Rolling Stone's 500 Best Albums
 

Although Rolling Stone has gotten very crappy in the past years, they still manage to put out some interesting lists. This time they've compiled a list of the 500 best albums of all time. The top ten was:

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band-The Beatles
2. Pet Sounds-The Beach Boys
3. Revolver-The Beatles
4. Highway 61 Revisited-Bob Dylan
5. Rubber Soul-The Beatles
6. What's Going On-Marvin Gaye
7. Exile on Main Street-The Rolling Stones
8. London Calling-The Clash
9. Blonde on Blonde-Bob Dylan
10. The Beatles ("The White Album")-The Beatles


The rest of the list is here: http://www.rollingstone.com/features...n.asp?pid=2125

Bah, Abbey Road is way better than any other Beatles record. If you ask me. ;)

Amen! Man, Abbey Road is incredible. I can never get tired of it, no matter how many times I hear it. Truly amazing work.


Pet Sounds is definitely a good inclusion, as is the White Album. London Calling is not a bad choice. I'm sort of surprised that neither Zeppelin's IV or Physical Graffiti made the Top 10, nor Radiohead's OK Computer. Usually you can find at least one of those near the top. I'm sure they're somewhere in the top 500, though. I'll look through it later.

That's kind of ironic...since John Lennon described it as "a couple of unfinished songs stuck together".

It is my favourite of the bunch too.But only for its medley.

EDIT: Led Zeppelin IV is at 66.That's a shame.No Pink Floyd Album is in top 20.That's a shame too.

Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall are too low in my opinion. But then who am I to talk?...........

Don't forget Nick Drake's Bryter Layter. It's 250-something! Outrageous! It belongs somewhere in the top 20, I'd say. Still, it's good to see that they find it his best work. It's incredibly awesome.

Remixor and Pappapishu! You read my mind! :D

How can they place 4 Beatles albums in the top 10 and NOT include Abbey Road? To me that album is easily better than Sgt. Pepper, but I actually happen to like its A-side best - and not its B-side. I mean WHAT a collection of songs... Come Together, Something, Oh! Darling and I Want You... Four of their strongest songs ever IMHO, on the one and same LP side... Unbelievable!!!

The inclusion of White Album is cool though. That one is my second favourite. :) Sgt. Pepper probably comes in third for me.

Abbey Road and Sgt. Pepper always competes about which is my favourite - it depends on which one I last listened to.

Ehm... Is it a bad thing If I haven't heard any of the albums from that list?

YES. I'd say it's bad if you haven't heard of at least 60% of the albums on that list. You're in critical condition. Go become educated in the ways of rock.

My conclusion from that list is: there hasn't been any good music since 1980. :confused:

Well, one thing is that it's a lot easier to figure out what the best albums of all time are when time has sorted things out. There will no doubt be several albums from more modern bands present on lists like these eventually.

That list is made by pure idiots. :rolleyes: It is not even close to be right in any aspect IMO.

They have Nirvana at number 17? Oh please.

Yeah, it's hard to agree with that list at all, even though the top 10 ones are undoubtedly good. I know my list would have looked a lot different... I really don't understand how anyone just can call a list "The 500 best albums of all time"... That is just too vague. 500 best albums of what? Decided by who? Albums for whom? Obviously there are a lot of classic rock records on the list. Then they should at least indicate that instead of just calling it "best 500 albums". Oh wait, Rolling Stone is probably a rock magazine. I've never read it. :D

There are many reasons. Most of those albums are widely considered among the best of all time because of innovativeness and influence on the genre, for example. And yes, Rolling Stone is a rock magazine (of course) so it stands to reason that their list of best albums will be a rock one.



And regarding Abbey Road: Well, as ludicrous as this may sound, I'm going to have to disagree with John Lennon on this one ;) The first half of that album is a brilliant showcase of songwriting, then it ends with I Want You (She's So Heavy), abruptly cutting off with no ending or fade-out at 7 minutes (or whenever it is) and going into Here Comes the Sun on the other half. That's probably my favorite moment on the album, the crazy awesome acid-rock cacophany of I Want You (the album's noisiest song, at that part anyway) followed by a bit of silence, then juxtaposed against the clean pure acoustic guitar of Here Comes the Sun. Every time I hear that transition, I smile involuntarily. Great stuff. Then essentially the whole second half of the album is incredible. That block of music is some of their finest work to me, from a total composition sense. There are hardly even divisions of songs, rather there are common themes and motifs that are woven throughout the record effortlessly. Track numbers are essentially meaningless after "You Never Give Me Your Money", and up until the very last song, "Her Majesty" (which is one of the funniest and greatest ways to end an album that I've ever heard). I know I'm not necessarily in the majority on this, but I feel that Abbey Road is sort of the culmination of all the skills the Beatles perfected over the course of their career. They effortlessly shift between different styles over the course of the album, their songwriting skills are at absolute excellence, their harmonies are gorgeous (the harmonies on "Because" are almost staggering, especially when you consider that John, George, and Paul sang them all in the same take without any clipping; they really ARE that in sync with each other), their instrumental work was excellent--essentially, it's just too awesome for me to write concisely about.

Word! I completely agree with you.

Oh man, You Never Give Me Your Money is just incredibly awesome. It's impossible for me to pick favourites from Abbey Road, but this is definitely one. ;)

Amen to that, remixor!

Innovativeness and influence on the genre? Bullshit. ;)

The first two albums I can agree on. But the rest? No way. :D

:eek: I'm not even going to respond, it would take too long. ;)

Bah! Rolling Stones only puts the 500 best albums that the dumb American public would want to be considered the 500 best albums.

And the musicians I do like that were on that list, they chose all the incorrect albums, as if they were just throwing darts at a board. Twits.

Also, I don't see anything too special about the Beatles except that the general consensus is that they are somehow genius. So because of that opinion of mine, this whole post is invalidated.