Rolling Stone's Top 500: Ex-Bleeping-CUSE ME?

The other night, I heard on Entertainment Tonight that Rolling Stone, considered to be the prime arbiter of popular music, among other things, came out with its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time." Considering the contents of the list-even the aptly-placed items-the title seems a little presumptuous, to say the least. What they mean is their version of the top 500 popular songs written since the publishers have been around. Not even considered is a plethora of classical, jazz, traditional, Broadway, patriotic and sacred music.

Fine, let us go with the premise that, what the magazine's editors meant was "The 500 Greatest Songs We are Aware of Within Our Tiny Attention-Span," and examine the list they did come up with on that basis.

In this first of two essays, I will consider only the top five songs the magazine selected as the "Greatest" of "All Time." Believe me, there is easily enough fodder for one article on that aspect alone. The succeeding article will deal with the rest of the choices.

First, let me provide the magazine's top five selections:

5. "Respect," Aretha Franklin

4. "What's Going On?" Marvin Gaye

3. "Imagine" John Lennon/The Beatles

2. "Satisfaction," The Rolling Stones

1. "Like a Rolling Stone," Bob Dylan

Nothing like having a number-one song that mentions the product, is there, guys?

I do not, for a moment wish to denigrate the skill any of these artists have brought to popular music, and, I would not be too puzzled to see all five of these numbers somewhere on a top-500 list, but the very top? Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar!

Okay, I can see why the compilers of the list, after putting only white boys in the first three slots, wanted to get a couple Motown songs into the top-five (Although Ms. Franklin, for reasons of her own, chose not to record with Motown Records, she was certainly part of the "sound."), but I wonder if those two songs-both of which carry a "message"-were really the best of the entire lot or whether they were selected only for those messages.

I mean no disrespect to the late Marvin Gaye, but Stevie Wonder could out-write and out-sing the man blindfolded. Any number of his songs could have made that top-five list ahead of "What's Going On?" Consider, for example:

"A Place in the Sun"
"For Once in My Life"
"Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours"
"Heaven Help Us All"
"You Are the Sunshine of My Life"
"Maybe Your Baby"
"I Believe"
"All in Love is Fair"
"Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing"
"I Just Called to Say I Love You"

And those are just the obvious choices. There are probably a lot more.

I would not have disagreed with one of The Temptations' top hits for that select five grouping. "Just My Imagination" or "My Girl" could have made it to that level without causing anyone to question the compilers' taste.

There are several more Motown artists whose work might rank ahead of the fourth and fifth selections, to say nothing of other works by Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin themselves. Still, let me not dwell. I have more ground to cover.

Let us take a look at Rolling Stone's top three: do Dylan, The Stones and The Beatles deserve the win, place and show finishes? Possibly, but let us say, for the sake of argument, they do. Did it have to be those three songs? Come on, people, clean the Cheese-Whiz out of your ears.

Let us start with the third selection, "Imagine," written by John Lennon and performed by the Beatles. Keep in mind, I harbor no disrespect to the late John Lennon or his musical comrades, but I think that was a lousy choice to represent them.

True enough, "Imagine" is a lovely tune. No argument there. It is only when someone ventures to sing the words that I get somewhat turned off. Even for one, such as I, who dislikes materialism and war, to a really huge extent, this song comes off being so naïve as to be laughable. As to imagining there is no God, I am a Christian, but a free-thinker, so I can and have imagined such a thing, at least as a possibility. Unlike John Lennon, I do not consider it a cause for joy.

If you Rolling Stone people wanted to make sure the Beatles landed in the #3 position, there were any number of better songs you could have picked. Among them:

"Please, Please, Me"
"A Hard Day's Night"
"Can't Buy Me Love"
"I'll Follow the Sun"
"You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"
"Another Girl"
"Ticket to Ride"
"Yesterday"
"Nowhere Man"
"In My Life"
"Eleanor Rigby"
"With a Little Help from My Friends"
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
"She's Leaving Home"
"When I'm 64"
"Penny Lane"
"Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da"
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
"Come Together"
"Something"
"Here Comes the Sun"
"She Came in Through the Bathroom Window"
"Get Back"
"Hey, Jude"

Get the picture?

As for the Rolling Stones in the #2 slot, "Satisfaction" is an OK song, but they have put out so many others that are a lot more OK. I am thinking in particular of:

"It's All Over Now"
"Mother's Little Helper"
"Sympathy for the Devil"
"No Expectations"
"You Can't Always Get What You Want"
"Time is on My Side"
"Wild Horses"
"Dead Flowers"
"Moonlight Mile"
"It's Only Rock and Roll"
"Some Girls"
"Beast of Burden"
"Shattered"

Finally, we come to Bob Dylan. All right, "Like a Rolling Stone" is probably better-than-average Dylan, but, why settle for better-than-average to put at the very apex of your list? I am guessing that you, the patient reader, are probably a little slap-happy with song lists by now, so, in this instance, I am going to slap you even harder with a strongly recommended reference to an earlier article, My Top Fifteen Songs and Top Four Albums by Bob Dylan. Any of those fifteen songs could easily make "Like a Rolling Stone" sound like Dylan gargling with hot sauce and ginger ale (Wow, I hope he doesn't read this and start getting ideas...).

I will be back soon to take on the rest of this idiotic list.

Sources

Wikipedia

Rolling Stone magazine

"Entertainment Tonight," 5/28/10

Any number of albums and singles