500 Greatest Songs of All Time Playlist
Whatever value 1 places in "best of" or "greatest" lists, it'southward hard to deny they can be virtuoso exercises in critical concision. When running through 10, l, 100 films, albums, novels etc. one can't wander through the wildflowers simply must make sparkly, punchy statements and movement on. Rolling Stone's writers have excelled at this class, and expanded the list size to 500, kickoff releasing a volume compiling their "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2003 then following upwardly the next year with the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time," a special result of the mag with brusk blurbs about each selection.
In 2010, the magazine updated their massive listing, compiled by 162 critics, for a special digital issue, and information technology now lives on their site with paragraph-length blurbs intact. Each 1 offers a fun little nugget of fact or opinion about the chosen songs. (Tom Footling, learning that The Strokes admitted to stealing his opening riff for "American Girl," told the magazine, "I was similar, 'Ok, adept for you.' It doesn't carp me.") There's hardly room to explain the rankings or justify inclusion. Nosotros're asked to take the Rolling Stone writers' commonage word for it.
Maybe it's a piffling difficult to argue with a list this big, since it includes a bit of everything—for the possible dross, at that place's a whole lot of gold. The updated list swapped in 25 new songs and added an introduction by Jay-Z: "A great song has all the key elements—melody; emotion; a strong statement that becomes part of the lexicon; and great production." Wide enough criteria for great, but "greatest"? Put on the Spotify playlist in a higher place (or admission information technology hither) and gauge for yourself whether nigh of those 500 songs in the updated list—472 to be exact—meet the bar.
You can see the original, 2004 list, sans blurbs, at the Cyberspace Annal. Number one, Dylan'due south "Similar a Rolling Stone" (get it?). Number 500, Boston's "More Than a Feeling," which, well… okay. The updated list gives us Smokey Robinson's "Shop Around" in last place (don't worry, Smokey fans, "The Tracks of My Tears" makes it to 50.) Still at number ane, naturally, "Like a Rolling Stone." Detect out which 498 songs sit in-betwixt at the online list here. (Wikipedia has a per centum breakdown for both lists of songs by decade.) The magazine may be up for sale, its journalistic credibility in question, but for comprehensive "all-time of" lists that proceed track of the movement of popular civilization, nosotros shouldn't count them out just nonetheless.
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at@jdmagness
500 Greatest Songs of All Time Playlist
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