quote:

Originally posted by Bobthespirit:

Greatest hits records don't really count.

Au contraire! I just found where you can see that Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time thing online ( here); it's like 35% greatest hits and collections. Presumably they care more about marketability than completed works of art, which should surprise no one.

Comically, I found this when someone on rateyourmusic linked it while giving In the Aeroplane over the Sea a half-star review. Basically, I really want to rail on this thing so the rest of you check it out. Although, for the most part it's actually pretty good in the way you'd expect--heavy on the Beatles and Stones and other classic rock, and it's pretty cool to just sift through all these albums. I'm actually thinking about getting it, only 23 bucks on amazon and it weighs like 45 pounds. To get you started, look up a little band called Radiohead and see if you can spot a discrepancy.

There's so much music at the top of that list I'd bet most of the current Rolling Stone staff has never listened to. Sgt. Pepper's is just so famous, they have to vote for it or they wouldn't be cool.

It's hard to debate a list like this, because on the one hand, I don't think there are too many albums on the list that don't deserve to be there, it's just that the order is a little screwed up. But that's going to happen any time you have a bunch of people compiling a list together.

Yeah, that's definitely true. It is so long and so inclusive and so broad that it's hard to argue with most of their choices, and lots and lots of people were involved in the choosing. But if you were in charge of a list like this, wouldn't you make a couple of corrections knowing that your name was going to appear on the front cover?

The Bends was like 50 spots above OK Computer. The latter was named the best album of the past 20 years by Spin and the best of the decade by Pitchfork. They treat the 1990s as a decade of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Eminem, and a few timely compilation releases. There are a couple recent albums that I thought were generally regarded as masterpieces, at least by critics, that were missing. Hints: one is by a band that starts with W and rhymes with 'jillco,' and one was inspired by the diary of Anne Frank.

Yet Kiss got two albums on.

quote:

Originally posted by dubs:
They treat the 1990s as a decade of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Eminem, and a few timely compilation releases.

One of my gripes with Rolling Stone, which is why I don't put much stock in their reviews, is that they will reward an album based on it's impact on pop culture as opposed to how good it actually is. In any RS list you'll see mediocre mainstream releases beat out good lesser-known releases. If a lot of people are buying it, it must be good, right ?

Sadly, the criticisms against Rolling Stone are so obvious and widely held that there's no reason to even fight about them like there is with Pitchfork.

In their favor, they happily recognize punk and important-but-unpopular bands like Velvet Underground. And cultural impact is a significant factor that should have been considered, but they tend to go too far. They apply the same guidelines for the 90s and 00s that they do for the 60s, when the Beatles and Dylan were both revolutionary and immensely successful. In the past decade and a half, few artists really met these criteria, (e.g., Nirvana, Pearl Jam, White Stripes, and Eminem), because music is much different now than it was in 1965, when you had to choose between your parents' music and the revolution.

I think we should look at Rolling Stone as historians of popular music rather than as critics. These days, I would only read the magazine for its historical content. Several months ago they ran a great piece about Hendrix's arrival in London that I loved. But I would never trust their reviews of anything after 1975.

Yeah..I wouldn't argue many of the inclusions on that list, but the order has a lot of issues.

The only major issue I'd say is that the list is date-biased. Like, stuff from earlier than 1980 gets a bonus. Albums from 1980-1999 have to be twice as good to make the list as albums from 1964-1979, and albums from 2000- don't have to be good, but they do have to be super-fashionable to like, like Eminem.

(Or they have to have no business anywhere near the top 500 for the year they're released, much less all time, like Rock Steady by No Doubt).

quote:

(Or they have to have no business anywhere near the top 500 for the year they're released, much less all time, like Rock Steady by No Doubt).

Oh man. I actually surprisingly like that list a lot, and have repeatedly gone back to it as a reference for some things (like if i'm looking into a band, which album do I buy first, etc.), but the fact that Rock Steady is rated higher than Kid A (!), Elephant, Stop Making Sense, and even No Doubst own, ridiculously better Tragic Kingdon, almost takes away credibilty in one fell swoop. To think that that album is 100+ slots more influential, important and amazing then Kid A is just bizarre. Most of my disagreements with this list are opinion, but i think that one is just fact.

