24 ms·

Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums 2003 vs. 2012 vs. 2020

mektrik 6y ago
Interesting to see on the 'Sorted by Net Shift' tab that a lot of the big risers are hip-hop. Sorted by the rankings in earlier years, these were nowhere to be found.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Well, it’s good to see that net shift. However, the net shift still indicates that they still don’t know what’s good. Kanye and Amy Whinehouse are ranked almost 100 places higher than The Fugees - The Score and Biggy Smalls - Life After Death. I’m just glad cinema is so international and most of it’s rankings always had diversity internationally that new top lists don’t have to literally over correct in a shallow way to make up for the pure exclusionary judgement making of the past.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bwilli123 6y ago
All non-white artists who have released an original recording (not a compilation) after Jane Jackson's Rhythm Nation in 1989 have been re-rated up since the 2012 survey. Without exception. Anything originally released in the 1950's rated down.
whatok 6y ago
Really funny/sad that these guys as well as others have historically downplayed rap and other black music, felt the need to placeholder some in recent years, and now have the audacity to act like Kanye's MBDTF is the 17th greatest album of all-time. Meanwhile, Sketches of Spain no longer even ranks in the top 500.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  There’s a massive overcorrection going on here. None of this feels sincere.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    some of it feels sincere generational shift. Like Prince and Michael Jackson and Lauryn Hill, but Aretha Franklin which I might consider to be a needed correction does not feel like a generational shift - other than the new generation thinking previous generations undervalued women of color etc. which I guess they also did so, hard for me to judge the sincerity, although there sure is a lot of stuff I think really?
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      But 2003-2012 hardly changed at all, which makes sense. I wouldn’t expect 8-9 years to drastically change a decades-old album’s quality. How does a 50 year old album suddenly go from 30th to 3rd? Did the content suddenly change? It looks like they just used a random number generator for 2020. I would love to read the article where they explain what changed about all these albums since 2012.
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        since I have absolutely no knowledge regarding Joni Mitchell whatsoever I have no idea what could have changed her status, since I know nothing about her it does easily come to mind to suspect it is because people decided to reevaluate women artists, and she came up on top. However in the case of some people that I do know about other non 'political' motivations might come out, for example Purple Rain jumped 68 spots to come up #8 which strikes me as totally understandable based on these things: 1. Maybe people who choose these things now have more representatives of the 80s-90s generation than before. 2. His killer show at the Super Bowl really made people who had perhaps forgotten about him re-appreciate him. 3. He died recently and that kind of thing also tends to give you a big bump. #3 reason also applies to Fleetwood Mac since Mick Fleetwood died recently, and there does seem to have been a big critical reevaluation in the past year regarding Rumours (and Fleetwood Mac used to be loathed by the Rock press in the previous generation, so if more of their opponents disappear it just might lead to their re-evaluation) other examples - I think critical reevaluations of this sort often have to do with someone reminding the public of themselves, perhaps through death but also perhaps by doing something kick ass, so - Aretha Franklin https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/arts/music/aretha-franklin-natural-woman-kennedy-center-honors.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/arts/music/aretha-frankli... might get a big lift from the kind of performance she gave there. I could go through and find other examples, but yes in a lot of cases I think what?! I just don't understand the reasoning (unless it's let's do a big reevaluation to make things more fair and we really need to put this great album down so we can bring this great album up). And in some cases like Joni Mitchell I really have to just drop it because I'm not well enough informed to really have any idea .
actuator 6y ago
It is interesting to see 'OK Computer' jump so much. Did streaming benefit Radiohead more or just that the dystopian theme really goes well the current times. Also, amusing to see 'The Piper at the Gate of Dawn' increase in rank while the other Pink Floyd albums have gone down.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Although I don't think Radiohead are anywhere near as good as a lot of people say they, OK Computer - thematically at least - was very prescient in capturing the feel of a world rapidly accelerating towards the world we have now.
- deeblering4 6y ago
  Kid A jumped significantly as well. I think we collectively/culturally embrace electronic and “experimental” (awful term but widely used) music much more now than in the 2000s. Radiohead while popular on the charts were quite ahead of their time.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Liz Phair is #56. There’s a 90s cohort in that voting bunch that is overweighting things. Just goes to show you how the people making judgements can change the landscape and make you feel like you’re the one that’s crazy. Guess never be upset about interview rejections.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  And The Bends (which is a great "traditional" Radiohead album) went down But maybe it's just the demise of traditional rock music
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  I think it's the effect of sometimes only realizing in hindsight that something was truly groundbreaking and trend-setting. I still listen to OK Computer and Kid A frequently; they absolutely hold up. The same isn't true of so much other turn-of-the-millennium music that was massively popular at the time. The trend-setting part is the real distinction here. You don't know what ends up being a dead end and what ends up being foundational to entire new genres of music until enough time has passed to see how things turned out. You need to wait enough time to see it all shake out. E.g. the first jazz and rock'n'roll musicians (who were all black) were not remotely appreciated in their time as much as they are now.
vr46 6y ago
I’ve been following over the years and this very simple analysis says to me that they’re (RS) are desperately playing catch-up with culture. There’s a LOT of black albums suddenly appearing in the list making the previous lists look like they were compiled by Linnaeus. Personal opinion: Purple Rain making a jump to slightly below where it should be (below Rumours? Gimme a break) with Sign O The Times nowhere near suggests that this years’ judges still don’t know their shit. Just get Robert Christgau to write it all next time?
- oever 6y ago
  And 'Dirty Mind' as 4th best Prince album at 326 from 206. De gustibus...
- Ntrails 6y ago
  > Personal opinion: .. (below Rumours? Gimme a break) Yeah. I'd put it quite a long way below rumours personally.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  It's essentially an impossible project anyway. I tend to agree with the older lists more simply because I don't like newer music and newer genres so much (particularly rap/pop/modern country). And the lack of representation of modern black artists in earlier lists is nothing compared to the overall lack of representation of non-western, non-English-language music in all of these lists generally. I'm preaching to the choir here but there's no sound methodology for remotely being able to quantify the "best" albums. About the best you could do is use some kind of Metacritic-like review score aggregator, but that will still heavily favor in biases existing at the time in who societally was even allowed to win recognition, e.g. Elvis will rank a lot higher than the black artists whose music he was ripping off. So it's always just going to come down to the editorial judgment of whatever team is compiling the list, and it seems like the team working on this at Rolling Stone now is likely younger and more diverse than the teams of years past, hence the forays into newer artists and genres.
  - actuator 6y ago
    or they can just leave it upto the judgement of masses and just rank on album sales(probably streams now). You are right and that it is hard for any ranking like this to be objective. If I remove my bias for old albums and just look at two of the more accessible new entrants in the list, Taylor Swift's Red and Arctic Monkey's AM. AM was generally rated much better and even I would have personally rated it higher.
