Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Songs

[sgreenwell]

I'd love to hear a death metal cover of Afternoon Delight. That would be fun.

Can I interest you in a pop punk version? This fella also gives it a spirited, 1980s rock try.

 

[Mngwa]

Can I interest you in a pop punk version? This fella also gives it a spirited, 1980s rock try.

Catchy. Too bad that dude is totally unappealing

 

[Driftwood]

In your opinion. idk. Lists like this are always stupidly subjective, whether we're talking TV, movies, music, video games or some other form of art. Even deciding on the criteria for the list - are we judging a band / artist at their commercial or critical peak? does it matter if they influenced the greater culture or not? - is something that I doubt there would be wide agreement on.

I usually like the Rolling Stone list because it's essentially "here is the mainstream music critic Top 500." Since I tend to like music covered my Pitchfork, I also hit up their lists from time to time. There's always a couple of songs I managed to miss for whatever reason, or, didn't appreciate because of my age. "Maggie May" had a resonance with me in my 30s, whereas I didn't really give a shirt about it in my 20s.

And that's why my post as the very first reply to this thread said music is subjective.

 

[swingline]

"He Stopped Loving Her Today" at 140 is a travesty. The best country song ever.

Good day!

 

[Scout]

I don't have time to check the entire list. What number is Afternoon Delight?

203

Knock three times.

 

[Starman]

The most striking aspect of the list is the de-Beatlization of the top of the rankings.

 

[sgreenwell]

The most striking aspect of the list is the de-Beatlization of the top of the rankings.

Kind of makes sense. If you listened to the radio in the 90s and 00s, there were still plenty of rock bands that obviously owed some kind of debt to them. Now? I think it's more fitting that the Top 10 has less groups, and more outstanding individual artists.

 

[DanOregon]

I always though music journalists focused too much on how a song "made you feel" and not "why" it made you feel that way. Very few music journalists write about the technical aspects of a song's structure.

 

[Hermes]

I always though music journalists focused too much on how a song "made you feel" and not "why" it made you feel that way. Very few music journalists write about the technical aspects of a song's structure.

I've talked to people who've studied that shirt in college and it ruined music for them. Every song is just a chord structure that reminds them of something else. It becomes a game of connecting dots and they become jaded.

I want the wonder. I want to always feel like it is magic.

 

[Huggy]

I've talked to people who've studied that shirt in college and it ruined music for them. Every song is just a chord structure that reminds them of something else. It becomes a game of connecting dots and they become jaded.

I want the wonder. I want to always feel like it is magic.

I'd agree with this. I have read two books that dissected the work of two artists, Sinatra (Sinatra! The Song is You! by Will Friedwald) and the Beatles (Can't Buy Me Love by Jonathan Gould) and no matter how well I knew the songs being discussed I found the writing about the musicianship and structure of the songs to often be way over the head of this non-musician. It was just way too technical and scholarly for me.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

No Styx? Fail.

 

[Huggy]

Yeah, I guess I have missed a ton of amazing music over the last 15 years: