Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Kind of an insane undertaking, right?  Cutting off the world's entire album output at the 500 best?  I wonder how many albums there have been, in history.  More than a million?  Ten million?  Some random website I just looked up (discogs.com) says 13,217,318.  If we want to believe that, then this is .0003783% of all released albums that are up for this honor.  A minuscule drop in the bucket of all released music.  Hell, I own more than 500 CDs myself.

RS has done it once before, but this time it is all new.  They solicited and received top 50 album lists from over 300 artists, producers, critics, and other industry people.  I feel like making a top 50 albums list would be an absolutely devilish task.  I'd need to have an algorithm or something like the FlickChart.com process by which I could pit all of the albums against each other until I reached an internal consensus.  It would be very unpleasant though.

I have a few random observations to make, in no particular order.

First, I thought it interesting to compare the one from 2003 to this new one.  In 2003, it went Sgt. Peppers, Pet Sounds, Revolver, Highway 61 Revisited, and Rubber Soul.  Three Beatles discs in the top 5, and the other two were old white guys too.  The 2020 list now has What's Going On, Pet Sounds, Joni Mitchell's Blue, Songs in the Key of Life, and Abbey Road as the top 5.  Zero representation of black voices in 2003, now it's 2 of 5.  Only one Beatles album in 2020, and not even one of the three that was top five in 2003.  Seems weird that Sgt. Pepper's would not remain the consensus top Beatles album, and that Abbey Road (#14 in 2003, also behind the White Album) would leapfrog all three of those other discs.  Sgt. Pepper's is now at #24, by the way.  I wonder what creates such a change in opinion, long after those albums were released?  Does the younger generation dig Abbey more than Sgt.?  Is it from adding more diverse voices to the panel of contributors?  Interesting.

Only semi-related to this top 500 list, I have to admit something dorky.  About twenty years ago, I tried compiling my own personal top ten, and as I look back on it now, it is embarrassingly nostalgic.  I can't recall what inspired me to create the list, I think I got a chain e-mail or something.  Anyway, I asked my siblings to do it as well, and there were rules about it that included no soundtracks or greatest hits comps.  Sadly, I no longer have their lists - they disappeared when Tripod websites went down (I had built an entire family website using Tripod - I had coded the whole thing in html like a sweet ass hacker mastermind.  I can barely figure out how to find the menu on my TV now).  For the most prime example of how embarrassing it is to create such a list, I had LL Cool J's Mr. Smith as my top nine album of all time!  OF ALL TIME!!!  And you know why?  It's because two of my best buds and had spent a million hours in college, listening to that album, while playing video games or driving around the shithole town where we sent to college, and so it has all of these emotional strings tied to it that no otherwise sane human being would have.  Because, come on.  It wouldn't even come to mind now if I tried to create a top one hundred albums of all time for me.  Also, a John Cougar album is in my top ten.  I deserve all the scorn you can lob at me.  Dammit, 1999 Jack.

And actually, I think that is the most difficult thing about coming up with a list like this, and why a Flickchart type database would almost be necessary.  If I'm just trying to use my brain to come up with the best albums ever, I'm going to be over here thinking of memories, and some of those will tie on more strongly to good emotions.  Like, my brain will think about Living Colour, because I fucking loved their first two albums, that I listened to for a million hours when reading books and playing Zelda in my bedroom as a kid.  But are either of those discs actually top fifty material?  They shouldn't be, but they would pop into my head for sure.  Same with weirdo things like Midnight Oil, or John Cougar, or Robert Earl Keen, or any number of other bands that have mental/emotional ties in my mind.  On the other hand, I might just forget entirely about something else great and leave it off my list.  Makes me curious - it would be fun to talk to one of the people who helped to make this list and dig into their thought process.  Looks like there is a podcast, maybe I'll try that and see what I think.

Strangest thing about this RS list, to me, is how few of the things in here are entirely new to me.  Not that I've listened to every single album listed in this list, but at the same time, I'm not seeing some sort of cool new underground thing that I had never seen before.  Just as one example, here are the rap artists in the list, in order:  

Lauryn Hill (yes, that is the highest ranked rap album in the list), Public Enemy, Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Notorious B.I.G., Wu Tang Clan, Dr. Dre, A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Outkast, Jay-Z, Eric B. & Rakim, Outkast, Jay-Z, N.W.A., Kanye West, Missy Elliott, Drake, De La Soul, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Beastie Boys, Fugees, Eminem, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Public Enemy, Notorious B.I.G., Ice Cube, Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Run DMC, Raekwon, De La Soul, Boogie Down Productions, Kanye West, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Outkast, DJ Shadow (which is just beats, but I'll consider it rap?), Snoop Doggy Dogg, GZA, Eminem, Madvillain, Drake, Mobb Deep, Lil Wayne, Run DMC, J. Dilla, Ghostface Killah, The Roots, 2Pac, Kid Cudi, Juvenile, The Pharcyde. 

That is 59 albums of the top 500 that are rap albums.  And other than eight of those (Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak, Drake's Take Care, Missy's Supa Dupa Fly, DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, Drake's If You're Reading This, Run DMC's debut, J. Dilla's Donuts, and Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon) I own every single one of those albums (some, sadly, such as Kanye's Yeezus).  And even all eight of those that I don't own, I've definitely listened to them, except for the J Dilla (okay collection of beats) or the DJ Shadow disc (which I'm jamming now and it's pretty damn cool - "Mutual Slump" samples Bjork and I'm here for it).  Seems weird right?  That rap homogeneity would be so clear so as to not let any under-the-radar rap album into this list.  I guess it also just might be the law of averages - even if DJ Drama's list had Run the Jewels on it, or El P listed Helmet on his, if no other voter included them on their list, then they couldn't have enough vote numbers to make the cut into the top 500.  Just weird to me that I found only one single new album in the rap world to listen to, and it isn't even really rap, it's just beats.  Or it could just be that news travels faster now, and if a great rapper gets discovered, he or she doesn't remain a regional, hidden thing, and so everyone will include them on their lists.

