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

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

Thanks! I made several drafts before finalizing, and those two songs were never not on my list.

"Inverness" is a nice pick if you only have one Scott Miller song.

Questlove's new list-based Music Is History sounds promising (comments & song excerpts):
In his new book, Roots co-founder Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson starts in 1971 and moves year-by-year through his life, writing about memories, turning points and the songs he listened to.
stream/download/transcript (Fresh Air)
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/12/1045247409/questlove-spins-the-soundtrack-of-his-life-in-music-is-history

Bashing "Strange Fruit" because of someone else's alleged motivations in posting it is some of that ol' classick reductive ilx religion---to say the least---

Aaand I took the bait, sry

But by that logic, any artist on here who's ever been subject of a documentary etc. could be exculded; hell whole list could be dismissed because it's pantheon-sucking trend-molesting Rolling Stone