The New Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums List • Page 6

Pet Sounds is great, but it's definitely more of a singles record for me than something I reach for to listen to all the way through. In general, Beach Boys have such a specific sound that I have to be in a certain mood to listen to them. They were fantastic at a lot of things, vocal harmonies and production chief among them, but I'm just surprised that's the album that ends up having the best average between these two versions of the list (I don't really count the 2012 version; not much changed significantly).

I do think Pet Sounds benefits from being the go-to "great" Beach Boys album, whereas you're going to have some vote splitting with The Beatles, Dylan, Rolling Stones, or even Bruce.

 

Definitely a good call re vote splitting. And re the singles. I could happily listen to Wouldn't It Be Nice?, God Only Knows and Caroline, No without much of the rest to be honest. Throw in Good Vibrations, and that's an impeccable year for the band. Pet Sounds just doesn't hit me the way most 'classic' albums do unfortunately.
I was interested to see it was a huge influence on Everything In Transit, which is cool. The start of MFEO part one is VERY Beach Boys sounding.

 

Yeah the canon shifts based on whatever is most influential at the time. And that changes both with different eras of new musicians coming through, and as a reaction to the previous generation. I mean, even a few years ago who would have thought Pitchfork would be fawning over Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and Tell All Your Friends?? Yet those albums have proven influential with the latest crop of artists who grew up with that music. Tom Waits released two of his best loved albums in 1992 and 1999, in the latter case literally while Modest Mouse was active and only a few years before The Gaslight Anthem. More than a few bands used his work as inspiration and he became ultra-revered. Lately the main inspiration for modern classic artists/albums includes G-Funk (Kendrick) and Prince (Frank, Weeknd etc). No surprise to see Prince, MJ, Dre and others skyrocketing up revisionist lists.

 

Observations:

- Including Ask Rufus and 3 + 3 is wonderful and makes me happy

- Cutting 52nd Street makes me furious

- Weird that the Carpenters fell off given that the list got much more poptimist and female

- Given the diversification of genres, it's surprising they cut so much blues. Two Muddy Waters, Little Walter, one of the Howlin' Wolf albums, Bluesbreakers, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, etc. The genre is almost absent now.

- Lots of superfluous compilations got the axe, which is a plus.

- The already thin representation of New Orleans takes a hit with one each of The Meters' and Dr. John's albums and Professor Longhair falling off

- Weirdo shit taking a dive with Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa entirely gone

- Multiple albums falling off for Randy Newman, Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, Cheap Trick, The Byrds, U2, The Smiths, The Who, Mott the Hoople, and Grateful Dead but The Stones, Springsteen and Bob Dylan got really walloped, losing four each.

- Not sure why but it really rubs me the wrong way to keep the (admittedly definitive) Birth of Soul compilation for Ray Charles, but cut his actually brilliant The Genius of Ray Charles. Same with cutting Folk Singer and At Newport but keeping Anthology for Muddy Waters

- Not my favorite album to get the axe, but removing The Anthology of American Folk Music is indefensible.

 

A Love Supreme should be in the top 5 (3? 1?) and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady should be in the top 10 yet somehow doesn't make the list. It's cool to see Beyonce and Kendrick so high, but they're not better than Mingus and Nina Simone.

 

This is correct.

Wish they'd picked a different Nina, too, tbh. But it's a good one.

 

What would be interesting would be a companion list of 500 songs. Many artists never really have a classic album, but could have a single song that's more "great" (in the sense of significance) than any whole album by some other artist. You see it on this list when they just use compilations of artists that were around before the album became the standard medium

Stereogum is doing a series of writing about every single Billboard #1 since the chart started in the 50s, and it's always interesting to me to see what was so culturally dominant at the time vs what ends up having longevity. Same with the Grammys.

 

Tom Breihan's work on the Number Ones is unbelievably good. I don't always agree with his takes but it doesn't matter because 95% of each essay is just straight informative. That column is the reason I've been obsessed with Total Eclipse of the Heart for like six weeks and counting haha

 

Anyone with some spare time want to combine the original list with the new one to see how it shakes out?

