Nineteen Thoughts About the New RS500

 

You can go through the entire list HERE, or you can continue ahead to read some of my thoughts.

1. RS releasing this massive list this past Tuesday was pretty good timing, as I had literally just mentioned it that morning on my final draft Bob Dylan Top Five. I feel no shame in continually acknowledging how important that 2003 issue of this magazine was in my blooming as an appreciator of music in general. It was exciting to learn that Rolling Stone considered it just as important (though possibly in a more patting-self-on-back sort of way).
   
   
2. Honestly, it was just nice to be able to spend a few hours paging through all this. It's been a while since I've read such a wide-ranging and comprehensive music ranking. It doesn't matter if the list is legitimate or if you agree with the number rankings or whatever; sometimes it's just easier to consider this a tome, filled with musical knowledge about the so-called "canon." I love reading about music almost as much as I like listening to music, so the list's existence is such a treat.
   
   
3. That being said, of course I'm going to have my issues with such a ranking, and with them plenty of questions about how this all came to be. The most important question, I think, is asking what exactly it took for an album to make it to this list. Over 300 people submitted lists of their own top 50, and a master list was compiled from there. Does one single voter have the ability to skew the results? Like, okay, say that a no-name music journalist decided to place fucking Harry Styles' Fine Line (released in 2019!!) at #5, for whatever reason. Would that single vote be enough to power the album to a #491 ranking on this list? (Yes, this is for real!) Or are we to assume that at least TWO or MORE(?!) people consider Fine Line to be one of the best albums OF ALL TIME? How many jabronis were duped into including Norman Fucking Rockwell on their lists so that it shot up to #321? And so on—I could give countless other examples, but you get it. I just wonder how different this list would look if, say 3000 people voted on it? Or would it be populist and thus less interesting in that case?
   
   
4. Probably more important in the scope of actually enjoying consuming this list is: how did they decide who wrote what? A group of people had to sit down and compile 500 different blurbs, on for each album, which to me seems like an arduous task (and ask me again during December's list season to find out how I really feel). Was it like a football draft, and someone could raise their hand at the meeting and say that they would love to write about Rubber Soul? I've never shared such duties with anyone, so I don't know how it typically works.
   
   
5. Regardless, I was impressed with the variety of blurbs, and also with how they were able to make each blurb truly interesting. Sure, I have heard plenty of these stories before—how many more times is Bruce Springsteen going to be quoted when we're talking about Highway 61 Revisited?—but that too makes sense, because these types of lists aren't built for music experts to learn something new. This list is for the neophytes, for someone who is going to pick up this list and use it as a jumping-off point, and get comfortable with the "music canon."
   
   
6. That's not to say that I wasn't surprised by anything that was written—definitely not presenting myself as an expert here by any means. For example, I cracked up when I read My Aim Is True's blurb. All it did was quote the album's opening line—"Now that your picture’s in the paper being rhythmically admired." It's a line I've heard dozens of times. But this blurb made me appreciate the hilarious nastiness about it for the first time, and it gave me a subtly greater insight into what makes Elvis Costello tick. RS pulls this trick again and again, not necessarily wowing anyone with new discoveries, but placing old favorites in a new light and perfectly capturing what makes them great in the first place.
   
   
7. I wonder if you could go through the list of voters (provided by RS) and play the game of whose vote was able to get which album onto this list. Did Patterson Hood make a list of entirely country albums, making sure that at least a few of them made the list? Did Lin-Manuel Miranda vote for all soundtracks? Did Beyoncé vote for herself? There are too many people on the voters list to be able to say for sure, but there's definitely a correlation between the music made from the voters and the music featured on the Top 500.
   
   
8. Which almost makes me wonder, should musical artists have even been the majority of voters in the first place? Obviously, there's something to be said about being in the trenches instead of mindlessly consuming music, but can we at least acknowledge that audiences and artists might be approaching such a list differently? Like, artists such Stevie Nicks are going to be creating lists of music that inspired her, and here I am, as an objective audience member, claiming that there's no way anything that inspired Stevie Nicks is better than the music that Stevie Nicks herself created. You cannot be objective if you are both creating the list and eligible to be on the list.
   
   
9. On a completely different note: I thought it was interesting to see how some of the old dinosaurs fared on this list. Bands like the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, they are all legends because they have a deep and comprehensive discography. I almost wonder if this was a sort of handicap in way. The fact that the Beatles have at least eight albums that anyone could reasonably call their favorite of all time means that their votes are getting split. Compare this to someone like Joni Mitchell. Not that I personally enjoy Joni all that much, but I think it's been made clear by Joni fans everywhere that Blue is far away her best album. Everyone who votes for Joni Mitchell is going to be voting for Joni Mitchell is going to be funneling votes toward Blue. It's interesting to think that the more 10/10 albums an artist has, the worse s/he is going to perform on such a list.
   
   
10. This is something that I complained about in 2003, and it's something that I'll complain about again now: the number of greatest hits collections on this list is embarrassing. I don't have anything against the idea of "Best of Artist" albums. Sometimes you just wanna hear the hits. I get it. But if you're ranking albums, then something like a Greatest Hits is completely antithetical to what you are ranking in the first place. Greatest Hits are not albums. They are not cohesive works of art, created by the artist. I get that you want to include people like Chuck Berry and the Temptations, but if those artists never put out a stand-out LP, then those are the fucking brakes. Rank 'em high on a Top 100 Artists or Top 500 Songs list, but they have no place here. (I could make similar arguments for live albums, but no need to press further on this subject.)
    
