Back That Azz Up It's hilarious to think anyone would put this on the best 500 songs of all time list 0/5 So What-Miles Davis You're So Vain - Carly Simon Without You - Nilsson Oye Como Va - Santana I Can't Help Myself - Four Tops Baby Love - Supremes Cross Road Blues - Robert Johnson Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper Welcome To The Jungle-Guns N' Roses Buddy Holly-Weezer
478. Juvenile feat. Lil Wayne and Mannie Fresh, “Back That Azz Up” I'm really puzzled how something as generic and bland as this can end up in a Top 500. I don't think it's even good enough for a Top 500 of purely rap and hip-hop. if there is such a thing as MOR rap, well, this is it I guess, with of course the obligatory puerile lyrics. I'm not even going to rate it. By the way, I can't find any info on this song or the album having had any impact whatsoever in Europe or the UK. You would at least expect a list like this to focus on songs that had at least some minor international success.
Biz Markie - Just a Friend A fun song that a few voters remember with a smile? Absolutely. A Top 500 song of all time? No, I don't think so. But compared to some other songs we've already seen, I understand its inclusion. My list sorted so far: 1. Carly Simon - You're So Vain 2. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance 3. Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle 4. The Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself 5. Pixies - Where is My Mind? 6. Robert Johnson - Cross Roads Blues 7. Weezer - Buddy Holly 8. Miles Davis - So What 9. Kanye West - Stronger 10. Townes Van Zandt - Pancho and Lefty 11. The Breeders - Cannonball 12. Nilsson - Without You 13. Azealia Banks -212 14. Solange: Cranes In The Sky (big gap) 15. Lil Nas X - Old Town Road 16. Biz Markie - Just a Friend 17. Lil Wayne - A Milli 18. The Weeknd – House of Balloons 19. Lizzo - Truth Hurts 20. Supremes - Baby Love 21. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
Yeah, if I were doing my own top 500 song list, I don't know what percentage of selections are things that would have been singles, but probably not more than half. And then only a subset of the singles would have had chart success. It's not something I'd pay attention to when compiling my list, but definitely stuff like "Wichita Lineman" (Glen Campbell), "Living for the City" (Stevie Wonder) and "September" (Earth, Wind & Fire) would be on my list, and I know those were released as singles and had chart success.
Santana - Oye Cómo Va One of 6-7 Santana songs I could have chosen that would have potentially made a Top 500, Oye Como Va is a great exciting song, very well played. Like others have stated, Samba Pa Ti might have been a better choice. It's a very close battle with You're So Vain, but it's my new #1 so far for this list. My list sorted so far: 1. Santana - Oye Cómo Va 2. Carly Simon - You're So Vain 3. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance 4. Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle 5. The Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself 6. Pixies - Where is My Mind? 7. Robert Johnson - Cross Roads Blues 8. Weezer - Buddy Holly 9. Miles Davis - So What 10. Kanye West - Stronger 11. Townes Van Zandt - Pancho and Lefty 12. The Breeders - Cannonball 13. Nilsson - Without You 14. Azealia Banks -212 15. Solange: Cranes In The Sky (big gap) 16. Lil Nas X - Old Town Road 17. Biz Markie - Just a Friend 18. Lil Wayne - A Milli 19. The Weeknd – House of Balloons 20. Lizzo - Truth Hurts 21. Supremes - Baby Love 22. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
Juvenile feat. Lil Wayne - Back That Azz Up Must've missed Juvenile back then because I never heard of him. Listening to 'Back That Azz Up' now, it's nothing groundbreaking or something, just a very catchy mainstream hiphop track. The most interesting ingredient is the production. 3,5 / 5
