Tunes younger than all but two of these entries that I would put in the top 20 that not only do I, personally, think should be on there, but I would include even if I were the editors are:
– Comfortably Numb
– Another Brick in the Wall, part 2
– Birthday (sugarcubes)
– and on preview, NOT one of my top 20, but I’d put in How Soon is Now, not only better but more famous than some of these
every single track on The Wall is better than all of the listed top 20, and half of them are better than all the Top 20 combined!
Furthermore all of my top 10 favorite songs are from 1979 onward. (I don’t really have a personal top 20, but that might include some earlier stuff, especially by The Pink Floyd Sound.)
But I disagree with John…wait, actually I agree with him. 16 of the 20 songs also wouldn’t make my Top 5000 songs. In fact, I haven’t even heard 4 of them, and I have shelled out money for none of them, which is what really matters, right?
Huh? I first subscribed to Rolling Stone in 1970 (for $5 and a got a free copy of Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers album to boot.) That means I haven’t been a part of their “target demographic” for a quarter of a century.
I find it hard to imagine that any more than a tiny handful from my generation read Rolling Stone or would ever even know the existence of such a list, if not for someone much younger pointing it out.
Which means that Rolling Stone has a lot of integrity pointing out the obvious truth despite the certain condemnation of those who are truly in their target demographic.
The late great Frank Zappa, who defined rock 'journalistsl as:
Re #2: (Which I thought was a) link to all 500 (revised for 2004) - Sorry, that About.com link was to Rolling Stone magazine’s top 500 rock songs, not the entire list of the tracks referred to in the OP or in link #1.
Real interesting to see the British list (New Musical Express). I always thought ‘Live Forever’ by Oasis was an incredibly underrated song. In fact that whole album “Definetly Maybe” is very underrated on this side of the pond.
JohnBckWLD, the links you gave in your OP do not point to a Rolling Stone magazine 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. One points to a registration page for theage.com, and the other points to about.com’s classic rock Top 500 songs (this list has nothing to do with Rolling Stone magazine).
I search the NET and could not find anything for Rolling Stone’s500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
On the other hand, neither did Pearl Jam. I’d really like to hope they’re gonna stand the test of time, but their releases are getting increasingly obscure (I loved “Riot Act”, damnit!), and most people seem to have lost interest several albums ago. Hmm…
I swear I ain’t gonna change my name to “Eddie Vedder”!
Irrespective of the fact that they’ve been up and down for awhile, a list of 500 greatest songs that does not include “Corduroy,” “Dissident” or “Daughter” is in error.
Man, UD…with everything that’s been going on regarding my supposed “obsession” with TFF over the past couple days, you don’t know how close I came to taking that personally and snapping at you for it. A brief pause over “Submit Reply” was all that saved me from overreacting to what was obviously a joke. Not sure why I’m telling you this; I guess it’s a roundabout way of saying “sorry for almost yelling at you for no reason”.
On the bright side, I see that Radiohead has secured their rightful place on one of the top 20 lists.
Actually, as far as lists go, these aren’t half bad. Dunno about “Stayin’ Alive”, and I’m loathe to accept The Kinks on a list of the top 20 most influential anything, but other than that, the lists are as good as any other I’ve seen. The only place on any of these where I can see even conceivably making an argument for TFF would be for placing “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” on the first list, but I certainly don’t begrudge its exclusion.
I would be interested to see the full Rolling Stone list, though.
Yeah, that Rolling Stone is sure one cutting edge magazine.
But come on, seriously, they couldn’t take out one Beatles song and replace it with, say, a Pixies song? That band is like the main influence over so much of today’s rock. Even if you’re a diehard Beatlemaniac, you have to admit that giving them a fifth of the list–a quarter if you count John Lennon–is a little much. I’ll concede that the Beatles are an Important Band in Rock even if I don’t like them very much, but come on, four songs? Especially when there’s nothing from the eighties or later except Nirvana? Does anyone actually think there’s only one song made in the last twenty-four years that’s going to stand the test of time?
I would also like to read the top 500 list if someone would like to post it.
I know! And here’s the thing – anybody who isn’t completely lying to themselves will admit that Nirvana had basically reached the end of its shelf life by 1994. Their music was increasingly not as well-received by the time Cobain killed himself, and their popularity was easily overshadowed by Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins.
Then Kurt kills himself. All of a sudden, Nirvana was “the voice of a generation” and we’d lost a true revolutionary. And none of this is anything less than revisionist history. I don’t deny that Nirvana helped usher the grunge movement to the masses, but they were hardly the only torch-bearers. They were just the ones whose faces adorned the banners after-the-fact.
IMO, Nirvana didn’t leave any quality work unfinished. Their best work had already been on the shelves by the time Incesticide was released.
The only band I can think of that left good music unfinished was Sublime.