coldtea 6y ago
"What's Going On" in first place? Yeah, I don't see it. It's good, but it wasn't THAT good even when it came out. Whereas Sgt Pepper was heraled and recognized as such from day one -- and for the next decades. And number 3 is Joni Mitchel's Blue? This is more about pandering to 2020 ideologies and taste than about a somewhat objective album ranking.
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  > objective album ranking That's gotta be an oxymoron.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Getting close to making that oxymoron a reality is the whole goal of any album ranking. Else just as well don't rank anything, and just say "this is a random assembly of random tastes".
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      It's not remotely a random collection though, it's a ranking of the albums actually considered "the best" by the people compiling the list. So yes, while saying "best" isn't objective, it's still completely different from "random". A "best" list still has lots of uses for lots of people (even if not for you), whereas "random" doesn't.
- samdjstephens 6y ago
  Is there such a thing as an objective album ranking? Especially when you consider the shifting landscape of music over time. Actually forget the shifting landscape of music, consider the shifting landscape of people - theres been significant generational change since 2003, doesn't it make sense that albums move up and down the ranking as their relevance increases or decreases? It doesn't surprise me at all that Marvin Gaye would have gone up the ranking. edit: I think it's also worth asking the question of what role race played in the degree to which an artist or group was heralded "at the time".
bla3 6y ago
One takeaway is that winning a nobel price in literature is bad for your Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums rating.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I don't think Kendrick Lamar moving from not being rated in previous years to #19 in 2020 with To Pimp A Butterfly represents a loss of 19 points. on edit: or Beyonce losing 32 points - wow, sorry for her I guess.
mjgs 6y ago
Really liked this list, very fun. Some things that stood out for me: - So many Beatles entries near the top - Surprised by how many of these artists I know very well (90%) - Lots of really great hip hop making big leaps forward - It’s noticeable how much all of these artists/albums are a cut above the rest of the industry - Even though I love all these albums, I hardly ever listen to any of them, it’s like going to the Louvre, very rarely but it is lovely
wsc981 6y ago
I always feel it's a shame these kinds of lists are mainly limited to the English-speaking world. I myself have taken a liking to many Thai music (e.g. "luk thung" [0]) and this kind of music would never appear in these Rolling Stone's Greatest Albums lists. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luk_thung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luk_thung
- actuator 6y ago
  Every language can have its own, no? Otherwise, selecting the judges would be a herculean task.
- peruvian 6y ago
  I think it's fine if they're honest about it or their readership/public understand "ok, they don't actually mean the greatest albums EVER from EVERYWHERE". It's essentially impossible to consider every music from everywhere. You don't have to go all the way to Thai music. Rolling Stone has been _the_ "Anglo Saxon rock music between 1950-1980s is the only music out there" publication till recently. Until the last few years there's been almost no hip hop, almost no electronic music, jazz is relegated to some token pics, etc.
- Sileni 6y ago
  Sure, but those lists exist as well, and are curated by much more qualified people than the Rolling Stones editors. /block of unsubstantiated opinions/ I don't think Rolling Stones claims to be a full list of all music of all time, nor do I think their editors would claim to be experts in all music. I dare say they hardly claim to be experts. I'd imagine they'd say they were more interested in being entertaining. /going off the rails a bit/ Now that I think about it, it would honestly be pretty disgusting if they did try to make a list encompassing all of music. Either it's strictly analytical, at which point you're really asking "What's the best selling of all time", or it's saying "our opinion is a proxy for every other opinion". The hubris of that kind of project would outweigh any good it could do.
- diego_moita 6y ago
  Here's my personal list of great Brazilian albuns: 1) Tom Jobim: Stone Flower 2) Os Novos Baianos: Acabou chorare 3) Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Tom Jobim, Zimbo Trio: Getz & Gilberto 4) Chico Science & Nação Zumbi: Da Lama Ao Caos 5) Secos & Molhados: Secos & Molhados 6) Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Nara Leao: Tropicalia 7) Tom Jobim & Elis Regina: Tom & Elis 8) Heitor Villa-Lobos : Bachianas Brasileiras 9) Egberto Gismonti : Sol do Meio Dia 10) Sepultura : Roots
mg 6y ago
It's interesting to compare them to our crowd-sourced top 100 bands of all time on Gnoosic: https://www.gnoosic.com/top https://www.gnoosic.com/top Most striking differences I can spot: The Beach Boys: While they are #2 on the Rolling Stone's list, they are not on our list at all. Linkin Park: While at #11 on Gnoosic, they are not on the Rolling Stone's list.
- dbspin 6y ago
  Rolling Stone's list, for all it's flaws, is a comparison of albums not artists. A meaningful comparison of artists isn't possible in the broad sense. It's literally a popularity contest. Stop pimping your website.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  What's the methodology on this list? In my opinion, the first 9 are fine enough, and then it starts going off the rails at #10, heavily favoring modern bands in the current era of music streaming. E.g. Lynyrd Skynyrd isn't even on that list, and Twenty One Pilots ranks significantly higher than Jimi Hendrix?!?!
  - mg 6y ago
    It is sorted by the number of people who named the artist as one of their favorites. I also would have expected Jimi Hendrix to be more popular then the Twenty One Pilots. But looking at Google Trends seems to confirm that the Twenty One Pilots have been on top over the last years: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=twenty%20one%20pilots,jimi%20hendrix https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=twenty%2...
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  Those two differences are a pretty harsh judgement on the wisdom of the crowd (or they should tell you you aren't using an especially culturally diverse crowd). More sympathetically, Album vs Band seems like a confounding factor... the Beach Boys released some astonishing albums, but their overall standing as a band has to also consider the drivel they released. OTOH, Linkin Park are enormously popular as a band, but (in my memory as an alt-rock obsessed teenager in the 00's) none of their albums really broke the surface (relative to the ludicrous levels of play their singles got).
mhh__ 6y ago
Although the whole aim of doing this is completely pointless and impossible (If you try to rank art or start waxing poetical about high or low culture, I'm gone before you've finished the sentence), these rankings just seem bizarre. I won't bother making a list but I'm quite surprised Queen's News of the world isn't present - 2 songs, played at almost any sporting event for the last 40 years.
dadarepublic 6y ago
Even within the subcategory of hip hop/rap it seems there's some bias towards more current artists vs artists from the 90s & 00s. Is that just because there is a natural bias towards more contemporary artists?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  The bias is the critics who make the list aren't dead yet and humans have a tendency to revere music not based on some aesthetic appeal, but the way it reminds them of who they were at the time they first heard that record. So music criticism has a natural tendency to move by age cohort.
cushychicken 6y ago
This book is great coffee table material, but I think it's a bit silly to treat Rolling Stone as any sort of meaningful cultural arbiter in modern times, where: -niche music blogs exist, -Spotify's related albums exists, -Allmusic and Band Camp exist, and (most importantly) -near-instant communication with your friends, peers, and social groups (who are still my biggest source of new music) exist There are just so many sources of recommendations that are better suited to aligning to an individual's musical tastes. It really throws into sharp relief what a dinosaur RS is.
- ytdytvhxgydvhh 6y ago
