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

Feel free to clog this thread with fantasy ballots.

OK – I'm gonna do it (timing it after hours, for minimal annoyance).

These are in no particular order; I just listed til I hit 50, then made a few swaps. It's purely personal faves – songs that are close to my heart, for whatever reason – and not going for objective/historical significance. (The list probably has some "recency bias" – 2 songs from this year! – but I think that's OK)

I Missed the Point - Neko Case
Push It - Salt-N-Pepa
Match Made Up in Heaven - Jill
You Dropped a Bomb on Me - Gap Band
Tumbling Dice - Rolling Stones
Start Me Up - Rolling Stones
Loretta's Scars - Pavement
Found a Job - Talking Heads
Man, I Feel Like a Woman - Shania Twain
Give Him a Great Big Kiss - Shangri-Las
Out in the Streets - Shangri-Las
When U Were Mine - Prince
She Makes Me Shake Like a Soul Machine - Unrest
Shivers - Boys Next Door
Mamma Mia - ABBA
The Drum - Slapp Happy + all covers (Bongwater, Impossibles, Love and Hates)
Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man - Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty
Break Free - Ariana Grande ft. Zedd
NASA - Ariana Grande
She's Your Lover Now - Bob Dylan
Plekhanov - Red Crayola w/Art & Language
A Portrait of V.I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock, Part 1 - Red Crayola w/Art & Language
The United States vs. One 1974 Cadillac El Dorado Sedan - Royal Trux
Green Limousine - Howling Hex
Into the Groove - Madonna
Is It True - Brenda Lee
Look in My Diary - Reparata and the Delrons
Trash - New York Dolls
Tossin' and Turnin' - Bobby Lewis
Father Figure - George Michael
Don't Change - INXS
The Great Pretender - Platters
Nanou2 - Aphex Twin
Good 4 U - Olivia Rodrigo
Watch - Billie Eilish
Shine a Light - Wolf Parade
Breakin' Down the Walls of Heartache - The Bandwagon
When It All Comes Down - Miaow
L.A. Mist - The Sharp Ease
Part of Your World - Jodi Benson (Little Mermaid soundtrack)
What Goes On - Velvet Underground
Rare - Selena Gomez
Garden - The Fall
Ten Years Gone - Led Zeppelin
Band of Gold - Freda Payne
Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
These Are Days - 10,000 Maniacs
Chris Michaels - Fiery Furnaces
Centerfold - J. Geils Band
Law Man - Jefferson Airplane

(oh, it's just one from this year... OK, I feel better, lol)

Here’s a top 10 ballot I whipped up with a few days ago

Al Green - Love and Happiness
Beach Boys - God Only Knows
Donna Summer - I Feel Love
Glenn Campbell - Wichita Lineman
Stevie Wonder - Superstition
Fela Kuti - Zombie
Nina Simone - Sinnerman
Kate Bush - Cloudbusting
Deee-Lite - Groove is in the Heart
Talk Talk - New Grass

I've got 40 or so and am just deciding what 10 will round it out.

That’s a pretty good top 10

i did a top 50 a couple years ago, probably would swap a few out and i never ordered it, but i wouldn't change that much: 50 of My Favorite Songs - choose one

Yeah love that list, I see at least 5 songs which I’d probably consider top 10 of their respective decade.

i honestly think i would be hard pressed to do an unnumbered top 500 so i am cool with whatever anybody wants to do with anything forever

I'll give it a shot:

Judee Sill - The Kiss
Sly and the Family Stone - Family Affair
Steely Dan - King of the World
Willie Nelson - One Day at a Time
Ernie (from Sesame Street) - I Don't Want to Live on the Moon
Laura Nyro - Up On the Roof
The Incredible String Band - Maya
Arthur Russell - That's Us/Wild Combination
Tracy Chapman - Fast Car
Primitive Radio Gods - Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand
Grateful Dead - Dark Star
Sheryl Crow - If It Makes You Happy
OMD - Souvenir
Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns
Milton Nascimento - Ponta De Areia
Seal - Kiss From a Rose
The Smiths - Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
Dolly Parton - Down From Dover
Belle and Sebastian - The Model
Tommy James & The Shondells - Crystal Blue Persuasion
Jimmy Webb - Met Her on a Plane
Cocteau Twins - Lorelei
Broadcast - Corporeal
Yo La Tengo - Let's Save Tony Orlando's House
Prefab Sprout - The Sound of Crying
Sandy Denny - No End
Bob Marley & The Wailers - No Woman, No Cry
The Beatles - Dear Prudence
The Temptations - My Girl
OMC - How Bizarre
Prince - Adore
Moondog - Do Your Thing
Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight
Gal Costa - Baby
Bruce Springsteen - Tougher Than the Rest
Joanna Newsom - Esme
Hatfield & the North - Son Of 'There's No Place Like Homerton'
Scott Walker - Joe
Gong - Love Is How Y Make It
Van Morrison - Snow In San Anselmo
The Cosmic Rays w/Sun Ra - Dreaming
The Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers
Al Green - Funny How Time Slips Away
Rufus Wainwright - Greek Song
Carly Rae Jepsen - Warm Blood
Yes - Starship Trooper
Randy Newman - Living Without You
Kraftwerk - Computer Love
Hüsker Dü - Flexible Flyer
Björk - Hyperballad

(no particular order)

Grateful Dead - Dark Star

Which version??

