the most annoying song ever. It has a secure space on my bottom 10 songs of all-time.

Wait a minute. Three OutKast songs and only one by Elvis? And the Elvis song is not even one of his best ones. I'm not some rockist dude and I like OutKast a lot, but this is really something.

 

happy to say i don't have a clue at all about it