Edit: I just looked, and it's also rated higher than The Beatles' Help! and With the Beatles. Jesus Christ, now I'm angry.

I like this list; I think they get most of the essentials on there. I have to complain though, only because I always do. They really dropped the ball on picking masterpiece records from the last ten years or so. They included albums like "Rock Steady" by No Doubt (I know it's been said but it bears repeating) and "The Eminem Show". However, they did not include Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" or the Flaming Lip's "The Soft Bulletin". Oh well, I guess there is no satisfying me.

I think they went out of their way to discount indie/sub-popular music, maybe because they've never cared about it. They threw in the two Pavement albums and two Pixies albums that you would expect and that was just about it. No Lips, no Neutral Milk Hotel, no Wilco. And you're right, putting Rock Steady above Stop Making Sense (the best live album ever period) is laughable. I think that for a post 1990 album to make the list, it just had to put at least two videos on TRL and not be teeny-pop or a Green Day ripoff.

I think the Top 500 Albums list is surprisingly good, though the Top 500 Songs list is total bullshit. Though I think "Pet Sounds" is the greatest album and unquestionably better, it's forgiveable that they put it at number 2. I wouldn't put "Exile on Main Street" in the top 10, but that's just me. The Beatles deserve all three albums in the top 5, "What's Going On" is fine at number 6 and even though I think "Blonde on Blonde" is Dylan's best, I give them credit for putting "Highway 61 Revisited" (a close Dylan second) at number 4

For the sake of these lists, compilations shouldn't count. It seems unfair to compare all the best of a great artist's career to a single album designed to be heard as one piece. I guess you could argue the same about live albums, but at least they reflect a unique experience.

It's been mentioned before, but I'll second the fact that that Radiohead got slighted here. OK Computer is on par with Nevermind as far as 90s albums go. But OKC is not in the top 20.. or 50 .. or even 150 (#162 to be exact)! I like U2, but All That You Can't Leave Behind at #139 (23 above OKC)? That's hilarious! But then again, who cares. It's just a stupid list.

You're totally right on both counts. Their Bono-crush is embarrassing, and U2 has sucked for years.

I only think compilations should count if the music was released before the LP format had really been fleshed out. Even then, it's dubious. Rolling Stone has no respect for the album as a single, coherent work of art, unless it was a Beatles concept album. I'm surprised they didn't include Now That's What I Call Music 12.

quote:

I wouldn't put "Exile on Main Street" in the top 10, but that's just me.

Hear, hear. I love "Sweet Virginia" (and much of the rest, actually), but I find Exile on Main Street to be a critical blindspot. Give me Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters any day.

Whenever I read a Rolling Stone list (500 Greatest Albums, 100 Greatest Guitarists, so on ad nauseum) I keep getting the impression that it was put together by some sort of mathmatical algorithm rather than by actual human beings. Maybe it's just me.

I also get the impression that the Stone has been trying to cover up it's dirty critical history by lauding albums it gave lukewarm-if-any response to upon their original release. I use to skim through their online archieve of reviews back when they kept most of their original ones up and happen to know they weren't as favorable to some now-classic albums back in the day. "Nevermind" got a piddling three star review, Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" got a two star pan (the reviewer called the musicianship poor and dismissed it as a poor follow up to "Dark Side"). They also panned Neil Young's "Harvest," Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets" and Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Trashed Cream's "Wheels of Fire" upon its release. They also got D. Boon and Mike Watts' instruments mixed up in a 3 and a half star review for "Double Nickel on the Dime" (they've given better ratings to Justin Timberlake albums than that, which should give you an idea of what their star ratings are worth. A few years back they gave a five star review to Mick Jagger's most recent solo album and called it the best of the year. Didn't see that on this list).

And who can forget their one-star "worst album of the year" review for Weezer's "Pinkerton" (their similar assualt on the Liar's last album was also pretty heinious. Regardless of your opinion of the "They Lied, So We Drowned," their review basically attacked it for not sounding like "The Threw Us in a Ditch...". Not really a solid position for a critic to take).