  On the other hand, we’ve heard about the downsides of bubbles and echo chambers over the past few years — very broad lists like these can be good reminders that quality music (or good ideas of whatever sort) exist outside of the realm of what you and your friends are currently into. Not saying I agree with or care much about the actual rankings here, but it’s a decent list to scroll through and reconsider an artist or band I haven’t given much ear time to before.
marban 6y ago
RS's Ranking always reminds me of: Best Sellers Sell the Best Because They’re Best Sellers https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/books/penguin-random-house-madeline-mcintosh.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/books/penguin-random-hous...
- thordenmark 6y ago
  Plenty of great art doesn't achieve commercial success. Or is only recognized long long after it was made. (interesting article btw).
- awo84tjwao 6y ago
  Seriously. If you make a list called "The 500 Greatest Albums OF ALL TIME" and it doesn't include Beethoven's 9th Symphony, or anything before 1960 for that matter, or anything in languages other than English, it's clearly a garbage list. Rolling Stone is and always has been just another money-making echo chamber.
  - johndill 6y ago
    Well have I got an excellent record for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Years_of_Popular_Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Years_of_Popular_Music
    - Balgair 6y ago
      That would be amazing if it were 'professionally' done and not just one dude on a guitar.
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    But Rolling Stone is about Rolling Stones -like music only, they don't cover classical
    - avip 6y ago
      Just to clarify the magazine is not named after the band.
ilamont 6y ago
Moby Grape kicked off the list? Say it ain't so! Seriously, though, what we're seeing is blues, R&B, and blues-based rockers on the way out, and a new generation from the 80s and 90s on the way in, along with some seminal discs from various genres and periods that were under-appreciated for years (Blue, What's Going On, etc.) It's interesting how the tide has really turned for some artists like U2.
- tyingq 6y ago
  I think the forced U2 songs on iTunes really hit their reputation a lot.
  - bronxbomber92 6y ago
    My impression was that the iTunes stunt was not received well because they had already lost popularity. The iTunes stunt didn't help, but I doubt it materially hurt their popularity either.
    - tyingq 6y ago
      To me, it exposed U2 to a bunch of people that had never heard of them, in a very bad light. Killing off any chance of new fans. Not that they would have grown in popularity, but that the trail off got much steeper.
    - ilamont 6y ago
      I agree. Other things are going on. Rock has long been in decline, the social messages and trends U2 focused on 30-40 years ago have passed, and U2 is no longer breaking new musical ground like they were from the late 70s until Pop.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        As a lifelong rock fan, it's really been sad to live through the long slow inexorable decline of the genre. The vast majority of current popular music doesn't appeal to me at all, which simply wasn't true even as recently as the 90s.
quaffapint 6y ago
I'm glad to see albums like The Cure's Disintegration move up, but the Beatles Sgt Peppers clearly needs to be 1 or 2. It's albums that go beyond just being random songs and provide such an influence that deserve to be near the top.
deltron3030 6y ago
Illmatic (Nas, 1994) jumping 358 spots is crazy.
- kl4m 6y ago
  One of the rare hip-hop albums I come back to regularly.
jeffbee 6y ago
A lot of Boomer garbage falling off the list, which is good, but this list is obviously cursed if Superunknown isn't even in the top 500. The math seems a little dodgy. I can't view the formulae but some new-for-2020 albums show up as having fallen into their new positions. For example Little Earthquakes (a great album!) is at position 233 with a change of -233.
kbenson 6y ago
Wow, that drop for the Beetles is really surprising. I didn't care much for the Beatles in my teen years in the 90's, but I found a great appreciation for them in my 20's. It seems odd to me that they would stay #1 through 2012 and then abruptly drop. Some of that is likely other works finally being appreciated, but 22 spots? I'm also kind of wondering how much of this is meme driven. What's Going On is amazing, but it's also immediately recognizable by title and main song chorus, and as such used to evoke the song through that alone to great effect to this day. Does that effect it's ranking here? Should it? Edit: While a few Beatles albums on this list saw large drops, there are also a couple others that gained ground. Interesting.
- npunt 6y ago
  I've been a huge Beatles fan since my early 20s, I can recognize and sing almost every song, but somewhere in the last 5 years the relevance of their music just fell off a cliff and I never listen anymore. Some of it is probably life stage related but I can't help but think a lot of it is just that they describe a time that now bears little resemblance to our own. We're entering some dark times, and hearing songs from the golden age of the 60s can create a kind of visceral rejection. I'm glad to see Abbey Road surpass Sgt Pepper though, past cultural relevance aside it's just a better album to listen to. I'm fully in support of ranking What's Going On much higher, musically its fantastic and its themes are unfortunately still so relevant. As a ranking criteria I'd say a mix of music & timelessness or relevance are the most important, followed in distant third by how groundbreaking or influential they were in their time, as that feels more like an intellectual footnote than a judgment of the music.
da39a3ee 6y ago
I agree with lots of the stuff in the lists (I am a white male in my late 30s from an anglophone country). However... Neither Aenima nor Lateralus anywhere in any of the lists??
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Tool is one of those bands that, despite having a truly massive fan base for decades, never quite gets the accolades it perhaps deserves from the mainstream at large. It's just a little too "weird", as anyone who's seen their music videos or live performances can attest.
  - beastieboyce 6y ago
    Apart from their four Grammy awards?
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Somewhat counter-intuitively, a band having won Grammies doesn't mean much when it comes to whether their albums show on this list. The top several award-winning groups aren't represented on the list at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_records#Most_Grammys_won_by_a_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_records#Most_Gram...
- Kosirich 6y ago
  Preach brother! How about the list not containing Iron Maiden. Not even Number of the Beast
anm89 6y ago
Some of these choices are bizarre in my mind, including the new number 1, but I can take all of it just to see that they moved all of U2 out of the top 100. Most overrated band of all time. I personally like Al Green "I'm still in love with you" (306) and Curtis Mayfield's Superfly (76) more than Marvin Gays' What's going on (1)
- Yhippa 6y ago
  I think they're overrated but I also like them still. I bet a lot of this is attributed to the fact that it's harder for big labels to monopolize our music choices. Distribution is much flatter. In 10 years I hope this list looks different with more older stuff being rediscovered and new stuff rising to the top.
  - anm89 6y ago
    Yeah, totally subjective at the end of the end of the day. I think we are in a very new is cool mode right now that reminds me of the early 2000s and I think you will get your wish with old being rediscovered The next 10 years.
mynegation 6y ago
Rolling Stone ratings are made by old timers who rate the music they grew up with higher. It is heavily weighted towards 60s, 70s and cultural impact more than musical value. And I am saying this as a (relative) old timer myself. Sure, music is subjective, and that is why I don’t view ratings like that anything more than a curiosity. More targeted listS like “20 Greatest Death Metal albums” are of much greater value and interest to me because they are more relevant to me personally.
- wmf 6y ago
  The 2020 list dropped a lot of pre-1990 music and added more recent stuff which makes me think the list is now controlled by 45-year-olds.
Yhippa 6y ago
Anybody know why John Prine's eponymous album from 1971 have such a huge jump? Just listened to it. Not bad to me but nothing jumped out.
- furyofantares 6y ago
  He died this year
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    And of COVID no less, early on in the pandemic, perhaps the most famed person to have died from it yet in the US at the time. The circumstances of his death thus drew a lot more attention to him than would the typical news story of "old musician decades past their prime died of old age today" which would make page 8 in the paper.