Juvenile - Back That Azz Up Looks like I am the only one so far that would consider this as a Top 500 song. I own the album strictly for this song (although Ghetto Children is cool, too). This is that New Orleans sound, influenced by Bounce Music - I am from the South, so I do enjoy Southern Hip Hop artists - from New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, and Miami - it connects with me. Mannie Fresh's production is quite interesting and has a lot going on, but it works instead of being a mess. First time I heard Lil Wayne was when he and Juvenile were in the Hot Boy$ with Juvenile, and I would have thought Juvenile would have been the one with the bigger career - oops. My list sorted so far: 1. Santana - Oye Cómo Va 2. Carly Simon - You're So Vain 3. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance 4. Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle 5. The Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself 6. Pixies - Where is My Mind? 7. Robert Johnson - Cross Roads Blues 8. Weezer - Buddy Holly 9. Miles Davis - So What 10. Kanye West - Stronger 11. Townes Van Zandt - Pancho and Lefty 12. Juvenile - Back That Azz Up 13. The Breeders - Cannonball 14. Nilsson - Without You 15. Azealia Banks -212 16. Solange: Cranes In The Sky (big gap) 17. Lil Nas X - Old Town Road 18. Biz Markie - Just a Friend 19. Lil Wayne - A Milli 20. The Weeknd – House of Balloons 21. Lizzo - Truth Hurts 22. Supremes - Baby Love 23. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
I’m not surprised it’s on here. It was a huge record back in the day and broke through to the larger pop culture. I’m of the mindset that there are a couple thousand songs that would fit just fine in this top five hundred. I don’t think it’s a long enough list, really, for how much ground it wants to cover. So most of these songs make sense to me, yet could all be replaced by another set of songs that would also make sense to me.
Even for Rolling Stone and the “mainstream” critics I read at Melbourne University in the late 1990s, popular music did not correspond to good music, although mentally and emotionally at the time I did not grasp this. However, ever since reading Joe S. Harrington in the early 2000s, it has been clear that in most eras popular is more likely to mean bad than good. This makes it ipso facto problematic to make a list of best songs. Artists outside the mainstream of commercial radio are with few exceptions much less likely to rely on individual songs than upon albums, and even the few that are would tend to be compiled into compilations. This means that finding the best individual songs would take more intense listening than finding the best albums. Personal experience pre-dating my reading of Joe S. Harrington agrees with this conclusion. More often than not – it would be far too laborious to count – the song(s) I consider best on any album are different from the critical consensus and/or from which song(s) were most popular. I agree, although I would think without counting that I could fit more singles than twenty.
Back That Azz Up (Juvenile) This is the kind of slow rap that just puzzles me. Calling it boring is too kind. I just don't get the appeal at all. I can tell you for sure it doesn't belong on this list. And "featuring" the awful Lil Wayne does not help. (0.5/5) Rating the songs so far: 1. You're So Vain - Carly Simon 2. Buddy Holly-Weezer 3. Cannonball-Breeders 4. I Can't Help Myself-Four Tops 5. Oy Como Va-Santana 6. Baby Love - Supremes 7. Without You - Nilsson 8. Cross Road Blues-Robert Johnson 9. Pancho And Lefty-Townes Van Zandt 10. Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper 11. So What-Miles Davis 12. Just A Friend-Biz Markie 13. Bad Romance-Lady Gaga 14. 212-Azelia Banks 15. Cranes In The Sky -Solange 16. Where Is My Mind?-Pixies 17. Welcome To The Jungle-Guns N' Roses 18. Old Town Road-Lil Naz 19. Truth Hurts-Lizzo 20. House Of Balloons-The Weeknd 21. Stronger-Kayne West 22. Back That Azz Up-Juvenile 23. A Milli-Lil Wayne Once I get to a top 40 I'm not going to drop the bottom songs if a new song places higher. RS still hasn't included a top 500 songs from the 2000's in my opinion. Only #1-#3 are definite top 500 with 4-7 contenders were I making my own list. #14-#23 would not even be considered for my top 50,000 songs!
“Back That Azz Up” - Juvenile feat Lil Wayne and Mannie Fresh This is the kind of track that started to convince me that I was already losing the plot with rap. Cash Money never worked for me. I didn’t care for the production style or the rappers. But the sound heard on “Back That Azz Up” was very influential and can’t still be heard in trap styles now. Whereas, my favorite East Coast tracks are largely forgotten. I never hear the sound of, say Pete Rock, in anything modern.