Ideally all of them, but if I have to pick one it's 8/1/73

gut says Once in a Lifetime

Carly Rae Jepsen - Warm Blood

Once In a Lifetime is definitely one of the greatest songs of all time

had to go with Strawberry Fields

Scott Woods has started posting Top 50s on rockcritics.com as kind of a parallel poll for outcasts, has-beens, and never-weres like me (he's not tabulating votes, though). My list is up, followed by Scott's, and there'll be more in the coming weeks. (Two I know: Frank Kogan and Kevin J. Bozelka...also Scott's 20-year-old nephew, Ethan.)

My own list is definitely contrived/self-conscious/whatever, in that I intentionally tried to stay clear of famous hits as much as possible. (A handful snuck in.) I've just reached a point where I get tired of seeing that stuff reshuffled endlessly.

https://rockcritics.com/

"Strawberry Fields Forever." My favorite song of all time.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Looking for songs that I honestly deeply loved and that weren’t completely destroyed by hypercanonicity and media synergies, it ended up coming down to “Once in a Lifetime” vs “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”….

Was tempted by Waterloo Sunset but I went for Heroes.

wasn't gonna vote and thus validate this exercise in tedious canon-forming nonsense but then I saw 15 of you had voted Bohemian Rhapsody as the worst and frankly bismillah NO

I guess I'm going with hypercanonicity and hyperagreement by voting for the representative of the RS album #1 (I was very happy with that choice)
I could have gone for Joni Mitchell, but Case of You isn't my fave from the album
Talking Heads and Notorious B.I.G certainly good options. Wonder if Heroes takes this. Or maybe there will be revenges carried on from the "worst" poll :)

And I hope some people are less cowards than me and vote for Nuthing but a G thang

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Go straight to hell, ILM.

Lol

Go straight to hell, ILM.

― i carry the torch for disco inauthenticity (Eric H.)

how does it feel to be on your owwwwwnnn

5 votes for "dancing on my own" is about as ridiculous as its recent overrating itself

1 vote for what's going on
what's going on

its not as good as 'dancing on my own,' obviously

I'm not the biggest Dylan fan and I voted for something else but "Like a Rolling Stone" is a 100% deserving winner. I never fail to find it compelling any time I hear it.

"Strange Fruit" is a great record and a greater cause, but Holiday has had much better records.

Well, many not MUCH better, but better records, at least performance-wise and musically speaking.

*maybe (not many)

These are so nauseating and I don't understand the impulse to rank music at all, but "I only have eyes for you" is the only song I can think of where a magazine could say "this is the #1 greatest song of all time" and I would think 'yeah, that sounds about right'

Think I'm gonna FP anyone who posts a list from here on out.

I voted for Gimme Shelter. One of the few songs that I keep hearing pretty regularly on the radio or in movies that I somehow never really tire of and still think is great.

I think ranked lists are bound to lead more to argument/derision than assent or constructive debate, though I do like interesting lists (esp if they're not ranked, which I guess is rare).

But how else do we know what the best songs are?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2FGRVRzXZM

Both of Otis Redding’s songs shut out.

The arguments and debates bother me as much as the lists or more, the idea that such a list could potentially be good if only they were more inclusive, or informed, or ranked in a different order, or whatever. No, the idea of a '500 greatest songs' is totally irredeemable, there are no best songs, just stop it imo

What if were just called "500 Cool Songs You Should Totally Hear and Stuff"?

How about: "500 Songs. Have at it."

500 songs. Some we like, some we had to add begrudgingly for clicks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzdEd1dZJjA

At the risk of being flagged, I'll link here to the Top 50 that I contributed to Scott Woods's ongoing roundup on rockcritics.com. Much more canonical than some of the lists that have been collected thus far (including clemenza's), but less canonical than others, I guess:

https://rockcritics.com/2021/10/12/top-50-favourite-songs-jeremy-fairall/

Good list.

8. “No Easy Way Down,” Dusty Springfield (1969)
33. “Move With Me,” Neneh Cherry (1992)

hell yeah