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

&quot;What&#x27;s Going On&quot; in first place? Yeah, I don&#x27;t see it. It&#x27;s good, but it wasn&#x27;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&#x27;s Blue?<p>This is more about pandering to 2020 ideologies and taste than about a somewhat objective album ranking.

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.<p>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?

RS&#x27;s Ranking always reminds me of: Best Sellers Sell the Best Because They’re Best Sellers <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;19&#x2F;books&#x2F;penguin-random-house-madeline-mcintosh.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;19&#x2F;books&#x2F;penguin-random-hous...</a>

This book is great coffee table material, but I think it&#x27;s a bit silly to treat <i>Rolling Stone</i> as any sort of meaningful cultural arbiter in modern times, where:<p>-niche music blogs exist,<p>-Spotify&#x27;s related albums exists,<p>-Allmusic and Band Camp exist, and (most importantly)<p>-near-instant communication with your friends, peers, and social groups (who are still my biggest source of new music) exist<p>There are just so many sources of recommendations that are better suited to aligning to an individual&#x27;s musical tastes. It really throws into sharp relief what a dinosaur RS is.

All non-white artists who have released an original recording (not a compilation) after Jane Jackson&#x27;s Rhythm Nation in 1989 have been re-rated up since the 2012 survey. Without exception. Anything originally released in the 1950&#x27;s rated down.

Really funny&#x2F;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&#x27;s MBDTF is the 17th greatest album of all-time. Meanwhile, Sketches of Spain no longer even ranks in the top 500.

Moby Grape kicked off the list? Say it ain&#x27;t so!<p>Seriously, though, what we&#x27;re seeing is blues, R&amp;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&#x27;s Going On, etc.)<p>It&#x27;s interesting how the tide has really turned for some artists like U2.

How can Muddy Waters Anthology drop 445 places in 8 years?<p>I&#x27;ve had a soft spot for the Miseducation since 1999, but pumping it 300 places to make it into the top 10, I don&#x27;t know about that.<p>I don&#x27;t understand the swings with Funkadelic&#x27;s nor what they&#x27;ve done with Forever changes.<p>This list is what it is, but come on.<p>(So Nevermind is the new RSS&#x27; London calling, it&#x27;s official, we&#x27;re old now.)

Wow, that drop for the Beetles is really surprising. I didn&#x27;t care much for the Beatles in my teen years in the 90&#x27;s, but I found a great appreciation for them in my 20&#x27;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?<p>I&#x27;m also kind of wondering how much of this is meme driven. What&#x27;s Going On is amazing, but it&#x27;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&#x27;s ranking here? Should it?<p>Edit: While a few Beatles albums on this list saw large drops, there are also a couple others that gained ground. Interesting.

It is interesting to see &#x27;OK Computer&#x27; jump so much. Did streaming benefit Radiohead more or just that the dystopian theme really goes well the current times.<p>Also, amusing to see &#x27;The Piper at the Gate of Dawn&#x27; increase in rank while the other Pink Floyd albums have gone down.

Really liked this list, very fun. Some things that stood out for me:<p>- So many Beatles entries near the top<p>- Surprised by how many of these artists I know very well (90%)<p>- Lots of really great hip hop making big leaps forward<p>- It’s noticeable how much all of these artists&#x2F;albums are a cut above the rest of the industry<p>- 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

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&#x27;s &quot;Number of the Beast&quot; will be. They weren&#x27;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

One takeaway is that winning a nobel price in literature is bad for your Rolling Stone&#x27;s 500 Greatest Albums rating.

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.<p>Most overrated band of all time.<p>I personally like Al Green &quot;I&#x27;m still in love with you&quot; (306) and Curtis Mayfield&#x27;s Superfly (76) more than Marvin Gays&#x27; What&#x27;s going on (1)

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.

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&#x27;m gone before you&#x27;ve finished the sentence), these rankings just seem bizarre.<p>I won&#x27;t bother making a list but I&#x27;m quite surprised Queen&#x27;s News of the world isn&#x27;t present - 2 songs, played at almost any sporting event for the last 40 years.