Lil Wayne again? Back already? As with 99.9% of rap, I've never heard Back That Azz Up before. I think it's well done actually, with very good rhythm (maybe the best of the hip hop tracks thus far) and pleasant, string-based and sometimes dreamy music. I've heard a lot worse in the broader musical world, and on the RS list. The lyrics of course aren't exactly inspirational, the habit of ending every line with "yeah" is a drawback, and (as with a lot of rap) it makes you wish they had learned how to write a melody, and how to sing. In short, I can take this sort of stuff in small doses. It's not something I'd ever be likely to seek out, but if it started playing where I was, I wouldn't be fleeing out the door either.
It's worse than that, the voters only got to list 50 songs each, so some significant number of them thought this was one of the 50 greatest songs of all time.
#477. The Go-Gos, “Our Lips Are Sealed” (1981) Written by Jane Wiedlin, Terence Edward Hall Wikipedia says: “Our Lips Are Sealed" is a song co-written by Jane Wiedlin, guitarist of the Go-Go's, and Terry Hall, singer of the Specials and Fun Boy Three. It was first recorded by the Go-Go's as the opening track on their album Beauty and the Beat (1981) and was their debut American single in June 1981. The single eventually reached the top 5 in Australia and Canada, and the top 20 in the United States. Although originally written and performed with three verses, an abbreviated version of the song appears on Beauty and the Beat. Although most of the song's lead vocals are performed by usual lead singer Belinda Carlisle, co-writer Wiedlin sings the bridge. In 1983, Hall's band, Fun Boy Three, released their version of "Our Lips Are Sealed". Issued as a single, the track became a top ten hit in the United Kingdom and remains the best known version of "Lips" in that country. The recording by the Go-Go's, while a bigger hit elsewhere, only made No. 47 in the UK.
RS #477 The Go-Gos – “Our Lips Are Sealed” [from Beauty and the Beat] I was never that much of a Go-Go’s fan, so this is the first time in quite a few years that I’ve given both Beauty and the Beat and “Our Lips Are Sealed” a spin. Of course, even without listening to commercial music radio during the 1980s (I haven’t listened to it since then—the playlists started getting too narrow; I can’t stand that), I’ve still heard “Our Lips Are Sealed” so many times over the years that it’s seared into my brain. It’s not that I hated the Go-Go’s when they came out or anything—I thought they were “just okay.” They didn’t excite me enough to want to explore their discography in any depth at the time, and that wasn’t helped by seeing them in concert (opening up for . . . geez, I forget now—did they maybe open up for the Who at some point?) and thinking they were pretty boring on stage. Still, I have them ranked as a 6th tier artist, top 2501-5000, which isn’t too bad considering that they could be 9th tier and at least 15,000 slots lower. And at this point I do have all of the Go-Go’s albums in my collection (aided by them having a fairly small discography), plus some offshoot stuff, and I like all of that a bit better than I did when they first appeared on the scene, though I’d still not say I’m much of a Go-Go’s fan. Listening to “Our Lips Are Sealed” again now for this list, it strikes me just what a well-crafted, catchy pop track it is, though it’s maybe a bit too “clean”/“ironed-out” for its own good. It’s kind of like a “fast food” track. It tastes great while you’re consuming it, but then it has aftereffects where you’re skeptical instead and you quickly forget how you felt during the experience and you wonder if you shouldn’t avoid consuming it again. Analyzing it more closely, though, it’s really just a few elements that make it exceptional—the most substantial one being the vocals. Both Belinda Carlisle’s primary vocal and songwriter Jane Wiedlin’s bridge vocal have fantastic melodies that suit their ranges well, so that they’re really attractive timbrally, too—especially Carlisle’s part pushes her range in just the right way. And the two different vocal styles complement each other well, too. Aside from that, what makes the song is (a) the chorusy melodic guitar accents (they sound like something