New Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list
 

Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time was originally published in 2003, with a slight update in 2012. Over the years, it’s been the most widely read — and argued over — feature in the history of the magazine (last year, the RS 500 got over 63 million views on the site). But no list is definitive — tastes change, new genres emerge, the history of music keeps being rewritten. So we decided to remake our greatest albums list from scratch. To do so, we received and tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures (from radio programmers to label heads, like Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman). The electorate includes Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish; rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack, and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail; as well as veteran musicians, such as Adam Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks.

How We Made the List and Who Voted
When we first did the RS 500 in 2003, people were talking about the “death of the album.” The album —and especially the album release — is more relevant than ever. (As in 2003, we allowed votes for compilations and greatest-hits albums, mainly because a well-made compilation can be just as coherent and significant as an LP, because compilations helped shaped music history, and because many hugely important artists recorded their best work before the album had arrived as a prominent format.)

Of course, it could still be argued that embarking on a project like this is increasingly difficult in an era of streaming and fragmented taste. But that was part of what made rebooting the RS 500 fascinating and fun; 86 of the albums on the list are from this century, and 154 are new additions that weren’t on the 2003 or 2012 versions. The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better.



https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...-time-1062063/

Wow Taylor Swift has 2 albums on the list and Tusk didn't even make the cut:shrug: The 1975 "White " album was on the last one.Looks like it got bumped by Harry Style's new one this time.:rolleyes:

Yeah, it stinks the other two have been dropped from the list. But Rumours climbed a great deal to #7...

For once, I’d like to see THEN PLAY ON or even KILN HOUSE make this list. Two incredible records in very different ways.

Mystery to Me, Tusk, Fleetwood Mac, and Bella Donna should definitely be in the top 500

Kiln House in the RS top 500???
Hmmmm...I'd say you're reaching a bit there. :eek:

Sure it should be there ..right between Behind the Mask and Penguin.!

Too 500, not 50.

But personally it’s in my top 25.

KILN HOUSE is a one-of-a-kind record, an honest unaffected record that achieves a great deal. I am not embarrassed by my love of it; nor am I surprised many don’t understand its appeal.

Just listened to it while I was cleaning . It is tied with the uneven Penguin as my least favorite of the "wilderness ' years albums .Part of the reason could be that I prefer Bob Welch over Jeremy Spencer.

Different strokes.

I guess I don’t consider Kiln House to be a wilderness album as much as the end of the first phase. Even after Christine joined, it was still Peter Green’s band. They’d all played with him and were obviously influenced in some way by him.

It wasn’t until Bob, who never really knew Peter, joined that the band became something very different and really starting playing more as a band.

"Understand" ? Right, our subjective opinion of art is because of a comprehension issue. :rolleyes:

I enjoy Kiln House also.

I've listened to it 3 times (since the box set) and I really think it's a charming album. It's hidden brilliance. And like Steve said, "It's a period "." on the Peter era. So to me it's a nice send off. And I do think it's a nice follow up to Then Play On.

It’s called a sensibility. Understand was used in that sense. But whatever. Different Strokes.

I’m just defending my statement because a couple people weighed in and made derisive comments about my standing by KILN HOUSE. If art is subjective, they shouldn’t consider someone calling KILN HOUSE excellent an absurdity. And then grouping it with the band’s lowest points.

Hey. No offence. I personally wouldn't describe your liking of Kiln House as absurd. I can see it has a certain charm about it and it's an important record just because it exists (the band could have folded before that point and history would have turned out very differently). However, any suggestion of it making an all-time top 500 list is a bit of an absurdity really, especially if most of the band's most successful albums fail to make it. For me it's a bit far fetched to suggest music bigwigs, fellow artists, producers and music journalists would rank it above the likes of Tusk, Mirage or the White Album or even critically acclaimed albums such as Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Mystery to Me, Bare Trees or Say You Will. That's not to denigrate your tastes, I just feel it's a reach to ever consider it being close to such a list when the general consensus is it's one of Fleetwood Mac's weakest offerings. I know you're just making the point you have a soft spot for that album. I'm just objectively saying there's not much chance of it ever garnering much love from the types of people who vote for these things. Not meaning to offend.:sorry:

Thanks! Truly. Some of my most beloved Mac moments are ones others think are trash. “Sugar Daddy” and “Oh Daddy,” for instance. I’m protective of KILN HOUSE because I — along with a certain subset of critics and obsessed fans — think it’s magic, charming magic if not bewitching magic.