I don't really get to worked up any more by rankings or even selections on the list. I've got my faves, don't care too much about anyone else's.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ryan Nyburg,

quote:

Originally posted by Ryan Nyburg:

I also get the impression that the Stone has been trying to cover up it's dirty critical history by lauding albums it gave lukewarm-if-any response to upon their original release. I use to skim through their online archieve of reviews back when they kept most of their original ones up and happen to know they weren't as favorable to some now-classic albums back in the day. "Nevermind" got a piddling three star review, Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" got a two star pan (the reviewer called the musicianship poor and dismissed it as a poor follow up to "Dark Side"). They also panned Neil Young's "Harvest," Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets" and Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Trashed Cream's "Wheels of Fire" upon its release. They also got D. Boon and Mike Watts' instruments mixed up in a 3 and a half star review for "Double Nickel on the Dime" (they've given better ratings to Justin Timberlake albums than that, which should give you an idea of what their star ratings are worth. A few years back they gave a five star review to Mick Jagger's most recent solo album and called it the best of the year. Didn't see that on this list).

And who can forget their one-star "worst album of the year" review for Weezer's "Pinkerton" (their similar assualt on the Liar's last album was also pretty heinious. Regardless of your opinion of the "They Lied, So We Drowned," their review basically attacked it for not sounding like "The Threw Us in a Ditch...". Not really a solid position for a critic to take).

Yeah, you make a pretty good point. For all the respect they get for covering music since whenever, Rolling Stone historically has had no idea what was good and what was not. I guess every publication missteps, but I've also heard that they routinely panned Led Zeppelin.

But they could have told us that the Strokes' debut was the 5th greatest album of all time, and they didn't. Bravo RS, you're not nearly as bad as NME.

quote:

Originally posted by dubs:
But they could have told us that the Strokes' debut was the 5th greatest album of all time, and they didn't. Bravo RS, you're not nearly as bad as NME.

I've noticed that RS is like the complete opposite of NME. RS holds all classics (and classic artists) in such high regard, you'll rarely see them hand out a fantastic review to an unestablished band. On the flip side, NME is ready to crown every new band the greatest in the history of music. I'm not sure which is worse, but they're both pretty annoying habits, which make both publications not very credible in my opinion.

Well I read this list first time last night and it was an sad if not unsurprising I didn't, ok I wasn't expecting to see Radiohead in the top 20 but to see it placed where it was, ad under U2 and Nirvana and Prince... shudder.

The thing that confused me was the reason behind their choices. I read bealtes review for number 1 and they seemed to be going for originality, if so isn't Radiohead one of the most original bands of the last 20 years?

They implied in the Kid A review that they were on the verge of becoming bigger than U2 and then this album brought them crashing down?

The Rolling Stone list is interesting in many aspects. It is large (500) albums and yet it makes one feel strong feelings when an album is discovered to have not made the list or cut. On this note I would argue that certain genres are obviously overlooked. Indie and trip-hop to name a few. However,this does not mean that the list has no credability.

I made a casual TOP 25. It is completely ignorant of jazz music. Please don't laugh at me (unless you want to)

1. The Beatles: Revolver
2. The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
3. The Clash: London Calling
4. Radiohead: OK Computer
5. David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust
6. The Velvet Underground & Nico: s/t
7. Bob Dylan: Highway 61, Revisited
8. Marvin Gaye: What's Goin' On
9. Pink Floyd: The Wall
10. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless
11. Radiohead: Kid A
12. The Beatles: Abbey Road
13. Talking Heads: Remain in Light
14. Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
15. Pavement: Slanted & Enchanted
16. Bob Dylan: Blonde on Blonde
17. Television: Marquee Moon
18. Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hould Us Back
19. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing...
20. Modest Mouse: The Moon & Antarctica
21. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
22. The Smiths: The Queen is Dead
23. Joy Division: Closer
24. Nick Drake: Pink Moon
25. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin
(26. The Velvet Underground: Loaded)