To counter the extraordinary volume of bland negativity in this comment thread, I&#x27;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.

It&#x27;s interesting to compare them to our crowd-sourced top 100 bands of all time on Gnoosic:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnoosic.com&#x2F;top" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnoosic.com&#x2F;top</a><p>Most striking differences I can spot:<p>The Beach Boys: While they are #2 on the Rolling Stone&#x27;s list, they are not on our list at all.<p>Linkin Park: While at #11 on Gnoosic, they are not on the Rolling Stone&#x27;s list.

Interesting to see on the &#x27;Sorted by Net Shift&#x27; tab that a lot of the big risers are hip-hop. Sorted by the rankings in earlier years, these were nowhere to be found.

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.

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.<p>When it comes to music,&#x27;greatest&#x27; 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 &#x27;oldies&#x27; are gone from the radio. Radiohead&#x27;s 28-year-old &#x27;Creep&#x27; (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.

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.

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

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

It seems like very odd rankings. Of course, there are a great many bands in the list that I&#x27;ve never even heard of. That doesn&#x27;t invalidate the list. I just point it out to say that my tastes aren&#x27;t wide enough to recognize everyone.<p>It&#x27;s even very odd for all the bands and albums that I know very well. I would have expected to see Pink Floyd&#x27;s Dark Side of the Moon much further up the list. I was completely shocked to find that Supertramp&#x27;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.<p>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&#x27;s downright bizarre to me. Rush&#x27;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.

Comparing it to lists of best-selling albums [0], the major artist that isn&#x27;t even present in the RS list (vs. ones that are but not by their best-selling album, e.g. Santana&#x27;s <i>Supernatural</i>) is Celine Dion (<i>Falling into You</i>), 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&#x27;s critical list, from Bon Jovi to Linkin Park to Norah Jones to the Backstreet Boys to the Spice Girls.<p>Also, film scores (such as <i>The Titanic</i> OST) are not on RS&#x27;s list.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_best-selling_albums" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_best-selling_albums</a>

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.<p>It seems like the oldest new entry is Nina Simones With an 1966 album.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

I don&#x27;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.<p>on edit: or Beyonce losing 32 points - wow, sorry for her I guess.

Some perspective: a cherry-picked Quora thread [0] says that there have been 9,610,130+ english-language albums released.<p>It&#x27;s <i>really</i> splitting hairs to take issue with the <i>order</i> of the top 0.0052% of albums.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-many-music-albums-are-available-in-the-world" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-many-music-albums-are-available-in...</a>

I always feel it&#x27;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. &quot;luk thung&quot; [0]) and this kind of music would never appear in these Rolling Stone&#x27;s Greatest Albums lists.<p>---<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Luk_thung" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Luk_thung</a>

I&#x27;m glad to see albums like The Cure&#x27;s Disintegration move up, but the Beatles Sgt Peppers clearly needs to be 1 or 2. It&#x27;s albums that go beyond just being random songs and provide such an influence that deserve to be near the top.

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&#x27;s Joshua Tree dropped quite a bit but it was an absolute monster when it came out.

TL;DR<p>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.

Even within the subcategory of hip hop&#x2F;rap it seems there&#x27;s some bias towards more current artists vs artists from the 90s &amp; 00s.<p>Is that just because there is a natural bias towards more contemporary artists?

Hmm... I honestly cannot perceive this as the &quot;absolute&quot; 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&#x2F;record crude statistical variability among certain artists, yet not a consensus of the greatest albums of &quot;all time&quot;.

This is a top 500 list of apples and oranges as far as I&#x27;m concerned. Music is too diverse and what is a great rock album is a terrible hip hop album.

Everyone is surprised about the payola in these lists?

Anybody know why John Prine&#x27;s eponymous album from 1971 have such a huge jump? Just listened to it. Not bad to me but nothing jumped out.

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

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

A lot of Boomer garbage falling off the list, which is good, but this list is obviously cursed if Superunknown isn&#x27;t even in the top 500.<p>The math seems a little dodgy. I can&#x27;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.