So, fellow forum users, in one of my sparse posts nowadays, I would like to address something that has made me both confused and bewildered... This is, of course, the scandalous list of Rolling Stone Mag of 'The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time'; and the aspect that a lot of us would be most likely interested in (I hope) would be where did they place the prog albums?

As most of you, fellow forum users, will agree, there are quite a bunch of albums and bands that absolutely deserve to be represented at least once in such a list, with their impact & influence, or the cutting-edge sound, or the eye-opening lyrical themes, etc.

Well, the reality is a bit different. First of all, here is a link to the latest list (If I got this correctly, this is the third such list that RS do since 2003; and after looking at this and being absolutely appalled, I am not interested in going back to compare with the older ones):

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-of-all-time-1062063/" rel="nofollow - http://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-albums-of-all-time-1062063/

About the list and the nerve-inducing aspects of it: Let's say that to an extent I agree with 2/3 of this 'list'; at least a half of it is for me indisputable; But a very 'interesting' observation came across my mind after scrolling through the entirety of this bs: There are some artists that are NOT represented even once (now, one or two of these could be wrong, please correct me if you happen to see those being present on the list, but for most I am 100% certain), and these include King Crimson (I repeat, King Crimson in openly not included, not even with a single record), Deep Purple, Marillion, Porcupine Tree, Jethro Tull, ELP, Gong, The Mars Volta, etc. You get the idea, when you scroll through it, the list can obviously become bigger and bigger.

However, we get some unbelievable appearances by: Billie Eilish, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Kanye West (several albums are featured), Madonna (a fripping compilation album of her hits is featured... I just can't take it anymore...), SZA (whoever the hell this is), and a bunch of pop and rap jokes from the last decade whose presence on the list I can hardly justify...

Oh, and you might notice the presence of 'Close to the Edge' around the 440th position, what a tremendous achievement for Yes! Of course, they are far behind artists like Adelle, Jay-Z, Beyonce, etc.

And if I am not wrong, we also get just one Miles Davis record, just a lonely one... And obviously no Jaco Pastorius, because why would you include one of the most impactful fusion records of an ingenious bass guitar player when you can have the Billie Eilish debut album...

I leave the floor to you, fellow forum users, because I do not know how bad my rant can get; Let me know where you disagree with the list, and why do you think Rolling Stone is a joke (by the way, a joke just like the Grammys, the R&RHoF, and all those flashy award shows that take place annually).

I only bothered with the top 50 and needn't investigate further (btw, I love the NAS and Tribe Called Quest albums included + I'm a huge Billie Eilish-fan and What's Going On is a worthy no. 1).

-We hardly need music magazines or music journalists anymore. I know I certainly don't, but I never cared about their correct, boring, uniformed and limited tastes anyway. Look at the top 500 at http://https://rateyourmusic.com/" rel="nofollow - RYM instead (the biggest "userrun" music site like PA, but every kind of music genre is included). Much more interesting list, and you'll usually find more interesting and informative reviews than in any magazine out there as well. Here's the top 3 with King Crimson's debut at 3rd place (also Red is at 26, Close to the Edge, 49th) based on over 43 000 votes and 855 reviews... Now this is representative for what music lovers from 15 to 75 years actually love:

http://https://rateyourmusic.com/charts" rel="nofollow - Link, but you have to choose "all-time" manually

   

As ever with these lists there is a fair proportion of stuff that has been popular in the last five years or so... but how many of those 'recent' albums will feature on the same list in 20 years time (or indeed even be remembered)?

But then again are we looking at it through our rose tinted prog spectacles?

I’m not going to try and justify the list, because there are plenty of things that make it obvious to me that it is flawed, but I do think you’re looking at it from a biased angle. Of the bands you mention you would expect to see, several have no one album I would expect to see in the list. It’s perhaps odd that ItCotCK is not there (and that is the only KC album I would expect to see make the list, if one did at all), but I would never expect to see Marillion, Porcupine Tree, Gong or The Mars Volta. Deep Purple, Jethro Tull and ELP are perhaps more surprising by their absence. (NB this has nothing to do with my personal preference, as I like PT, Gong and TMV, and am not a fan of Marillion, Deep Purple or ELP.)

As for the inclusion of hip hop and r&b (in its modern incarnation, which is markedly different from rhythm and blues as I grew up understanding it), they absolutely have a place in the list. Kanye West, love him or hate him, would be even more inexcusable if he were absent from this list than King Crimson or Yes. I would go so far as to say the list wouldn’t even be credible if Kanye West was not included in it. Again, I think the problem many on this forum will have with either inclusion or exclusion from the list, will come down to personal bias. (NB, again this has nothing to do with my personal preferences, because although I do enjoy some hip hop, I’ve never been a Kanye West fan.)

Part of the problem is the same that was identified in 2003, and again in 2012, in that despite asking hundreds of people for their top 50 lists, those hundreds of people aren’t really drawn from a particularly diverse pool, and though there are some “outliers”, they are certainly outnumbered. To be fair, that even one Miles Davis album appears is pretty impressive, because this is basically a list of the 500 greatest rock and pop albums (and the aforementioned hip hop and r&b are rock and pop), so for any jazz album to appear is almost unexpected.

Regarding compilations, I have no problem at all with that. Queen’s “Greatest Hits” is one of the all-time best selling albums in many countries. No doubt Madonna’s compilation is similarly high selling. I can’t name a Madonna album off the top of my head, but I know her greatest hits was called “The Immaculate Collection”. I don’t know anyone who owns a Madonna album, but I know several who own “The Immaculate Collection”. There are some compilations which rise above any other individual album, and which become almost cult albums. Greatest Hits compilations come and go. It’s rare for one such title to remain the “go to” without being replaced again and again. It is rare for there to be a definitive title that if someone says what’s the name of the greatest hits album of “X”, and the answer will be almost universally known, and still easily purchased.