    - listenallyall 6y ago
      ...as did Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. FOW was never an "important" band, but Welcome Interstate Managers is a masterpiece that surely has a place somewhere in the top 500.
adrian_mrd 6y ago
TL;DR For 2020, Rolling Stone decided to elevate many seminal hip-hop and rap LPs, and upvote some alternative rock LPs at the expense of many classic rock albums.
thordenmark 6y ago
This is a top 500 list of apples and oranges as far as I'm concerned. Music is too diverse and what is a great rock album is a terrible hip hop album.
pje 6y ago
ok boomers
- dang 6y ago
  Hey, can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ericmcer 6y ago
Isn’t rolling stone a rock magazine? Obviously this is a super subjective list but I would expect a rock magazine to favor classic rock albums. Kinda weird they are moving away from that.
- itisit 6y ago
  Rolling Stone has not been a rock magazine for at least 30 years.
johndill 6y ago
While posterity often sorts things out what a list like this misses is how big, and important, some records were when they came out. U2's Joshua Tree dropped quite a bit but it was an absolute monster when it came out.
mnl 6y ago
How can Muddy Waters Anthology drop 445 places in 8 years? I've had a soft spot for the Miseducation since 1999, but pumping it 300 places to make it into the top 10, I don't know about that. I don't understand the swings with Funkadelic's nor what they've done with Forever changes. This list is what it is, but come on. (So Nevermind is the new RSS' London calling, it's official, we're old now.)
- rograndom 6y ago
  And to make you feel even older, today Nevermind is more than TWICE as old as London Calling was when Nevermind was released.
cambalache 6y ago
I sincerely doubt a Bad Bunny album is part of the best 500 Puerto Rican albums of all time, let alone the world. Most of the albums post 2000 are underwhelming to put it mildly. Great music is still made of course but great music + popularity + influence in the overall cultural landscape is pretty much dead.
Apocryphon 6y ago
Comparing it to lists of best-selling albums [0], the major artist that isn't even present in the RS list (vs. ones that are but not by their best-selling album, e.g. Santana's Supernatural) is Celine Dion (Falling into You), which record sold 32 million claimed copies. Once you get down to 20-29 million copies you see a lot more best-selling albums without their artists appearing on RS's critical list, from Bon Jovi to Linkin Park to Norah Jones to the Backstreet Boys to the Spice Girls. Also, film scores (such as The Titanic OST) are not on RS's list. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
In 2020, the best application of the Beatles catalog would be a preschool songbook. Fight me.
- mnl 6y ago
  Ok (although this isn't reddit yet): Tomorrow Never Knows (Chemical Brothers' breakbeat, just 30 years earlier), A Day in the Life, Helter Skelter, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey and I Want You (She's So Heavy). What would you draw in your sketchbook? BTW, I also miss say Hot Rats in this rag, no King Crimson either, but then there's Ege Bamyasi, Kimono My House and Different Class which are favourites of mine and hadn't noticed before.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
I could challenge the integrity of all 3 lists by noting the absence of Frank Zappa. Past that there are a lot of labels that seem overlooked - 4AD and Hyperium Records come to mind.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Kosirich 6y ago
Came from the gym after listening to a compilation with Tool and Iron Maiden on it.I opened the link and searched for the ranking of any Tool album uncertain there is one on it (if it is, it would probably be Lateralus) but being certain that Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" will be. They weren't. Found 6 Kanye West albums. One of his albums is 30 places above Dark Side of the Moon. (at least Public Enemy is higher). Respectfully, will never open the 500 list again
- SECProto 6y ago
  as a counter example, I dislike Tool and Iron Maiden, and, while I like DSotM, I would rank My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy higher. So the ranking suits my opinions just fine! :)
  - raffraffraff 6y ago
    As a counter counter example, etc.
  - sunstone 6y ago
    Ah, the warm glow of confirmation bias. :)
    - SECProto 6y ago
      Yep. I don't actually feel strongly about the chart (or changes to it) at all. Trying to create a definitive "greatest albums" list is an exercise in futility. The only music rankings I put any stock in are the Top 5's used in High Fidelity. Or anyone who does similar on their own: choose a narrow category ("top 5 side one track ones"), list them, and discuss with a group of people you know - because the prompted discussion is what's really beneficial.
jayd16 6y ago
Everyone is surprised about the payola in these lists?
somerandomboi 6y ago
Hmm... I honestly cannot perceive this as the "absolute" list of greatest albums, as was stated before every listener formulates their own opinion based on preferred media communication. Furthermore (as was stated), this list does not include any entry from pre-1960 or a country outside of the Anglosphere. Consequently, such a skewed artistic representation does not provide an appropriate framework to evaluate music.The spreadsheet might be interesting to observe/record crude statistical variability among certain artists, yet not a consensus of the greatest albums of "all time".
8bitsrule 6y ago
Music appreciation is very much tied to its era. I noticed a few days ago that Sibelius wrote 7 (~ romantic) symphonies in 30 years, then none in the next 30 years as Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky et.al. changed the face of music. When it comes to music,'greatest' is judged in the very long range. In the short range, Webern and Salieri were highly regarded, Bach forgotten. 99% of the 50s-60s-70s 'oldies' are gone from the radio. Radiohead's 28-year-old 'Creep' (foreshadowed by famous 60s Roy Orbison and Left Banke choons) now sounds ... like satire. Today everything on the radio sounds like rap or pap to me.
woopwoop 6y ago
To counter the extraordinary volume of bland negativity in this comment thread, I'll add my own bland positivity. I came across the 2003 version of this list in my early teens, and listened to a bunch of the albums here (or at least some of them), and it strongly influenced the development of my musical taste in a way which I think back on very fondly.
wodenokoto 6y ago
If you scroll to the bottom you get mostly new-to-2020. Interestingly Alanis Morisettes mega hit album Jagged Little Pill didn’t make it until this year. It seems like the oldest new entry is Nina Simones With an 1966 album. Another one that caught my eye was how Radiohead’s “Kid A” has been on all 3 lists and consistently climbing from the bottom, to the middle to the top 100. I remember when it came out I had actual discussions with classmates as to whether it was music or not (!) and it caused a huge fuzz in all the music magazines. Listening to it today ... I mean it’s not a bad album, but nothing about it sounds weird or out there. I guess that means they truly pushed popular music.
neverartful 6y ago
It seems like very odd rankings. Of course, there are a great many bands in the list that I've never even heard of. That doesn't invalidate the list. I just point it out to say that my tastes aren't wide enough to recognize everyone. It's even very odd for all the bands and albums that I know very well. I would have expected to see Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon much further up the list. I was completely shocked to find that Supertramp's Crime of the Century album is not even on the list! On the other hand, there are very many mediocre albums that made it. Of the Led Zeppelin albums on the list, I was shocked to see the first album (self-titled) ranked higher than II and Physical Graffiti. That's downright bizarre to me. Rush's Moving Pictures at #379 on latest list and not even present on earlier lists. Gasp! Other bands that I would have expected to see somewhere in the list: Journey, Styx, Bad Company, Foreigner, Boston.
sjs382 6y ago
Some perspective: a cherry-picked Quora thread [0] says that there have been 9,610,130+ english-language albums released. It's really splitting hairs to take issue with the order of the top 0.0052% of albums. [0] https://www.quora.com/How-many-music-albums-are-available-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/How-many-music-albums-are-available-in...
ramon68 6y ago
How can Rolling Stone explain the fact that the perennial #1 Sgt. Pepper is out of the Top 20? They obviously have an agenda over there!

