Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Promotional Book Cover

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone magazine published in November 2003. The list was based on the votes of 273 rock musicians, critics and industry figures, each of whom submitted a weighted list of 50 albums. Several music genres were featured in the list, including rock, blues, jazz, hip hop, and combinations thereof.

The list was released in book form in 2005, with an introduction written by Steven Van Zandt. The book's list was slightly different, with the addition of such albums as Aquemini by OutKast. The order was also rearranged, with Chuck Berry's The Great Twenty-Eight being lower on the list.

The list's apparent generational bias toward the 1960s and 1970s prompted a response. Following the publicity surrounding the list, rock critic Jim DeRogatis, a former Rolling Stone editor, published Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics (ISBN 1-56980-276-9) in 2004. This featured a number of younger critics arguing against the magazine's high evaluation of various "classic" albums, including DeRogatis taking on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had been Rolling Stone's top choice.

A clear limit of the list is that, as other similar lists from Rolling Stone, it suffers from a strong bias towards British and American artists, and only one album produced in a non-English speaking country is included in it: "Trans-Europe Express", by the German band Kraftwerk (#253).

Many songs from the top 10 albums appear in the top 100 of Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Like a Rolling Stone" (#1), "What's Going On" (#4), "London Calling" (#15), "In My Life" (#23), "God Only Knows" (#25), and "A Day in the Life" (#26).