Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums 2003 vs. 2012 vs. 2020

edit: I think it's also worth asking the question of what role race played in the degree to which an artist or group was heralded "at the time".

That's gotta be an oxymoron.

Keep in mind that voters are likely to overweight the music they were exposed to as teenagers and young adults (and the influences of that music), and that in the last 40 years pop music has become much less racially segregated than it was in the 30s-70s.

In the time since the 2003 edition, there's been a full generation of turnover; the largely white, rock-oriented baby boomers who ran and were the target audience of Rolling Stone from its founding have largely retired, to be replaced by millennials who, whether or not they are more diverse, had more exposure as teenagers to music by black people that was once relegated to the R&B charts.

To use the albums you listed (which, conveniently, came out within 5 years of each other), of course a reduction in rock's mindshare among critics is going to hurt Sgt Pepper the most. Looking at the Hot 100 today [0] (9-26-2020), and ignoring the electronic music whose forebears haven't had long enough to filter into cultural influence, I see a lot of confessional singer-songwriters and a lot of R&B.

TL;DR: Baby Boomers have lost influence at Rolling Stone in the last 20 years, so the rankings have shifted to meet the tastes and influences of a generation of music critics that were exposed to a lot more music by black people as teenagers.

[0] https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

I'm preaching to the choir here but there's no sound methodology for remotely being able to quantify the "best" albums. About the best you could do is use some kind of Metacritic-like review score aggregator, but that will still heavily favor in biases existing at the time in who societally was even allowed to win recognition, e.g. Elvis will rank a lot higher than the black artists whose music he was ripping off.

So it's always just going to come down to the editorial judgment of whatever team is compiling the list, and it seems like the team working on this at Rolling Stone now is likely younger and more diverse than the teams of years past, hence the forays into newer artists and genres.

Yeah. I'd put it quite a long way below rumours personally.

An important moment in pop music history was when the charts switched to actual sales data instead of what record store managers claimed were the top selling albums. This happened in 1991. All of a sudden:

... SoundScan’s data collection returned the power to the people, the genuine fans who buy and listen to music. Twenty-five years ago, the firm started counting how Joe Music Fan was spending his bucks, instead of listening to a record store manager’s easily corrupted opinion.

It turned out that people were buying a lot more metal, hip-hop, country, R&B and alternative rock albums than the old system claimed. The change on the charts was immediate. The change in the industry was almost as fast. Artists that had been relegated to their genre pools (from Nirvana to Ice Cube to Garth Brooks) were now free to swim in the mainstream.

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/billboard-soundscan/

Rolling Stone was forced to change their coverage, although the "best of lists" have always reflected the tastes of their editorial staff, which has been slower to come around.

I'm glad to see Abbey Road surpass Sgt Pepper though, past cultural relevance aside it's just a better album to listen to. I'm fully in support of ranking What's Going On much higher, musically its fantastic and its themes are unfortunately still so relevant.

As a ranking criteria I'd say a mix of music & timelessness or relevance are the most important, followed in distant third by how groundbreaking or influential they were in their time, as that feels more like an intellectual footnote than a judgment of the music.

The trend-setting part is the real distinction here. You don't know what ends up being a dead end and what ends up being foundational to entire new genres of music until enough time has passed to see how things turned out. You need to wait enough time to see it all shake out. E.g. the first jazz and rock'n'roll musicians (who were all black) were not remotely appreciated in their time as much as they are now.

Guess never be upset about interview rejections.

But maybe it's just the demise of traditional rock music

More sympathetically, Album vs Band seems like a confounding factor... the Beach Boys released some astonishing albums, but their overall standing as a band has to also consider the drivel they released. OTOH, Linkin Park are enormously popular as a band, but (in my memory as an alt-rock obsessed teenager in the 00's) none of their albums really broke the surface (relative to the ludicrous levels of play their singles got).

In my opinion, the first 9 are fine enough, and then it starts going off the rails at #10, heavily favoring modern bands in the current era of music streaming. E.g. Lynyrd Skynyrd isn't even on that list, and Twenty One Pilots ranks significantly higher than Jimi Hendrix?!?!

I’m just glad cinema is so international and most of it’s rankings always had diversity internationally that new top lists don’t have to literally over correct in a shallow way to make up for the pure exclusionary judgement making of the past.

You don't have to go all the way to Thai music. Rolling Stone has been _the_ "Anglo Saxon rock music between 1950-1980s is the only music out there" publication till recently. Until the last few years there's been almost no hip hop, almost no electronic music, jazz is relegated to some token pics, etc.

1) Tom Jobim: Stone Flower

2) Os Novos Baianos: Acabou chorare

3) Joao Gilberto, Stan Getz, Tom Jobim, Zimbo Trio: Getz & Gilberto

4) Chico Science & Nação Zumbi: Da Lama Ao Caos

5) Secos & Molhados: Secos & Molhados

6) Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Nara Leao: Tropicalia

7) Tom Jobim & Elis Regina: Tom & Elis

8) Heitor Villa-Lobos : Bachianas Brasileiras

9) Egberto Gismonti : Sol do Meio Dia

10) Sepultura : Roots

/block of unsubstantiated opinions/ I don't think Rolling Stones claims to be a full list of all music of all time, nor do I think their editors would claim to be experts in all music. I dare say they hardly claim to be experts. I'd imagine they'd say they were more interested in being entertaining.

/going off the rails a bit/ Now that I think about it, it would honestly be pretty disgusting if they did try to make a list encompassing all of music. Either it's strictly analytical, at which point you're really asking "What's the best selling of all time", or it's saying "our opinion is a proxy for every other opinion". The hubris of that kind of project would outweigh any good it could do.

Otherwise, selecting the judges would be a herculean task.

Very difficult to find any of the music on YouTube though, because Lao script alphabet is so different, same as for Thai, I don’t even know how to type any of the letters.

BTW, I also miss say Hot Rats in this rag, no King Crimson either, but then there's Ege Bamyasi, Kimono My House and Different Class which are favourites of mine and hadn't noticed before.