    
11. Let's talk about a few specific albums. The most impressive inclusion, in my opinion, was The Black Parade at #361. Man, what a fucking rehabilitation that album has seen over the past fourteen years, huh? Just goes to show you that genius can come from literally anywhere.
    
    
12. I was kind of shocked to see Sgt. Pepper at #24, if only because for the past seventeen years it's been "Rolling Stone's best album of all time," so the fall of 23 spots seems momentous to me. While this will always be one of the most important albums in my life, it's never been one of my favorite, so I don't necessarily have a problem with the demotion. I'm just saying that, if there is one single thing that you can point to and show how much the quote unquote "music canon" has shifted in the past two decades, it's this.
    
    
13. Or, ya know, maybe we could also point to the new reigning champion. Spoiler alert: Rolling Stone ranks Marvin Gaye's What's Going On as the best album of all time. This is one of those choices that I don't agree with, but don't have a problem with either. It would be akin to the Cleveland Browns winning the Super Bowl, or if Black Panther had won the Oscar for Best Picture. I'm cool with it because the winner is not actively offensive, and I can even see why it would be important to a lot of people. As it was in 1971, it's important in 2020 to ask "what's going on?" i.e. to assess society's ills and to address them appropriately. I might not be the biggest fan of slow, smooth soul music, but I appreciate the immensity of What's Going On's importance in the grand scheme of musical history. I might even go as far as to say I actively dislike listening to What's Going On, but you will never, ever, ever hear me complain about its place atop this list.
    
    
14. In a broader sense, I'm saying that it is an objectively good thing that the voting block had much more black representation here than in 2003, and that consequentially there are many more black artists represented on this list. Ultimately, I just care that everyone's music is represented on such a list. Of course I'm going to have an issue with something like Lemonade (#23) being overrated, but I'd rather it be overrated than underrepresented. There are other people who are not like me but who have just as much of a stake in musical enjoyment, and maybe those people love Lemonade because it is important to them, and they see Lemonade at #23 and feel the desire to explore the rest of the list. That's what matters. The time was absolutely right to correct some of the old list's faults, and to me, it looks like they fixed at least one of them.
    
    
15. If I could turn the spotlight back to me for a second—reading this list was a lot different of an experience than it was reading the 2003 list in 2003. Part of that is the fact that I'm now familiar with many of these artists already, so I know what I like. But part of it is also the fact that I am now more comfortable with what I don't like. I will certainly be using this list to explore some music I've been meaning to get into, but I already know many of the dead ends presented on this list too, because I've already been down them. I know that I'm never going to be able to get into Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, and so on. I enjoyed reading more about these artists in the context of the list, but this time around, I'm armed with the knowledge that it doesn't need to go farther than that.
    
    
16. That being said, of course I made a big fucking list of all the albums that I've been inspired to download (maybe I will get to all of them by the end of 2021). Here are the top five albums that I have been inspired to download from artists I was already aware of: 5) Wild Honey by the Beach Boys, 4) Willy and the Poor Boys by Creedence Clearwater Revival, 3) Ram by Paul McCartney, 2) Voodoo by D'Angelo, 1) Master of Reality by Black Sabbath.
    
    
17. And here are the top five albums that I want to download from artists I had either never heard of or had literally no knowledge of before reading about them on this list: 5) The Raincoats by the Raincoats, 4) Live Through This by Hole, 3) Brothers in Arms by Dire Straights, 2) Suicide by Suicide, 1) Madvillainy by Madvillain.
    
    
18. So how many of my own personal Top Albums of All Time are represented on Rolling Stone's Top Albums of All Time? Well, that answer would require me to actually sit down and think about my favorite albums of all time, a task that I have avoided for the most part over the years. But if I had a gun to my head, I could probably come up with something right now, and I can tell you that at least two of my own potential Top Ten All Time are on the RS500. In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel is in at #376, which I gotta admit seems pretty low for an album that everyone seems to cultishly love so much. Though maybe there's been a bit of a backlash in the past few years? I don't know. I would still keep it in my Top Ten. The only other one that's close is Funeral, probably a near-lock for my Top Ten on a good day, and here sneaking in at #500. Yes, Rolling Stone is currently claiming that Harry Styles' Fine Line is a better album than motherfucking Funeral. (My own personal #1, The Monitor, didn't make the cut, which I'm only 40% surprised about.)
    
    
19. Here's a hypothetical that might amount to my biggest takeaway from this new list: How different would my life have been if this was the list I discovered in 2003 and used as a bible for musical exploration? Would I be able to enjoy a lot more hip hop than I currently do? Would I take country music more seriously? Would I be a big Marvin Gaye fan? Would I have seen What's Going On at #1, only kind of liked it in the same way I only kind of like it now, and not have been as inspired to go through the rest of the list? I.e. would I not been into music as much as I am now? Or would I appreciate the vast scope of music more than I do now (when sometimes I feel like I only appreciate certain pockets of music)? Who's to say. All I can say is that I am still thankful that I read that issue of Rolling Stone in 2003, and I am also thankful that I can read this issue of Rolling Stone in 2020. They both have value.