Interesting to see on the 'Sorted by Net Shift' tab that a lot of the big risers are hip-hop. Sorted by the rankings in earlier years, these were nowhere to be found.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Well, it’s good to see that net shift. However, the net shift still indicates that they still don’t know what’s good. Kanye and Amy Whinehouse are ranked almost 100 places higher than The Fugees - The Score and Biggy Smalls - Life After Death. I’m just glad cinema is so international and most of it’s rankings always had diversity internationally that new top lists don’t have to literally over correct in a shallow way to make up for the pure exclusionary judgement making of the past.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bwilli123 6y ago

All non-white artists who have released an original recording (not a compilation) after Jane Jackson's Rhythm Nation in 1989 have been re-rated up since the 2012 survey. Without exception. Anything originally released in the 1950's rated down.

whatok 6y ago

Really funny/sad that these guys as well as others have historically downplayed rap and other black music, felt the need to placeholder some in recent years, and now have the audacity to act like Kanye's MBDTF is the 17th greatest album of all-time. Meanwhile, Sketches of Spain no longer even ranks in the top 500.

runawaybottle 6y ago
There’s a massive overcorrection going on here. None of this feels sincere.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  some of it feels sincere generational shift. Like Prince and Michael Jackson and Lauryn Hill, but Aretha Franklin which I might consider to be a needed correction does not feel like a generational shift - other than the new generation thinking previous generations undervalued women of color etc. which I guess they also did so, hard for me to judge the sincerity, although there sure is a lot of stuff I think really?
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    But 2003-2012 hardly changed at all, which makes sense. I wouldn’t expect 8-9 years to drastically change a decades-old album’s quality. How does a 50 year old album suddenly go from 30th to 3rd? Did the content suddenly change? It looks like they just used a random number generator for 2020. I would love to read the article where they explain what changed about all these albums since 2012.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      since I have absolutely no knowledge regarding Joni Mitchell whatsoever I have no idea what could have changed her status, since I know nothing about her it does easily come to mind to suspect it is because people decided to reevaluate women artists, and she came up on top. However in the case of some people that I do know about other non 'political' motivations might come out, for example Purple Rain jumped 68 spots to come up #8 which strikes me as totally understandable based on these things: 1. Maybe people who choose these things now have more representatives of the 80s-90s generation than before. 2. His killer show at the Super Bowl really made people who had perhaps forgotten about him re-appreciate him. 3. He died recently and that kind of thing also tends to give you a big bump. #3 reason also applies to Fleetwood Mac since Mick Fleetwood died recently, and there does seem to have been a big critical reevaluation in the past year regarding Rumours (and Fleetwood Mac used to be loathed by the Rock press in the previous generation, so if more of their opponents disappear it just might lead to their re-evaluation) other examples - I think critical reevaluations of this sort often have to do with someone reminding the public of themselves, perhaps through death but also perhaps by doing something kick ass, so - Aretha Franklin https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/arts/music/aretha-franklin-natural-woman-kennedy-center-honors.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/arts/music/aretha-frankli... might get a big lift from the kind of performance she gave there. I could go through and find other examples, but yes in a lot of cases I think what?! I just don't understand the reasoning (unless it's let's do a big reevaluation to make things more fair and we really need to put this great album down so we can bring this great album up). And in some cases like Joni Mitchell I really have to just drop it because I'm not well enough informed to really have any idea .

actuator 6y ago

It is interesting to see 'OK Computer' jump so much. Did streaming benefit Radiohead more or just that the dystopian theme really goes well the current times. Also, amusing to see 'The Piper at the Gate of Dawn' increase in rank while the other Pink Floyd albums have gone down.

mhh__ 6y ago
Although I don't think Radiohead are anywhere near as good as a lot of people say they, OK Computer - thematically at least - was very prescient in capturing the feel of a world rapidly accelerating towards the world we have now.
deeblering4 6y ago
Kid A jumped significantly as well. I think we collectively/culturally embrace electronic and “experimental” (awful term but widely used) music much more now than in the 2000s. Radiohead while popular on the charts were quite ahead of their time.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Liz Phair is #56. There’s a 90s cohort in that voting bunch that is overweighting things. Just goes to show you how the people making judgements can change the landscape and make you feel like you’re the one that’s crazy. Guess never be upset about interview rejections.
raverbashing 6y ago
And The Bends (which is a great "traditional" Radiohead album) went down But maybe it's just the demise of traditional rock music
CydeWeys 6y ago
I think it's the effect of sometimes only realizing in hindsight that something was truly groundbreaking and trend-setting. I still listen to OK Computer and Kid A frequently; they absolutely hold up. The same isn't true of so much other turn-of-the-millennium music that was massively popular at the time. The trend-setting part is the real distinction here. You don't know what ends up being a dead end and what ends up being foundational to entire new genres of music until enough time has passed to see how things turned out. You need to wait enough time to see it all shake out. E.g. the first jazz and rock'n'roll musicians (who were all black) were not remotely appreciated in their time as much as they are now.

vr46 6y ago

I’ve been following over the years and this very simple analysis says to me that they’re (RS) are desperately playing catch-up with culture. There’s a LOT of black albums suddenly appearing in the list making the previous lists look like they were compiled by Linnaeus. Personal opinion: Purple Rain making a jump to slightly below where it should be (below Rumours? Gimme a break) with Sign O The Times nowhere near suggests that this years’ judges still don’t know their shit. Just get Robert Christgau to write it all next time?

oever 6y ago
And 'Dirty Mind' as 4th best Prince album at 326 from 206. De gustibus...
Ntrails 6y ago
> Personal opinion: .. (below Rumours? Gimme a break) Yeah. I'd put it quite a long way below rumours personally.
CydeWeys 6y ago
It's essentially an impossible project anyway. I tend to agree with the older lists more simply because I don't like newer music and newer genres so much (particularly rap/pop/modern country). And the lack of representation of modern black artists in earlier lists is nothing compared to the overall lack of representation of non-western, non-English-language music in all of these lists generally. I'm preaching to the choir here but there's no sound methodology for remotely being able to quantify the "best" albums. About the best you could do is use some kind of Metacritic-like review score aggregator, but that will still heavily favor in biases existing at the time in who societally was even allowed to win recognition, e.g. Elvis will rank a lot higher than the black artists whose music he was ripping off. So it's always just going to come down to the editorial judgment of whatever team is compiling the list, and it seems like the team working on this at Rolling Stone now is likely younger and more diverse than the teams of years past, hence the forays into newer artists and genres.
- actuator 6y ago
  or they can just leave it upto the judgement of masses and just rank on album sales(probably streams now). You are right and that it is hard for any ranking like this to be objective. If I remove my bias for old albums and just look at two of the more accessible new entrants in the list, Taylor Swift's Red and Arctic Monkey's AM. AM was generally rated much better and even I would have personally rated it higher.

coldtea 6y ago

"What's Going On" in first place? Yeah, I don't see it. It's good, but it wasn't THAT good even when it came out. Whereas Sgt Pepper was heraled and recognized as such from day one -- and for the next decades. And number 3 is Joni Mitchel's Blue? This is more about pandering to 2020 ideologies and taste than about a somewhat objective album ranking.

