50 Best Albums of All Time According to Rolling Stone's BRAND NEW, 100% Revamped Top 500

i'd honestly kinda love to see piper at the gates of dawn in the top 5

yea, i dont think that 'kind of blue' is the 'legend' of jazz. it's not too polished or shiny; it was a landmark record with a singular sound that at once epitomizes jazz essence and stands apart from it. It makes sense it has a more immediate appeal to people who don't listen to jazz, but it's very much ... jazz, undiluted. jazzbo's argument feels like knowledge flexing or something

its why im frustrated by the low placing for 2pac. .. its reflective of the values of critics and which strands & legacies & traditions of rap they're willing to take seriously and which ones they downplay or minimize ... kind of blue is an album w that kind of representative power imo while also being extremely listenable

Maybe it's just too pretty for some jazz heads idk. Or doesn't fulfill the "challenging" requirement that some ppl love jazz for.

My sense is once Parker and bebop arrived, jazz heads were skeptical of anything that the public at large liked and was pleasant to listen to

I said well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles
Way that Bobby Brown is just ampin like Michael

LOL, reminds me of something a bartender at the Green Mill once said about listeners who treated jazz like "egghead" music: "there's nothing wrong with TUNES."

Shirley Collins to thread!

I have no problem with Kind of Blue topping any jazz list. So what if it certain listeners gulp it down like easy-listening? The Searchers and Vertigo were potboilers to some. They can all function on that level, but that's more on the audience's failure to see or listen beyond the surface.

yea its a pretty ~profound~ listen frankly idk why rock music is allowed to be profound and accessible but jazz has to be a walled garden to be good

It doesn't. No one said this. Jazzbo only said it wasn't his number one and you lot are accusing him of gatekeeper snobbery obscurantism.

he said a lot of other things that pretty much implied it?

i just found it annoying that he basically went "pshaw, what do YOU at Rolling Stone know about JAZZ anyway" where in the article it's pretty clear it wasn't just Rolling Stone staff voting, that it was 300 actual voters including journalists (including our own Alfred and Whiney), artists (some of whom are actually jazz musicians), songwriters and producers. a wide variety of people who may be jazz aficionados or people like me who admittedly only have a few jazz albums. so yeah, chances are when you do something like that, you're going to get more obvious choices.

I get it, being a metalhead I get tired of people going "oh u like metal? oh isn't Mastodon the best?" as if they're the only metal band alive, but there's a diff between Kind of Blue winning a "top 500 jazz albums of all time" poll and a generalized albums poll. Like, I'm not going into one of these 500 greatest albums polls expecting the highest charting metal album to be something by Cryptopsy.

like I don't get the gripe, he's mad that....300 independent voters chose wrong?

i think there were much more egregious 'voting mistakes' made by the collective, in that case.

i'd understand it more if this was a jazz only poll, or a wide-ranging "greatest album" poll with a smaller voter base, or if it was internal-only, like only few Rolling Stone music editors. a smaller base where one or two people's votes could have a much larger effect on results, and yeah, the results would probably be more varied.

300 people that come from all different scenes, even if you had 50 hardcore jazzheads, you'd have to consider many of them would make room in the 50 for non-jazz albums they like. so the top jazz albums they vote for, are they all going to be the same? probably not, people deeper into the scene often have their own personal preferences, so there'd be massive vote splitting and the jazz album that rises to the top is the one that not only appears on all of their Top 50 ballots (or most of them), but the one that also manages to appear on the non-jazzhead ballots.

it's the same reason Mastodon always gets undeservedly high marks in generalized aggregate music polls, because they're one of the newer metal bands non-metalheads know and like.

there's a diff between Kind of Blue winning a "top 500 jazz albums of all time" poll

fwiw, it does tend to top of these kind of polls as well...

