Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, And Harry Styles All Made Rolling Stone’s Updated List Of The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time
It’s 2020. People have been trapped inside for months on end. Tensions are high. People are more divided than ever. Rolling Stone knew this, and yet they STILL went ahead and published their updated list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone, please – you know we have nothing but time and very strong opinions on our hands! Forget the election; nothing is going to drive a wedge between friends, family, colleagues, and Twitter followers than where you stand on how high Prince’s Purple Rain should have been placed on the list (it’s sitting at the #8 spot, by the way). And as if that wasn’t enough to create internet chatter, there’s plenty of new names on the list, like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles, that I’m sure people will have plenty of feelings about.
Rolling Stone says they decided to update their list, originally published in 2003, because it’s been nearly 20 years, and they wanted to reflect the changing tastes of music. For example, the 2003 list was very rock-heavy, and it’s not like that anymore, thanks to hip-hop being the most predominantly popular genre of music over the past decade. Rolling Stone says that the new Greatest Albums list is a celebration of more types of music, like Latin or disco, rather than just classic rock. As for the details of the list, Rolling Stone says that there are 154 albums that are new to the 500 album list, and 86 albums from the 21st Century have been included. There are three times as man rap albums included as there were on the original list from 2003. Also, some albums saw huge jumps. For example, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill ranked at #312 in 2003; in 2020, it’s at #10.
Onto the newcomers, like Taylor Swift. Her 2014 album 1989 came in at #393 on the list. Her 2012 album Red ranked higher, at #99.
Harry Styles’ most recent album Fine Line sits at #491. Beyoncé will sleep well tonight knowing she’s got four albums on the list. Destiny’s Child’s The Writing’s on The Wall is at #291, 2013’s Beyoncé is #81, and 2016’s Lemonade is at #32. Here’s the top 20:
1. What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye
2. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
3. Blue, Joni Mitchell
4. Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder
5. Abbey Road, The Beatles
6. Nevermind, Nirvana
7. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac
8. Purple Rain, Prince and the Revolution
9. Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
10. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Lauryn Hill
11. Revolver, The Beatles
12. Thriller, Michael Jackson
13. I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, Aretha Franklin
14. Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones
15. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy
16. London Calling, The Clash
17. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West
18. Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan
19. To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar
20. Kid A, Radiohead
Britney Spears’ Blackout (a perfect album that I wore out from overplaying in my CD player) sits at the shamefully low position of #441. And Jingle Cats didn’t even make the list! See, I told you this shit was going to cause fights. They can always re-do the list next year. I mean, they’ll have to correct the list to include whatever album the masterpiece “WAP” ends up on. But you can see the entire current list here.
Pics: Wenn.com