the Edge would play) on the verses, (b) the bass part, which is also effectively melodic and often enough contrapuntal, (c) the prechorus turnaround progression, which is relatively simple but still quite quirky, and (d) the bridge. The rest of the tune would seem almost throwaway without these five things, two of which are relatively small elements percentage-wise, but they have a big impact. Moving on, I was surprised that the album’s second track, “How Much More,” pleasantly reminded me of Blondie’s punkier early days. I don’t remember having that impression before. That continued on some other tracks, and most of the rest of the album also clicked with me better than it ever had previously, though I still didn’t love it, exactly. “Our Lips Are Sealed” might make a top 100 “chart successful” songs of the 80s (if it wouldn’t it would be close to the cut-off), but I doubt I’d have it in a top 500 songs overall. My top 15 tracks so far: 1. "Time After Time" - Cyndi Lauper 2. "Without You" – Nilsson 3. "You're So Vain" - Carly Simon 4. “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)” – Four Tops 5. “Oye Como Va” - Santana 6. "Baby Love" – Supremes 7. “Bad Romance” – Lady Gaga 8. "So What" - Miles Davis 9. "Welcome to the Jungle" - Guns N' Roses 10. “Cannonball” – The Breeders 11. “Just Friends” – Biz Markie 12. “Buddy Holly” – Weezer 13. “Our Lips Are Sealed” – The Go-Go’s 14. “A Milli” – Lil Wayne 15. "Truth Hurts" – Lizzo
The Go-Go’s song is great pop/New Wave. Certainly one of the better radio songs of its time, which in America anyway was truly dire. I prefer the subtle desperation of “Vacation”. I don’t feel like it’s all that culturally significant (except it’s an all/women band.) but I’m glad it made the list.
“Our Lips Are Sealed” 5/5 – Fantastic song from one of the best pop albums ever recorded. Still weaves its magic forty years on. Top 10: 1. Cannonball – Breeders 2. Our Lips Are Sealed – Go-Go’s 3. You're So Vain - Carly Simon 4. Oye Como Va - Santana 5. I Can’t Help Myself – Four Tops 6. Where Is My Mind? - Pixies 7. Baby Love - Supremes 8. Without You – Nilsson 9. Buddy Holly - Weezer 10. Welcome To The Jungle - Guns N' Roses
Our Lips are Sealed A- I didn't care about them at all back when they were around; I was listening to what teenage boys listen to. As an adult, I can appreciate what is going on here, which is really excellent pop music.
The Go-Gos - Our Lips Are Sealed Now we are talking! This song would definitely be in my Top 500, and likely higher than #477. I've always been a bigger fan of Jane than Belinda, so Jane singing the bridge is a highlight. Well crafted, catchy, and a lot of fun. My new #1. 1. Go-Gos - Our Lips Are Sealed 2. Santana - Oye Cómo Va 3. Carly Simon - You're So Vain 4. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance 5. Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle 6. The Four Tops – I Can’t Help Myself 7. Pixies - Where is My Mind? 8. Robert Johnson - Cross Roads Blues 9. Weezer - Buddy Holly 10. Miles Davis - So What 11. Kanye West - Stronger 12. Townes Van Zandt - Pancho and Lefty 13. Juvenile - Back That Azz Up 14. The Breeders - Cannonball 15. Nilsson - Without You 16. Azealia Banks -212 17. Solange: Cranes In The Sky (big gap) 18. Lil Nas X - Old Town Road 19. Biz Markie - Just a Friend 20. Lil Wayne - A Milli 21. The Weeknd – House of Balloons 22. Lizzo - Truth Hurts 23. Supremes - Baby Love 24. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
477. The Go-Gos, “Our Lips Are Sealed” Now here a great song! Pop perfection from the early 1980s during one of the best years in music ever (imo). Upbeat and catchy, but very much in the New Wave vein of the time. the Go-Gos version blows the later Fun Boy Three cover out of the water. Easily a 4/5 or more for me. 1. Pixies - Where Is My Mind? 2. Carly Simon - You're So Vain 3. Breeders - Cannonball 4. Supremes - Baby Love 5. The Go-Gos - Our Lips Are Sealed 6. Four Tops - I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) 7. Robert Johnson - Cross Road Blues 8. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time 9. Santana - Oye Como Va 10. Weezer - Buddy Holly 11. Nilsson - Without You 12. Biz Markie - Just A Friend 13. Kanye West - Stronger 14. Solange - Cranes In The Sky