smnrchrds 6y ago
> objective album ranking That's gotta be an oxymoron.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Getting close to making that oxymoron a reality is the whole goal of any album ranking. Else just as well don't rank anything, and just say "this is a random assembly of random tastes".
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    It's not remotely a random collection though, it's a ranking of the albums actually considered "the best" by the people compiling the list. So yes, while saying "best" isn't objective, it's still completely different from "random". A "best" list still has lots of uses for lots of people (even if not for you), whereas "random" doesn't.
samdjstephens 6y ago
Is there such a thing as an objective album ranking? Especially when you consider the shifting landscape of music over time. Actually forget the shifting landscape of music, consider the shifting landscape of people - theres been significant generational change since 2003, doesn't it make sense that albums move up and down the ranking as their relevance increases or decreases? It doesn't surprise me at all that Marvin Gaye would have gone up the ranking. edit: I think it's also worth asking the question of what role race played in the degree to which an artist or group was heralded "at the time".

bla3 6y ago

One takeaway is that winning a nobel price in literature is bad for your Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums rating.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

I don't think Kendrick Lamar moving from not being rated in previous years to #19 in 2020 with To Pimp A Butterfly represents a loss of 19 points. on edit: or Beyonce losing 32 points - wow, sorry for her I guess.

mjgs 6y ago

Really liked this list, very fun. Some things that stood out for me: - So many Beatles entries near the top - Surprised by how many of these artists I know very well (90%) - Lots of really great hip hop making big leaps forward - It’s noticeable how much all of these artists/albums are a cut above the rest of the industry - Even though I love all these albums, I hardly ever listen to any of them, it’s like going to the Louvre, very rarely but it is lovely

wsc981 6y ago

I always feel it's a shame these kinds of lists are mainly limited to the English-speaking world. I myself have taken a liking to many Thai music (e.g. "luk thung" [0]) and this kind of music would never appear in these Rolling Stone's Greatest Albums lists. --- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luk_thung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luk_thung

actuator 6y ago
Every language can have its own, no? Otherwise, selecting the judges would be a herculean task.
peruvian 6y ago
I think it's fine if they're honest about it or their readership/public understand "ok, they don't actually mean the greatest albums EVER from EVERYWHERE". It's essentially impossible to consider every music from everywhere. You don't have to go all the way to Thai music. Rolling Stone has been _the_ "Anglo Saxon rock music between 1950-1980s is the only music out there" publication till recently. Until the last few years there's been almost no hip hop, almost no electronic music, jazz is relegated to some token pics, etc.
Sileni 6y ago
Sure, but those lists exist as well, and are curated by much more qualified people than the Rolling Stones editors. /block of unsubstantiated opinions/ I don't think Rolling Stones claims to be a full list of all music of all time, nor do I think their editors would claim to be experts in all music. I dare say they hardly claim to be experts. I'd imagine they'd say they were more interested in being entertaining. /going off the rails a bit/ Now that I think about it, it would honestly be pretty disgusting if they did try to make a list encompassing all of music. Either it's strictly analytical, at which point you're really asking "What's the best selling of all time", or it's saying "our opinion is a proxy for every other opinion". The hubris of that kind of project would outweigh any good it could do.
diego_moita 6y ago
Here's my personal list of great Brazilian albuns: 1) Tom Jobim: Stone Flower 2) Os Novos Baianos: Acabou chorare 3) Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Tom Jobim, Zimbo Trio: Getz & Gilberto 4) Chico Science & Nação Zumbi: Da Lama Ao Caos 5) Secos & Molhados: Secos & Molhados 6) Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Nara Leao: Tropicalia 7) Tom Jobim & Elis Regina: Tom & Elis 8) Heitor Villa-Lobos : Bachianas Brasileiras 9) Egberto Gismonti : Sol do Meio Dia 10) Sepultura : Roots

mg 6y ago

It's interesting to compare them to our crowd-sourced top 100 bands of all time on Gnoosic: https://www.gnoosic.com/top https://www.gnoosic.com/top Most striking differences I can spot: The Beach Boys: While they are #2 on the Rolling Stone's list, they are not on our list at all. Linkin Park: While at #11 on Gnoosic, they are not on the Rolling Stone's list.

dbspin 6y ago
Rolling Stone's list, for all it's flaws, is a comparison of albums not artists. A meaningful comparison of artists isn't possible in the broad sense. It's literally a popularity contest. Stop pimping your website.
CydeWeys 6y ago
What's the methodology on this list? In my opinion, the first 9 are fine enough, and then it starts going off the rails at #10, heavily favoring modern bands in the current era of music streaming. E.g. Lynyrd Skynyrd isn't even on that list, and Twenty One Pilots ranks significantly higher than Jimi Hendrix?!?!
- mg 6y ago
  It is sorted by the number of people who named the artist as one of their favorites. I also would have expected Jimi Hendrix to be more popular then the Twenty One Pilots. But looking at Google Trends seems to confirm that the Twenty One Pilots have been on top over the last years: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=twenty%20one%20pilots,jimi%20hendrix https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=twenty%2...
InitialLastName 6y ago
Those two differences are a pretty harsh judgement on the wisdom of the crowd (or they should tell you you aren't using an especially culturally diverse crowd). More sympathetically, Album vs Band seems like a confounding factor... the Beach Boys released some astonishing albums, but their overall standing as a band has to also consider the drivel they released. OTOH, Linkin Park are enormously popular as a band, but (in my memory as an alt-rock obsessed teenager in the 00's) none of their albums really broke the surface (relative to the ludicrous levels of play their singles got).

mhh__ 6y ago

Although the whole aim of doing this is completely pointless and impossible (If you try to rank art or start waxing poetical about high or low culture, I'm gone before you've finished the sentence), these rankings just seem bizarre. I won't bother making a list but I'm quite surprised Queen's News of the world isn't present - 2 songs, played at almost any sporting event for the last 40 years.

dadarepublic 6y ago

Even within the subcategory of hip hop/rap it seems there's some bias towards more current artists vs artists from the 90s & 00s. Is that just because there is a natural bias towards more contemporary artists?

jeffbee 6y ago
The bias is the critics who make the list aren't dead yet and humans have a tendency to revere music not based on some aesthetic appeal, but the way it reminds them of who they were at the time they first heard that record. So music criticism has a natural tendency to move by age cohort.

cushychicken 6y ago

This book is great coffee table material, but I think it's a bit silly to treat Rolling Stone as any sort of meaningful cultural arbiter in modern times, where: -niche music blogs exist, -Spotify's related albums exists, -Allmusic and Band Camp exist, and (most importantly) -near-instant communication with your friends, peers, and social groups (who are still my biggest source of new music) exist There are just so many sources of recommendations that are better suited to aligning to an individual's musical tastes. It really throws into sharp relief what a dinosaur RS is.

ytdytvhxgydvhh 6y ago
On the other hand, we’ve heard about the downsides of bubbles and echo chambers over the past few years — very broad lists like these can be good reminders that quality music (or good ideas of whatever sort) exist outside of the realm of what you and your friends are currently into. Not saying I agree with or care much about the actual rankings here, but it’s a decent list to scroll through and reconsider an artist or band I haven’t given much ear time to before.

marban 6y ago

RS's Ranking always reminds me of: Best Sellers Sell the Best Because They’re Best Sellers https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/books/penguin-random-house-madeline-mcintosh.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/books/penguin-random-hous...

