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

[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.