I did it for the Pitchfork '80s list to see what would happen and think the result is a good example of mixing people's opinions recently and those of a decade (or two) ago:

1 Talking Heads: Remain in Light (393)

2 Sonic Youth: Daydream Nation (392)

3 Prince: Purple Rain (387)

4 Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (385)

5 The Pixies: Doolittle (382)

6 Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique (382)

7 The Smiths: The Queen is Dead (381)

8 Joy Division: Closer (378)

9 Michael Jackson: Thriller (371)

10 NWA: Straight Outta Compton (362)

11 De La Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising (361)

12 Pixies: Surfer Rosa (361)

13 REM: Murmur (356)

14 The Cure: Disintegration (353)

15 New Order: Power, Corruption and Lies (353)

16 Tom Waits: Rain Dogs (350)

17 Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden (342)

18 Black Flag: Damaged (339)

19 Prince: Sing o' the Times (338)

20 Kraftwerk: Computer World (338)

21 Eric B and Rakim: Paid in Full (337)

22 The Jesus and Mary Chain: Psychocandy (337)

23 The Replacements: Let it Be (336)

24 Minutemen: Double Nickels on the Dime (331)

25 Galaxie 500: On Fire (327)

26 U2: The Joshua Tree (327)

27 My Bloody Valentine: Isn't Anything (320)

28 Run D.M.C.: Raising Hell (319)

29 Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska (318)

30 Sonic Youth: Evol (318)

31 Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (315)

32 Dinosaur Jr: You're Living All Over Me (314)

33 The Replacements: Tim (309)

34 The Fall: This Nation's Saving Grae (308)

35 This Heat: Deceit (307)

36 Boogie Down Productions: Criminal Minded (305)

37 Kate Bush: Hounds of Love (304)

38 Husker Du: Zen Arcade (300)

Stopped at 300 "points" because I had to stop somewhere and that seemed like plenty enough haha.

EDIT: If anyone's even remotely interested, the highest-ranked P4k 80s album to miss out on the RS list altogether is Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden.
That album is cited as an influence on the new Young Jesus album, one of the finest to come from this 'scene' in 2020. So definitely still influential, just didn't get the votes for the RS list obviously.

 

Beach Boys were, I think, a more prevalent influence in the 2000s than they are now. Definitely Andrew McMahon. A lot of that late 2000s indie rock/indie pop too, from Fleet Foxes to Animal Collective. I haven't heard as much of their DNA in music over the past few years, which is part of the reason I'm kind of surprised they clung to that number 2 spot.

I feel like if they'd actually redone this list from scratch in the early 2010s instead of just doing a slight tweak, Born to Run would have been in the top 10. From 2006 to about 2013, he was one of the most namedropped influences of any genre.

Stuff like this is why I really wish they would publish everyone's ballots. Without any scientific evidence for this, my assumption is a lot of people went with the "one album per artist" approach with their ballots, which I've found has gotten more common with lists I've read over the years (I saw a lot of people do this for decade lists, for instance). Perhaps people are letting one album from an artist be their "vote" for that artist, rather than including everything they love by a specific act.

Then again, there are a still a ton of Beatles albums on this list!

 

Needs more 2010s pop. Would’ve loved to see Pop 2 sneak onto the list. Emotion and Dangerous Woman also woulda been cool.

 

Wow I still can't believe that Rolling Stone ranked The Hotelier's Goodness as the #1 greatest album of all time!!!!

 

Quick thoughts:
The first Kanye album listed is his 4th best album.
Born to Run is about 20 spots too low.

 

Twisted Fantasy is absolutely not worse than three other Ye albums.

 

I've come around to agreeing that it should be the #1 ranked Ye album on lists like this, but I definitely like 3 of his other albums better

 

MBDTF is definitely my favorite Kanye album. Agreed on Born to Run though!

 

I"ve always found it so interesting how different some opinions are amongst this forum compared to whom I rub shoulders with...not just related to Kanye but in general. MBDTF is almost universally lauded on this forum and amongst any of my buddies its at best his 3rd best album.

 

I would rank his first 3 albums above Twisted fantasy.

 

808s is my favorite, Twisted Fantasy is his best imo. I'd accept Late Registration, College Dropout, and Yeezus as well. Graduation is a bottom tier Kanye album though

 

While my list would be vastly different this is about as encompassing as I thought it would be given the publication. To me, the most noteworthy omission is no Fugazi. Not having at least one of Repeater, 13 Songs or The Argument is surprising to me.

 

For most people I know who liked Ye/hip hop from the beginning (or at least like Graduation), this is true. For my more “serious” music fan friends, and those who might not dig the genre that much, MBDTF is always 1

 

I kinda feel the same way with Lemonade, too. It came out and was buzzy and important, but I don’t think it’s in my top 3 Bey albums.

 

I wonder why. I"m in the camp where I started with College Dropout, loved that and his next two....and then just didn't like MBDTF at all when it came out and still now except maybe a couple songs.

 

Those are fighting words regarding Graduation lol....though I would have it 3rd in my personal rank.

 

I simply don’t think a lot of casual music fans give a shit that Ye sampled prog/expanded on the sound/all the other stuff that goes along with it, haha. It’s pretty bloated and a lot of songs go on for a while and it’s not as digestible as his earlier stuff. A lot of casual fans I know fuck with the singles but don’t speak much about the deeper/longer cuts