thordenmark 6y ago
Plenty of great art doesn't achieve commercial success. Or is only recognized long long after it was made. (interesting article btw).
awo84tjwao 6y ago
Seriously. If you make a list called "The 500 Greatest Albums OF ALL TIME" and it doesn't include Beethoven's 9th Symphony, or anything before 1960 for that matter, or anything in languages other than English, it's clearly a garbage list. Rolling Stone is and always has been just another money-making echo chamber.
- johndill 6y ago
  Well have I got an excellent record for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Years_of_Popular_Music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Years_of_Popular_Music
  - Balgair 6y ago
    That would be amazing if it were 'professionally' done and not just one dude on a guitar.
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  But Rolling Stone is about Rolling Stones -like music only, they don't cover classical
  - avip 6y ago
    Just to clarify the magazine is not named after the band.

ilamont 6y ago

Moby Grape kicked off the list? Say it ain't so! Seriously, though, what we're seeing is blues, R&B, and blues-based rockers on the way out, and a new generation from the 80s and 90s on the way in, along with some seminal discs from various genres and periods that were under-appreciated for years (Blue, What's Going On, etc.) It's interesting how the tide has really turned for some artists like U2.

tyingq 6y ago
I think the forced U2 songs on iTunes really hit their reputation a lot.
- bronxbomber92 6y ago
  My impression was that the iTunes stunt was not received well because they had already lost popularity. The iTunes stunt didn't help, but I doubt it materially hurt their popularity either.
  - tyingq 6y ago
    To me, it exposed U2 to a bunch of people that had never heard of them, in a very bad light. Killing off any chance of new fans. Not that they would have grown in popularity, but that the trail off got much steeper.
  - ilamont 6y ago
    I agree. Other things are going on. Rock has long been in decline, the social messages and trends U2 focused on 30-40 years ago have passed, and U2 is no longer breaking new musical ground like they were from the late 70s until Pop.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      As a lifelong rock fan, it's really been sad to live through the long slow inexorable decline of the genre. The vast majority of current popular music doesn't appeal to me at all, which simply wasn't true even as recently as the 90s.

quaffapint 6y ago

I'm glad to see albums like The Cure's Disintegration move up, but the Beatles Sgt Peppers clearly needs to be 1 or 2. It's albums that go beyond just being random songs and provide such an influence that deserve to be near the top.

deltron3030 6y ago

Illmatic (Nas, 1994) jumping 358 spots is crazy.

kl4m 6y ago
One of the rare hip-hop albums I come back to regularly.

jeffbee 6y ago

A lot of Boomer garbage falling off the list, which is good, but this list is obviously cursed if Superunknown isn't even in the top 500. The math seems a little dodgy. I can't view the formulae but some new-for-2020 albums show up as having fallen into their new positions. For example Little Earthquakes (a great album!) is at position 233 with a change of -233.

kbenson 6y ago

Wow, that drop for the Beetles is really surprising. I didn't care much for the Beatles in my teen years in the 90's, but I found a great appreciation for them in my 20's. It seems odd to me that they would stay #1 through 2012 and then abruptly drop. Some of that is likely other works finally being appreciated, but 22 spots? I'm also kind of wondering how much of this is meme driven. What's Going On is amazing, but it's also immediately recognizable by title and main song chorus, and as such used to evoke the song through that alone to great effect to this day. Does that effect it's ranking here? Should it? Edit: While a few Beatles albums on this list saw large drops, there are also a couple others that gained ground. Interesting.

npunt 6y ago
I've been a huge Beatles fan since my early 20s, I can recognize and sing almost every song, but somewhere in the last 5 years the relevance of their music just fell off a cliff and I never listen anymore. Some of it is probably life stage related but I can't help but think a lot of it is just that they describe a time that now bears little resemblance to our own. We're entering some dark times, and hearing songs from the golden age of the 60s can create a kind of visceral rejection. I'm glad to see Abbey Road surpass Sgt Pepper though, past cultural relevance aside it's just a better album to listen to. I'm fully in support of ranking What's Going On much higher, musically its fantastic and its themes are unfortunately still so relevant. As a ranking criteria I'd say a mix of music & timelessness or relevance are the most important, followed in distant third by how groundbreaking or influential they were in their time, as that feels more like an intellectual footnote than a judgment of the music.

da39a3ee 6y ago

I agree with lots of the stuff in the lists (I am a white male in my late 30s from an anglophone country). However... Neither Aenima nor Lateralus anywhere in any of the lists??

CydeWeys 6y ago
Tool is one of those bands that, despite having a truly massive fan base for decades, never quite gets the accolades it perhaps deserves from the mainstream at large. It's just a little too "weird", as anyone who's seen their music videos or live performances can attest.
- beastieboyce 6y ago
  Apart from their four Grammy awards?
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Somewhat counter-intuitively, a band having won Grammies doesn't mean much when it comes to whether their albums show on this list. The top several award-winning groups aren't represented on the list at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_records#Most_Grammys_won_by_a_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_records#Most_Gram...
Kosirich 6y ago
Preach brother! How about the list not containing Iron Maiden. Not even Number of the Beast

anm89 6y ago

Some of these choices are bizarre in my mind, including the new number 1, but I can take all of it just to see that they moved all of U2 out of the top 100. Most overrated band of all time. I personally like Al Green "I'm still in love with you" (306) and Curtis Mayfield's Superfly (76) more than Marvin Gays' What's going on (1)

Yhippa 6y ago
I think they're overrated but I also like them still. I bet a lot of this is attributed to the fact that it's harder for big labels to monopolize our music choices. Distribution is much flatter. In 10 years I hope this list looks different with more older stuff being rediscovered and new stuff rising to the top.
- anm89 6y ago
  Yeah, totally subjective at the end of the end of the day. I think we are in a very new is cool mode right now that reminds me of the early 2000s and I think you will get your wish with old being rediscovered The next 10 years.

mynegation 6y ago

Rolling Stone ratings are made by old timers who rate the music they grew up with higher. It is heavily weighted towards 60s, 70s and cultural impact more than musical value. And I am saying this as a (relative) old timer myself. Sure, music is subjective, and that is why I don’t view ratings like that anything more than a curiosity. More targeted listS like “20 Greatest Death Metal albums” are of much greater value and interest to me because they are more relevant to me personally.

wmf 6y ago
The 2020 list dropped a lot of pre-1990 music and added more recent stuff which makes me think the list is now controlled by 45-year-olds.

