LL Cool J – "The G.O.A.T." (2000)

I'm the G.O.A.T.!

(The Greatest Of All Time!) 

Announcing . . . (drum roll) . . . the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME!

In June, we presented the inaugural class of our first hall of fame: the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME, which was created to honor the best top 40 hits from the golden decade of rock/pop music (1964 to 1973).

Our second hall of fame will feature the best tracks from the best albums of that same golden decade.  To be eligible for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME, a song must have been the best track on a classic album released between 1964 and 1973.  

Songs that were hit singles won’t be eligible for our new hall of fame.  As noted above, we already have a hall of fame for hit singles.  

  

Also, songs that SUCK won’t be eligible.  Each of the songs that make it into our new hall of fame are songs that sound just as good today as they did when they were released – which was roughly a half-century ago. 

While the main criterion for choosing songs for the album tracks hall of fame is the quality of the song, the artists whose songs are in the first class of inductees into that hall of fame are A-listers with impressive bodies of work.  No one-hit (or one-album) wonders need apply!

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The first ten songs I’ve chosen for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME are so good that it’s simply not possible to argue that they don’t belong in that hall of fame.

I’m not saying that my first ten picks are necessarily the best ten “Golden Decade” album tracks ever – although they might be.  But I don’t see how anyone can say these ten songs aren’t in the top 100. 

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You’ll probably notice that there’s no overlap between the artists whose songs were selected for the initial class of the album tracks hall of fame and the artists whose hit singles were among the first inductees into the hit singles hall of fame.

There will be overlap between the artists represented in the two halls of fame sooner or later, but isn’t it better to spread the love around a little – at least at first?

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A lot of you were surprised that there are no Beatles or Rolling Stones songs in the first ten songs inducted into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  (As you may recall, there were actually eleven songs inducted into that hall of fame.)

That was because the very best songs recorded by those groups didn’t crack the top 40.  So they aren’t eligible to be selected for that hall of fame.

But there was no way I could fail to include a Beatles and a Stones song in the initial class of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.  It was easy to decide which Stones album track to honor – but I had a hard time deciding which Beatles album track most deserved to be inducted.

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Enough chitter-chat.  It’s time to announce the first ten inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.  

Here they are, in chronological order of release – oldest to newest:

Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Are You Experienced?” (1967)

Vanilla Fudge – “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1967)

Beatles – “Helter Skelter” (1968)

Led Zeppelin –  “Dazed and Confused” (1969)

It’s a Beautiful Day – “White Bird” (1969)

Stooges – “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (1969)

Janis Joplin – “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)” (1969)

Rolling Stones – “Gimme Shelter” (1969)

Traffic – “Freedom Rider” (1970)

David Bowie – “Suffragette City” (1972)

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According to the Grammarphobia website, “G.O.A.T.” was first used to mean ”greatest of all time” in 1992, when Lonnie Ali (Muhammad Ali’s wife) incorporated Greatest of All Time, Inc. (G.O.A.T. Inc.) to consolidate and license her husband’s intellectual properties for commercial purposes.

But the first person to use “G.O.A.T.” in that sense and to pronounce it as “goat” (rather than as four individual letters) was the rapper, LL Cool J, in 2000.

Click here to listen to “The G.O.A.T.” from the album of the same name (sans “The”), which was LL Cool J’s only album to reach the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: