2023-08-01 14:21:36
Pop „Rolling Stone“-Ranking
The 500 best albums – and the deepest crashes
Status: 2:25 p.m. | Reading time: 4 minutes
And the winner is…
Quelle: Redferns
19 years ago, “Rolling Stone” determined the 500 best albums of all time. Now the music magazine has updated the voting. With surprising results – and a heated public debate.
Bob Dylan is dethroned. His album “Blonde on Blonde” was number one in German “Rolling Stone” for 19 years. In 2004, the magazine had a jury of music experts choose the 500 best albums of all time. The list has been recalculated for the current issue. In the August issue, Bob Dylan is only eighth. Best Album Forever is now The Velvet Underground & Nico, up three places.
According to legend, Dylan paid tribute to his blonde muse Edie Sedgwick from the artistic circle of Andy Warhol with the album title. The Velvet Underground also had Warhol to thank for their album: they were his factory’s house band, he upgraded their album cover with a banana he had designed himself and put them in touch with Nico. Nico came from Cologne and became world famous as a blonde singer beyond The Velvet Underground.
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Nineteen years ago, the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time were for older record collectors who read Rolling Stone and happily compared its rankings to their own tastes and their record shelves. The top ten also belonged to Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana and Bruce Springsteen. Except for Nico on The Velvet Underground (and Maureen Tucker, who was on drums), the white men kept to themselves back then.
The renovated List for the year 2023 knocks the Rolling Stones out of the canonical top ten, finding themselves at No. 51. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” came in second. Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” with her two female singers climbs from number 88 to number five. Patti Smith’s “Horses” and Amy Winheouse’s “Back to Black” are ninth and tenth respectively.
“The Stone Age seems to be over”
Even if people had been tweeting 19 years ago, nobody would have been as excited about such a list as they are today about the 500 best albums of all time from the point of view of 135 electors who were allowed to nominate their 50 favorite albums.
Is the new top 500 a product of wokeness because it is much more feminine and younger than in 2004? Is “Black Music Epic Upgraded” as one tweeted? And is the “Rolling Stone”, the magazine of the rock music-socialized boomers, still the “Rolling Stone” when he writes about “artists” and sentences like: “Debates about self-empowerment, diversity and cultural appropriation flow into the evaluation and contextualization of pop music, as well as changing listening habits and artistic developments.”
Or: “The view of music history has also changed due to the themes and identity-political discourses of our time.” Or: “The Stone Age seems to be over.” Even the Rolling Stones are no longer treated like pillar saints in “Rolling Stone”.
The cover of the August issue of Rolling Stone
Source: Mediahouse Berlin GmbH
To quote Bob Dylan, times are changing. Eternity is not even eternity. It’s quite possible or even very likely that, as a juror on a list of the best albums in August 2023, you will choose different albums than in 2004 – and not just because “Back to Black” by Amy Winehouse hadn’t even been released at the time. The big debutants of 2004 now sit at #35 (Kanye West) and #143 (Arcade Fire). However, the fact that the oldest of the albums in the list is not by Elvis but by Billie Holiday and that the most recent albums are all of a female nature, they come from Billie Eilish, Little Simz, Fiona Apple and Rosalía, is partly due to the fact that young female artists conquered music markets – and, on the other hand, in the spirit of the times. Music has always been powerless against the zeitgeist. Even if it was treated as classic and traditional in “Rolling Stone” and the magazine was therefore aimed at somewhat older, in doubt more male, musically more conservative readers.
But you don’t have to worry about that supposedly omnipotent one “Woke and Dopeness”, which the “Rolling Stone” has long been accused of in its motherland America, feel threatened and their taste in music humiliated. That’s why the music is different today than it was 19 years ago. Simply because there is more music, anywhere, anytime, anywhere and anytime you want to listen to it.
Annotation: The author is one of 135 jurors for the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time selection in the August issue of German “Rolling Stone”.
If you like, you can order the current issue of “Rolling Stone” here.
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