Yhippa 6y ago

Anybody know why John Prine's eponymous album from 1971 have such a huge jump? Just listened to it. Not bad to me but nothing jumped out.

furyofantares 6y ago
He died this year
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  And of COVID no less, early on in the pandemic, perhaps the most famed person to have died from it yet in the US at the time. The circumstances of his death thus drew a lot more attention to him than would the typical news story of "old musician decades past their prime died of old age today" which would make page 8 in the paper.
  - listenallyall 6y ago
    ...as did Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. FOW was never an "important" band, but Welcome Interstate Managers is a masterpiece that surely has a place somewhere in the top 500.

adrian_mrd 6y ago

TL;DR For 2020, Rolling Stone decided to elevate many seminal hip-hop and rap LPs, and upvote some alternative rock LPs at the expense of many classic rock albums.

thordenmark 6y ago

This is a top 500 list of apples and oranges as far as I'm concerned. Music is too diverse and what is a great rock album is a terrible hip hop album.

pje 6y ago

ok boomers

dang 6y ago
Hey, can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ericmcer 6y ago

Isn’t rolling stone a rock magazine? Obviously this is a super subjective list but I would expect a rock magazine to favor classic rock albums. Kinda weird they are moving away from that.

itisit 6y ago
Rolling Stone has not been a rock magazine for at least 30 years.

johndill 6y ago

While posterity often sorts things out what a list like this misses is how big, and important, some records were when they came out. U2's Joshua Tree dropped quite a bit but it was an absolute monster when it came out.

mnl 6y ago

How can Muddy Waters Anthology drop 445 places in 8 years? I've had a soft spot for the Miseducation since 1999, but pumping it 300 places to make it into the top 10, I don't know about that. I don't understand the swings with Funkadelic's nor what they've done with Forever changes. This list is what it is, but come on. (So Nevermind is the new RSS' London calling, it's official, we're old now.)

rograndom 6y ago
And to make you feel even older, today Nevermind is more than TWICE as old as London Calling was when Nevermind was released.

cambalache 6y ago

I sincerely doubt a Bad Bunny album is part of the best 500 Puerto Rican albums of all time, let alone the world. Most of the albums post 2000 are underwhelming to put it mildly. Great music is still made of course but great music + popularity + influence in the overall cultural landscape is pretty much dead.

Apocryphon 6y ago

Comparing it to lists of best-selling albums [0], the major artist that isn't even present in the RS list (vs. ones that are but not by their best-selling album, e.g. Santana's Supernatural) is Celine Dion (Falling into You), which record sold 32 million claimed copies. Once you get down to 20-29 million copies you see a lot more best-selling albums without their artists appearing on RS's critical list, from Bon Jovi to Linkin Park to Norah Jones to the Backstreet Boys to the Spice Girls. Also, film scores (such as The Titanic OST) are not on RS's list. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_albums

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

In 2020, the best application of the Beatles catalog would be a preschool songbook. Fight me.

mnl 6y ago
Ok (although this isn't reddit yet): Tomorrow Never Knows (Chemical Brothers' breakbeat, just 30 years earlier), A Day in the Life, Helter Skelter, Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey and I Want You (She's So Heavy). What would you draw in your sketchbook? BTW, I also miss say Hot Rats in this rag, no King Crimson either, but then there's Ege Bamyasi, Kimono My House and Different Class which are favourites of mine and hadn't noticed before.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

I could challenge the integrity of all 3 lists by noting the absence of Frank Zappa. Past that there are a lot of labels that seem overlooked - 4AD and Hyperium Records come to mind.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Kosirich 6y ago

Came from the gym after listening to a compilation with Tool and Iron Maiden on it.I opened the link and searched for the ranking of any Tool album uncertain there is one on it (if it is, it would probably be Lateralus) but being certain that Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" will be. They weren't. Found 6 Kanye West albums. One of his albums is 30 places above Dark Side of the Moon. (at least Public Enemy is higher). Respectfully, will never open the 500 list again

SECProto 6y ago
as a counter example, I dislike Tool and Iron Maiden, and, while I like DSotM, I would rank My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy higher. So the ranking suits my opinions just fine! :)
- raffraffraff 6y ago
  As a counter counter example, etc.
- sunstone 6y ago
  Ah, the warm glow of confirmation bias. :)
  - SECProto 6y ago
    Yep. I don't actually feel strongly about the chart (or changes to it) at all. Trying to create a definitive "greatest albums" list is an exercise in futility. The only music rankings I put any stock in are the Top 5's used in High Fidelity. Or anyone who does similar on their own: choose a narrow category ("top 5 side one track ones"), list them, and discuss with a group of people you know - because the prompted discussion is what's really beneficial.

jayd16 6y ago

Everyone is surprised about the payola in these lists?

somerandomboi 6y ago

Hmm... I honestly cannot perceive this as the "absolute" list of greatest albums, as was stated before every listener formulates their own opinion based on preferred media communication. Furthermore (as was stated), this list does not include any entry from pre-1960 or a country outside of the Anglosphere. Consequently, such a skewed artistic representation does not provide an appropriate framework to evaluate music.The spreadsheet might be interesting to observe/record crude statistical variability among certain artists, yet not a consensus of the greatest albums of "all time".

8bitsrule 6y ago

Music appreciation is very much tied to its era. I noticed a few days ago that Sibelius wrote 7 (~ romantic) symphonies in 30 years, then none in the next 30 years as Bartok, Hindemith, Stravinsky et.al. changed the face of music. When it comes to music,'greatest' is judged in the very long range. In the short range, Webern and Salieri were highly regarded, Bach forgotten. 99% of the 50s-60s-70s 'oldies' are gone from the radio. Radiohead's 28-year-old 'Creep' (foreshadowed by famous 60s Roy Orbison and Left Banke choons) now sounds ... like satire. Today everything on the radio sounds like rap or pap to me.

woopwoop 6y ago

To counter the extraordinary volume of bland negativity in this comment thread, I'll add my own bland positivity. I came across the 2003 version of this list in my early teens, and listened to a bunch of the albums here (or at least some of them), and it strongly influenced the development of my musical taste in a way which I think back on very fondly.

wodenokoto 6y ago

If you scroll to the bottom you get mostly new-to-2020. Interestingly Alanis Morisettes mega hit album Jagged Little Pill didn’t make it until this year. It seems like the oldest new entry is Nina Simones With an 1966 album. Another one that caught my eye was how Radiohead’s “Kid A” has been on all 3 lists and consistently climbing from the bottom, to the middle to the top 100. I remember when it came out I had actual discussions with classmates as to whether it was music or not (!) and it caused a huge fuzz in all the music magazines. Listening to it today ... I mean it’s not a bad album, but nothing about it sounds weird or out there. I guess that means they truly pushed popular music.

neverartful 6y ago

It seems like very odd rankings. Of course, there are a great many bands in the list that I've never even heard of. That doesn't invalidate the list. I just point it out to say that my tastes aren't wide enough to recognize everyone. It's even very odd for all the bands and albums that I know very well. I would have expected to see Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon much further up the list. I was completely shocked to find that Supertramp's Crime of the Century album is not even on the list! On the other hand, there are very many mediocre albums that made it. Of the Led Zeppelin albums on the list, I was shocked to see the first album (self-titled) ranked higher than II and Physical Graffiti. That's downright bizarre to me. Rush's Moving Pictures at #379 on latest list and not even present on earlier lists. Gasp! Other bands that I would have expected to see somewhere in the list: Journey, Styx, Bad Company, Foreigner, Boston.

sjs382 6y ago

Some perspective: a cherry-picked Quora thread [0] says that there have been 9,610,130+ english-language albums released. It's really splitting hairs to take issue with the order of the top 0.0052% of albums. [0] https://www.quora.com/How-many-music-albums-are-available-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/How-many-music-albums-are-available-in...

ramon68 6y ago

How can Rolling Stone explain the fact that the perennial #1 Sgt. Pepper is out of the Top 20? They obviously have an agenda over there!