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/erikfish/best_jazz_albums_of_all_time___22_lists_combined/

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/best-jazz-albums

https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/the-100-jazz-albums-that-shook-the-world

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/50-greatest-jazz-albums-ever/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Jazz/comments/8r3zcb/the_rjazz_top_100_album_results/

https://www.albumoftheyear.org/genre/35-jazz/all/pitchfork/

(^Not all of these are “polls,” and none go to 500; but I’m actually surprised at how it tops so many of these lists I found in a quick search. There were even more examples—but some of the sites seemed too janky to cite.)

Yeah, it's always been celebrated to that degree within the jazz community, even with Miles saying it didn't turn out the way he had hoped, which influenced his ability to appreciate it on the same level as an outsider. The Penguin Guide (hardly a conservative look at jazz) bestowed upon it a coveted "crown" without any hesitation.

I absolutely love Miles, and I also love Orson Welles, and the status of Kind of Blue is similar to Citizen Kane: to some degree (much more with Welles), it can overshadow their other work unfairly. They both made plenty of other masterpieces, especially Miles who had a far more prolific career thanks to his commercial success. But that shouldn't warrant any unnecessary backlash, because those works are indeed pillars of their respective art forms. They just have plenty of good company made by the same artists.

KOB was 9th in ILM jazz poll, right behind Sextant.

ATLiens wuz robbed.

If some brave ILXor wants to tackle it, I think the best compromise between stodgy rockist RS and reactionary poptimist RS would be combining the 2012 and 2020 polls.

--500-to-1 point system, then combining placements of anything that's on both lists
--New entries to the 2020 list would be given 1.5 weight to their points.
--Deleted entries from the 2012 list that feature music made before 1966 would be given 1.5 weight to their total.

That's how I break it down to an extent

Neanderthal, do u like Mastodon?

I'm going to work on a point system that manages to take the Shoes and Wussy from zero points to getting them on there.

KOB was 9th in ILM jazz poll, right behind Sextant.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Saturday, September 26, 2020 12:44 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

don't get me started on the ilm jazz poll

Rerun time?

What was wrong with it?

Didn’t swing iirc

If that's the charge, then a cursory look at the top 20 disproves it straight away.

It was an accurate reflection of ILM tastes and I found or rediscovered a few albums which is all I could ask for. That said, I feel like it overlooked "straight jazz" and privileged electro and spiritual hat jazz in its stead.

Yeah, I don't think that's a particularly swinging top 20 but it's also a great list.

I'm as disappointed as everyone else that Pat Metheny was ignored.

It's not the swingiest, sure, but it does swing in its own way. Then again, I probably have a peculiar understanding of swing.

No Ellington in the top 50 is the most headshake.gif part

Yeah, that's inexcusable.

All my favourite Ellington is pre-45, I think.

Most of mine is but Money Jungle and Far East Suite (which tbf were in the top 100) to name just 2 are after '45.

are not is

A brimful of Ellington

Were live albums eligible?

Was there anything post-75? I think I find that most glaring for a fusion-heavy list.

I'd be up for a dedicated fusion poll.

Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band (or an equivalent collection) should definitely make any list of the best/most important popular music. Easily in the top ten for jazz.

James Blood Ulmer's Odyssey and John Zorn's The Big Gundown would definitely make my post-1975 list for jazz.

I love ‘40s Ellington — which is basically saying, I love music — but Far East Suite (1967), Latin American Suite (1968-70), New Orleans Suite (1971), and Afro-Eurasian Eclipse (1971) are among my favorite of his recordings, and (apart from Far East Suite) seem largely slept-on.

I think you're all upset Kind of of Blue didn't win. iirc brad didn't even vote nor did deej.

Tuomas was supposed to run a pre 1945 jazz tracks poll but it never happened. Maybe someone should start that poll?

I'm upset that Sgt Pepper didn't win.xp

Luckily I banned New Order from being nominated.

where did the Stooges records come in? what about sly stone? everybody must vote for the Ramones

It's not the swingiest, sure, but it does swing in its own way. Then again, I probably have a peculiar understanding of swing.

I mean, if I tell people at a jam I want to swing something, they're not going to take it as a cue to play in the style of Sextant or In a Silent Way. Doesn't take anything away from their being wonderful albums!