But again, thanks!

Rumours should be higher but given some of the garbage on this list, I am grateful they had the good sense to have it in the Top Ten! I think Tusk, White Album and Bella Donna should be on here too!

So, without going through the whole list, is Rumours the only Mac album in the 500? If so, thats shocking given the number of multiple albums in there from their contemporaries. Is this a sign of Fleetwood Mac's waning influence and, dare I say it, legacy?

Yes, it is. I remember in the first versions of the list there was the white album at number 183. But I wouldn't say it's a sign of the end of FM legacy at all, since Rumours climbed up 18 positions and got in the top 10, so if anything the band influence has grown.
This new list reflects the waning of the legacy of a certain music; in the last two decades black music have substituted rock. The previous lists were male,white and rock dominated, in fact 4 of the first 10 positions were taken just by the Beatles, only one was taken from a black artist and none of the acts featured women, while on this new list 4 of the top 10 music acts are black and 3 feature women, Rumours included.
In this perspective the lack of earlier FM material doesn't mean that the albums of the pre-Rumours era aren't artistically valid anymore but that they're not seen as relevant and influential on today's music.

I find it annoying that Fleetwood Mac are increasingly only appreciated for Rumours. That's always largely been the case and perpetuated largely by Mick. But in recent years I'd been led to believe FM were a hugely influential band to many young artists. I thought that would mean a wider appreciation of their music beyond the obvious Rumours. After all, Matty Healy was only recently raving about how Tango In The Night was a huge influence on The 1975. If Big Star have 3 albums cited, then I'd have expected a few more from FM.

Beatles: 9
Dylan: 8
Neil Young: 7
Rolling Stones, Kanye: 6
Led Zep, Springsteen, Bowie: 5
Radiohead, Aretha, The Who, Pink Floyd, Prince, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Velvet Underground, Sly & The Family Stone: 4
Beach Boys, Tom Petty, Nirvana, Pavement, Hendrix, Al Green + various others: 3


Fleetwood Mac: 1

Pavement...3!!!!

Rumours is number 42 on the US billboard charts this week 43 years later. Of course this should be climbing. How it is behind Nirvana is a mystery. Surprised Tusk is not on this list.

Read the comments below the list. Everybody is pissy that such-and-such was left off, or placed below so-and-so. That's why they run these lists, to pique. Pique is a response, and they want a response. If you're responding, you're looking at the article in print or online and therefore also glancing at the ads.

I don't care anymore about placement. I just like reading these lists for the writeups on albums of note. I'm a sucker for opinions expressed well. But I'm looking over this list now, reading a lot of the commentary, and not finding a lot to get excited about. Rolling Stone used to Rolling Stone a lot better in the old days. I hate to sound like grandpa shaking his fist at the kids on his lawn, but there is a lot of minimally tolerable crud on the list in the top 100 or so. Still, you can find great recommendations if you keep looking: at no. 448, Otis Redding's "Dictionary of Soul" for example. What an album!

The new album they won't make (this new line-up) is better!! :xoxo::laugh::wavey:

So something positive has came out of 2020!

Buckingham McVie 2 is even better still.

Same here. It’s a kind of journapornography...

Boy, you slapped me back hard. You know I would die if there were a BuckVie2!!! :]

Listen to the wind blow!!! Or crickets.. :)

But when I think of crickets, I think not of silence but of the moments just before they took the stage. When the warm-up music stopped and you heard the chirping. My heart would flutter. Behold, I traded my mourning veil for a Covid mask, but the sorrow lingers.

And all our complaints go magically out the window and we love all 5 of them. Even if they are making me hate gypsy!! :laugh: