You are now about to witness
The strength of street knowledge!
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine released a list entitled “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” which was based on the votes of selected musicians, critics, and other industry members. The Crystals’ 1963 hit, “Da Doo Ron Ron,” was #114 on that list.
Rolling Stone revised their rankings in 2010, adding 26 new songs and dropping 26 others. “Da Doo Ron Ron” was one of those dropped.
Last week, the magazine issued another revised “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. “Da Doo Run Run” was added back to that list, coming in at #366.
I don’t care whether you love “Da Doo Ron Ron” or hate it. But ranking it as the 113th best song of all time in 2004, deciding it doesn’t belong in the top 500 in 2010, and then restoring it to 366th place in 2021 makes you wonder whether Rolling Stone has a clue.
Yours truly has taken a close look at the updated rankings, and I can tell you that Rolling Stone mos’ definitely does NOT have a clue.
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Before we get into the 2021 rankings, let’s first take a look at the original 2004 “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” (which really should be the “500 Greatest Records of All Time”).
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Here are the top ten records from the 2004 list:
1. Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone”
2. Rolling Stones – “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
3. John Lennon – “Imagine”
4. Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”
5. Aretha Franklin – “Respect”
6. Beach Boys – “Good Vibrations”
7. Chuck Berry – “Johnny B. Goode”
8. Beatles – “Hey Jude”
9. Nirvana – “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
10. Ray Charles – “What I’d Say”
If you ask me, that’s a pretty good top ten, despite the fact that it leaves out the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” which Rolling Stone ranks at . . . (gasp) . . . #122??? (ARE YOU ON DRUGS, ROLLING STONE?)
One thing I respect about that top ten is that every record on it is by a Hall of Fame-quality artist. The body of work of each of these artists is quite impressive – there are no one-hit wonders here.
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The biggest omission from the top ten is probably Led Zeppelin – “Dazed and Confused” would be my pick – but I’ll gladly sacrifice Led Zeppelin in exchange for Rolling Stone’s leaving Elvis Presley, the Grateful Dead, and Bruce Springsteen out of the top ten. (Standing ovation for Rolling Stone!)
Some people won’t agree with the decision to put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the top ten, but it’s the only record on the list that was recorded after 1971. While I love the “golden decade” of pop music (1964-1973) as much as the next guy, you need to throw at least one bone to generation X, or generation Y, or whoever it was who were teenagers in the nineties.
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If you wanted to accomplish that by replacing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with a rap record, I’m all for that – that would not only address the sixties-centric nature of the list but also acknowledge the significance of the hiphop genre (which was much greater than that of grunge).
My replacement for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” would be “Straight Outta Compton,” by N.W.A. (The four members of N.W.A. all became platinum-selling solo artists after the group broke up – it was a supergroup in reverse.)
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The one record that I would eliminate from the 2004 top ten in a New York minute is John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
I have never understood why everyone thinks “Imagine” is so great. The music is terrible, but most people don’t care about the music – it’s the song’s lyrics that make so many people worship “Imagine.”
If you ask me, the lyrics suck. The author of the aptly-titled blog, Essays on Sucking, agrees:
“Imagine” is [Lennon’s] most famous song, a song I hear in grocery stores and laundromats, a song whose legacy has lived on thanks to Yoko Ono, who acts like Gandhi wrote the lyrics and has constructed a monument of bullsh*t and light to it [in Iceland]. . . .
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| Imagine Peace Tower (Reykjavik, Iceland) |
“Imagine” could be the anthem of the ineffectual hippie movement, the people who “broke down barriers” by taking acid, listening to trippy music, and being promiscuous. The song fetishizes thoughts and fantasies and ignores direct action.
The song doesn’t advocate any action, it doesn’t detail any specific problems or solutions. It just sort of drifts along and says, “Hey, wouldn't it be great if things were great?”
Most of Rolling Stone’s readership consists of aging hippies, of course, so we may need to include a record that appeals to them. How about “Bridge Over Troubled Water” instead of “Imagine”? Can all you aging hippies live with “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”? (It’s an infinitely better song than “Imagine.”)
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As noted above, Rolling Stone first revised their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2010, adding about two dozen songs from the oughts to the list. But they didn’t make a single change to the top 25 in 2010.
By contrast, the magazine essentially tore the 2004 list up and started the ranking process over from scratch in 2021. Half of the records in the 2021 top ten – including #2 and #3 – didn’t make the 2004 top ten. “Like a Rolling Stone” fell from #1 to #4, and the Rolling Stones and Beach Boys dropped out of the top ten altogether.
Instead of tearing Rolling Stone a new one over their latest updating in this post, I’m going to wait a few days and let my bile levels build up first. But fear not: the new “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” will feel the wrath of 2 or 3 lines very soon. (You’ll want to make sure the children have left the room before opening and reading that post.)
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“Straight Outta Compton” was the first track on N.W.A.’s debut album of the same name, which was released in 1988. It became the first “gangsta rap” to go platinum despite receiving almost no radio play. (Check out the lyrics to the album’s tracks and you’ll understand why that was.)
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Click here to watch the official music video for “Straight Outta Compton” – which was banned by MTV.
Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:
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