Beyond the weirdness of the way that points averaging works, a few other interesting observations from the list:

• 2Pac doesn't have an entry until #436?  Feels like people still talk him up as a major rapper/influencer, and yet he's behind smaller name people like J. Dilla, Ghostface, and GZA.
• Their Beastie Boys entries are Paul's Boutique (125), License to Ill (192), and Check Your Head (261).  I would never put License to Ill above Check Your Head (or Ill Communication for that matter).  I know it has an important place in the conversation for what it was at the time, but by now most of the songs are much less interesting that they were in 1986.  That jokey, jock-y rap is much less cool compared to the later stuff - although "Paul Revere" is still iconic.
• Bjork's Homogenic is her top entry, which I find strange.  I'd easily place Debut (n/r) and Post (289) above that one.  It has some good stuff on there, but I don't think it is as good, or as innovative, as what came before.
• Similarly, Outkast has Aquemeni at #49, Stankonia at #64, and Speakerboxx/Love Below at #290.  Aquemeni has some great individual tracks on it, but I never would have considered it their best album.  I probably would have said Stankonia, but I might have gone with ATLiens.  Interesting.  I'll need to dig back into that album.
• People have fights over the "Best Soundtrack of All Time" on the internet all the time, but if you trust this list's rankings, you get Saturday Night Fever as #1, The Harder They Come as #2, and nothing else.  No Singles, no Pulp Fiction, no Garden State, no Big Chill, no Trainspotting, no nada.  Interesting.
• The world is going wild over Tom Petty's Wildflowers right now as it celebrates an anniversary and a massive box set release, but I find it interesting that they rank it so far (#214) above Full Moon Fever (#298), which I would rank higher.  They also have Damn the Torpedoes (#231) ahead of Full Moon Fever.
• Beck's Odelay at 424 is lame, should totally be higher.  Tame Impala's Currents at 382 is lame.  R.E.M. only gets two entries (Automatic and Murmur), which is terrible.  Same with Chilis only getting in here twice (Blood Sugar and Californication).  Weezer's Blue album seems low at #294 as well.  Coldplay only having one entry (Rush of Blood...), at #324, also seems off.

• I've sung/performed/freaked out to Devo's "Whip It" about 700,000 times, and yet I don't know that I've ever actually listened to one of their entire albums.  #252 is Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, and the cover looks like a poorly drawn Tom Brady in a Miami Gangster hat standing in front of a golf ball.  It's loose as hell, as I'm listening to it right now.  Wild stuff.  The only ones on here I recognize are the Stone's cover and "Gut Feeling," which I think was used in a Wes Anderson movie.  Also, that video rules.
• Very little traditional/Nashville country in here - like the monster artists with all the hits.  No George Strait, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Kenny Rogers, Reba, Carrie Underwood, Alabama, etc. The closest you come to that are three discs: Dixie Chicks, Shania Twain, and Miranda Lambert. 
• You get some old outlaw stuff: One Willie album (hell yeah, Red Headed Stranger is the stuff), a Haggard compilation album, a Johnny Cash live disc.
• And some new outlaw/alternative stuff: Jason Isbell's Southeastern, Kasey Musgraves' Golden Hour, and Eric Church's Chief.
• Some old timey classics: a Dolly disc, a Hank Williams greatest hits compilation, a Patsy Cline collection, Loretta Lynn's Coal Miner's Daughter.
• You might call some stuff as country that came from The Band, or Dylan, or John Prine, or Lucinda Williams, The Eagles, or The Byrds or something, but I'm talking mainstream country music.  A Ray Charles country album is at #127 though...
• Just of interest to me, I suppose...
• The first album on the list I had never heard of before was #162 - Pulp's A Different Class.  The blurb about the album claims that they "blew up in the Brit-Pop scene of the 1990s," but they sure didn't make any waves in my world at the time.  It's a weird album - the singer whispers too much.  And "Disco 2000" rips off the tune from "Gloria."  The overall vibe reminds me of that recent Arctic Monkeys album where they do lounge music on the moon.  I don't dig it.
• A few super-recent discs on here: Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell at #321 and released in 2019.  Harry Styles' Fine Line, also released in 2019, but at #491.  And the Billie EIlish album at #397.  I think those are the only 2019 albums.  Also, I think people in 2030 will giggle that those three albums were considered canonical back in 2020.
• Surprises in the top 50 for me.  Lauryn Hill at 10 - the top rap album - I love that disc, don't get me wrong, it is excellent, but seems way too high for something that I don't see as continuing to hold the conversation.  Could she even sell out a big show right now?  I think everyone else this high could.  Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy at 17.  Always interesting to me that everyone loves that disc more than the earlier albums.  I think those earlier ones are SO MUCH better.  I hate The Velvet Underground and Nico album (#23).  I've tried so hard to get into it, but I just can't.  Amy Winehouse's Back to Black is surprising at #33.  I like the album for sure, but that is so high.  I love that The Chronic made the top 50.  Graceland and Legend would be higher for me for sure.

Fun stuff!  Always good to search out new music and consider the importance and impact of certain music versus others.  GO read the list and hit me up with your thoughts.