Rolling Stone's Top 500 Song List

As I promised in my earlier essay on this subject, I'm back to take a look at those other popular songs that made the list, after the 1^st five. Don't worry, I'm not going to pick apart all 495 items, but I do have some general notes on the subject.

To begin with, let me start by saying a few nice things about the list. Most of the listed songs belong there. To be sure, this is a badly flawed list, but it is not totally wrong. Along with the many obvious choices, I was glad to see such numbers as The Allman Brothers' "Whipping Post" (#393); Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" (#382); Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" (#350) and "Many Rivers to Cross" (#325), as well as Laverne Baker's "Jim Dandy" (#352).

I was also glad to see the compilers were at least willing to consider the great instrumentals of the era, having placed "Green Onions" by Booker T. and the MGs at #183. But, having opened that door, just a crack, why slam it shut on such deserving numbers as "Wipeout" by the Beach Boys and, especially "Time is Tight," also by Booker T?

Let me also note that I fully realize I am pissing into the wind when I bad-mouth the entire genre of rap and hip-hop "music," so I am not going to get myself any wetter by trying to criticize that which I tune out as a matter of course. Any such number that is on this list will pass without any further comment from me.

There are only a handful of songs on the Rolling Stone's 500 that are truly awful, and I will get to them shortly. My first criticism centers around how some artists are poorly represented or not represented at all, when, clearly, they should be.

For starters, let's take a look at the "bottom" 400. Now, to be ranked at any level among the top 500 songs "ever" (Give me a break!), is, no doubt, a great honor, but the following songs certainly deserved to be higher on the list than they were:

"Brown Sugar," The Rolling Stones (#495)

"I Will Survive," Gloria Gaynor (#492)

"Under the Boardwalk," The Drifters (#489)

"Lady Marmelade," Labelle (#485)

"Runaway," Del Shannon (#472)

"Soul Man," Sam and Dave (#463)

"The Twist," Chubby Checker (#457)

"Pressure Drop," Toots and the Maytals (#453)

"Smoke on the Water," Deep Purple (#434)

"American Idiot," Green Day (#432)

And, please, American idiots who compiled this list, do not imagine you will escape the wrath of Lane by putting "Just My Imagination," by the Temps-perhaps the most beautiful song to come out of Motown-one tick over the line at #399.

Labelle's "Lady Marmelade" was the monster hit of 1975, the year I spent teaching in a Philadelphia "urban" school. It is also the source of a comically embarrassing moment for me.

In the spring of that year, the school threw a party for its faculty one Saturday night. It was a fun party, on the whole, but it could have been even more so. At one point, after Labelle's top hit had just finished playing, a math teacher who was one of the prettiest ladies on the faculty, came up to me and said, "Voulez vous coucher avec moi?"

"Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy!" I exclaimed. "I never thought I'd ever get this lucky! Yeah, sure, you bet I do!"

"Huh?" the math teacher said with a quizzical look. "No, I meant, what does it mean?"

"Um...I'm sorry...it means, 'Do you want to sleep with me?'"

As it turned out, we would eventually date, but never to the extent of what Ms. Labelle said.

I was also very surprised to see "The Twist" put so far down on the list. I will grant you that Earnest Evans (Checker) is no Leonard Cohen (One of the brilliant lights missing from this list, by the way), but, his song did have just a little impact. It radically changed the way we danced and provided the root for many similar ways of dancing to follow.

There are other deserving artists on the list who are not on it often enough or for the right material. Randy Newman, Neil Young, Hank Williams and Bob Marley come to mind in this respect.

The best they could do for a cutting-edge genius like Randy Newman was to put his so-so song "Sail Away" at #268. Young placed only two songs on the list, despite a body of work that is far superior to most artists who were listed many more times. Except for "Your Cheatin'Heart," Hank Williams best stuff failed to show up. And, while Bob Marley certainly deserves to be represented, none of his listed songs measure up to most of his album with The Wailers, Catch a Fire. I strongly recommend you check out the links in the Resources section of this article, if you want to see these artists, and more, at their best.

The inclusion of Hank Williams raises another critical question. If you are going to put country music artists on the list, fine, put them on, but, if that is the case, where are Brad Paisley, Emmy Lou Harris, Kinky Friedman and Gram Parsons, just to name a few?

Enough about the under-represented artists on the list. I could go on, but enough. Let me take a moment to look at some of the stuff that never should have made this list at all.

Highest on the list in that category (at #14) is Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." You heard me. It doesn't belong on the list. As I have shown in previous essays, I enjoy a good folk song, traditional or modern, but it needs to be good. This song is mediocre at best and a long, long, long way away from Dylan's best work.

To be sure, it had an impact, but, if impact is such an important criterion for this list, then let's consider it uniformly across the entire spectrum. In addition to my notation of how the impact of "The Twist" was taken so lightly, there are a number of major "impact" hits that were left off altogether.

Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee," does not deserve to be honored on its merits, but, for a while, it was the anthem of the anti-hippie, anti-liberal reaction to the revolutionary events of the late 1960s. It had every bit as much "impact" as its opposite number, "Blowin' in the Wind."

Then, too, there was Randy Newman's biggest hit, "Short People," which, while outrageous on the surface, made us all take a good long look at the intolerance that permeates so many of our lives. Won't find that one on the list either.

Additional songs I thought did not belong on such a list: Glen Campbell's Witchita Lineman and Billy Joel's Piano Man.

And then, we get to the BeeGees. Hmmm...okay, I have put myself on record as hating this group, and I do. I consider them probably the worst of the popular groups of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet, they are listed twice: once for "How Deep is Your Love" (How deaf are your ears?) and, further up, for "Stayin' Alive. While the latter is arguably their best song, it does not at all belong in the top 500.

Let me try to be fair, though. If someone were to draw up a list of, say, the top 29,862 songs of the 1960s and 1970s, one or two of the BeeGees hits could conceivably find their way onto the list, somewhere in the 29,861-62 range.

I almost cringed when I saw that "Stayin' Alive," came in at #191, just ahead of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and Lynard Skynard's "Free Bird." Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against providing our guests from the Planet Neptune with gainful employment, but compiling top-500 song lists? Maybe not such a good idea.

But the biggest shortcoming of the list and the thing that would have prompted me to let it stand in for my Cottonelle, were it not for the potential discomfort to my commode: no mention ANYWHERE of Mark Knopfler or Dire Straits. GRRRRR!

Sources

Rolling Stone Magazine Updates '500 Greatest Songs' List (for a copy of the list)

Wikipedia

Own collection and experience