readymade music controversy!

[psocoptera]

Rolling Stone has made a list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, by which they mean "popular published album tracks since 1948" (which is of course their expertise; I just think it's funny to label the list "of all time" and not be considering things like Greensleeves and Yankee Doodle). It's fun - a delightfully rich source of things to disagree with. (Six U2 songs and 2 REM? 2 from the Doors and about a dozen from the Rolling Stones?) Sortable by rank, year, or artist to quickly determine those shocking omissions. It took me a bit of poking to realize "greatest" meant something like "most iconic" - well-known and somehow significant or representative. My biggest objections so far: no Dire Straits? "Sultans of Swing" seems like a must-have on a Greatest Songs list even by the above criteria. And no "American Pie"??

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Definitely sounds like a way to "encourage" discussion. Twenty-two Beatles songs? I couldn't get excited about this list.

The local folk station (WUMB) did a "100 top folk artists" weekend recently which was more interesting, since it didn't focus on songs, but on career artists. I can look up the link if you're interested.

[glassonion]

I dunno. 22 songs implies that the Beatles are personally responsible for 1/25th of the net awesomeness of popular music. I'd buy that.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

Also, I read somewhere that the only reason they didn't have an entry in the top five was that they had so many great songs that the voting was split.

Hmmm....

[(Anonymous)]

REM only has two songs, but they span eight years (1983 and 1991). That's incredibly long for this poll; there are very few people or bands who have songs on the list that far apart. In fact, I'll list them: U2 covers 83-91 as well, Bob Marley 73-80, Ray Charles 54-62, the Beatles 63-70 (no ex-Beatles songs past 1970 either), Bruce Springsteen 75-84, Jackie Wilson 58-67; Muddy Waters 48-57; B-52s 79-89 (Ti-i-i-in Roof!), Bob Dylan 63-75, the Rolling Stones fourteen years from 65-78 (and nothing since), James Brown an astonishing 15 years from 56-70, Elvis Presley sixteen from 54-69, Neil Young eighteen from 72-89 (and if you count CSNY it's 69-89). If you're counting cross-band, Eric Clapton has three with Cream in 1968 and another solo in 1992, for twenty-five years between songs.

That's it. Pretty good company for REM, if you ask me.

It's interesting to look at how many singer/songwriters have had long, succesful careers, but have as their presence on the list a small handful of songs written in three or four years. Elton John (&Bernie Taupin) for instance has five songs on the list, which is pretty impressive, but they are all in the first five years of his recording career; nothing in the last thirty years makes the cut. Aretha Franklin (as a singer) has four songs—all recorded in 1967. The Beach Boys have seven on the list, recorded in four years from 1963-1966, and since then have become a joke.

When baseball fans talk Hall of Fame, we often talk about peak value versus career value. High-peak players often have short careers or long spells of average performance, sometimes hanging around for a few seasons where they are liabilities. Players who get their value from career numbers sometimes miss the spotlight, not having dominant seasons, but continue to produce, year after year. The recording industry (and Rolling Stone magazine) love high-peak players, since it always gives them something new to talk about. That extends to pretending players were peak players even when they weren't; Elvis Costello (to pick a name at random) has been more influential with his stuff from the last 25 years than with that early stuff that appears on the list.

And what's up with no Talking Heads? Two Smiths songs, but no "Psycho Killer"?
Thanks,
-Vardibidian (http://www.kith.org/vardibidian/journal/).