How Does The New Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums Of All Time Stack Up?
While your critical darlings like Radiohead have their material peppered throughout the top spots (and rightfully so), the willingness to include more people of color as well as prominent female artists is more of an acknowledgement of how music’s state of mind can change over time. Whereas the last list had the top spots dominated by white dudes brandishing guitars, the top 5 of this list features one of rock’s greatest female voices (Joni Mitchell), two rock bands (the Beatles and the Beach Boys), and two of the most gifted African American voices of all time (Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.)
There may be plenty of thinkpieces made about how “woke” this new version of the list is, but in terms of influence and impact on this new generation of music, this one feels a lot more in line with how music is being perceived. Yeah, there’s something to be said about the cultural revolution that came with Abbey Road, but when you look at modern marvels like To Pimp a Butterfly or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the influence owes just as much to something like Songs in the Key of the Life than it does to...say...Revolver. On the other side of the spectrum, new artists like Lana Del Rey wouldn’t have been able to make a name for herself were it not for someone like Joni Mitchell pushing the boundaries of what a woman could do within the context of a pop singer role.
So yeah, there’s a lot of different takes that you could possibly have on this list, but was it all worth it at the end of the day? Sure, times may be changing left and right in this new decade, but was it really necessary to take a look back and revise that which you had already set in stone?
Well, given the more pretentious nature of Rolling Stone in the past, this new ranking feels more like a measure of importance than an honest portrayal of the greatest of all time. While it might have “Greatest” in the title, there was no way any of the editors could have found an objective list of the greatest music ever conceived, since any type of music can have merit in its own special way.
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