The biggest problem for me with the Rolling Stones lists is their recency bias. It is very difficult to know whether or not something is as great, or will remain to be seen as great, when it is only recent. In a thread I started elsewhere on the forum (  http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=126239" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=126239  ), I talk about a list of 150 important and/or influential albums in New Zealand music history. I made that list in May 2019, but stated in a preface to the list that I needed to make a cut off, and I chose that to be 2010. The closer one gets to the present day, the harder it is to know just how important and/or influential an album might be. I used the example of Alien Weaponry’s debut, which had been released the previous year, and which I find it difficult to see how it will not be regarded as an important and influential album in years to come. But it would have been conjecture, and in my opinion, folly to include it just because of how it seemed a year after its release.

A couple of years after compiling my list, I decided to investigate a list of “100 Essential New Zealand Albums”, that I knew had been published as a book, by Nick Bollinger. I don’t have the book, but figured if I googled, I might come up with it. Someone had uploaded his list, and presuming it is accurate (which I have no way of knowing without buying the book), I found it was interesting to see. It’s how similar and how different our lists were. Both our lists were chronological, and the biggest difference was towards the end of the list. Bollinger’s book was published in 2010, and he included albums right up until the year before it was published. I’ve not even heard of some of the albums he presents from the years 2005-2009, and even after looking them up, they seem to have been either flash in the pan, or not really anything I would consider worthy of the list. I feel reasonably confident that if Bollinger were going to make his list again now, some (maybe all) of those albums would no longer feature in it. The same can probably be said for some of the more recent album inclusions in the RS list.

On the other hand, who knows? It could be that we are simply so out the loop that we don’t recognise how important and/or influential some of these albums already are, or might become. I’ve never heard of SZA, and I’m not going to knock Billy Eilish. Do they deserve to be in the list? I would say it’s almost impossible to know, and only time will tell. They are simply too recent, and they might appear important and influential now, but it’s pure conjecture to assume that in fifty years (or whenever) that they will be regarded highly. I would not include them myself, but not because I do t think they deserve it, so much as because of my awareness of recency bias.

I could easily have made my list of NZ albums go right up to 2019 when I made the list, and I am quite confident about some of the albums I would have put there (Lorde, Alien Weaponry, etc.). But it still seems premature to me….

Is the list perfect? Hell, no! Is it biased and subjective. Undoubtedly so, but also reasonably and transparently so.  Ultimately, I don’t think it’s a particularly wonderful list, but it’s definitely not a terrible list. Like any data one comes across, you have to consider who compiled it, how, and for what audience. Taking that into account, the only thing about the list that I think may not stand the test of time, is the inclusion of some of the more recent albums.

With these kind of lists I'm only interested to know how they compiled it...

RS wrote: we received and tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/voters-500-greatest-albums-list-1062225/" rel="nofollow - more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures (from radio programmers to label heads, like Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman).

Looking at the list of names you can indeed predict the recency bias Nick is refering to above, but that's happening most of the times with these kind of lists (ask here on PA what people's favourite films are and most of the films will date from the last 30, 40 years, skipping thus 80, 90 years of film history...). Furthermore, as Saperlipopette points out, a panel of 300 is not as representative as a panel of 43000. But still, ask 43000 tiktok users the same thing and the resulting list will be very different...

What I don't understand is why a list like this gets you upset like this. 

RS is not PA, they have a different audience and have to sell their mag to this audience, so they ask Billie Eilish (who actually has some very interesting musical references...) and not Pete Trewavas (who?)...

The whole idea that such a list could be in any sense "objective" is wrong. What the list shows is that they don't like prog much, we do, and this explains the difference. They are well within their rights to not like it.

Now I'm not saying such lists are totally random and surely most people with some music knowledge agree on something. However I'd think that over all genres one can easily find 2000 albums that have a credible case for inclusion in such a top X list, and which 500 to select from them and how to exactly rank them is an apples and oranges game from beginning to end. Lists are for entertainment only, and if you don't like one go look for another or write it yourself.

Absolutely! In all of my large post above, perhaps the last paragraph is al that really matters, and it says similar to what you’ve just said:

I wrote: Is the list perfect? Hell, no! Is it biased and subjective. Undoubtedly so, but also reasonably and transparently so.  Ultimately, I don’t think it’s a particularly wonderful list, but it’s definitely not a terrible list. Like any data one comes across, you have to consider who compiled it, how, and for what audience. Taking that into account, the only thing about the list that I think may not stand the test of time, is the inclusion of some of the more recent albums.

It also makes me think of a Dutch national radio program: at the end of each year, since 1999 and thanks to the input from the audience, they compile a https://www.nporadio2.nl/top2000" rel="nofollow - Top 2000 . There are the usual suspects and the surprises (look at last years' n° 1), with a turnover of, say 5 to 10% (this is a very wild estimate of mine).

Out of dissatisfaction with this list (its predictability, its recency bias, the neglect of many other very good songs...) a group of music lovers started an alternative, which is aired on internet each end of year: The https://ondergewaardeerdeliedjes.nl/snob-2000-2/snob-2000-uit-2020/" rel="nofollow - Snob 2000 ...

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady at 14th +
16, A Love Supreme
22, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!
38, In a Silent Way
47, Bitches Brew
79, Tago Mago etc...

I’m not so sure. I decided to look through again, and count how many “recent” releases there were in the list, and there were less than I thought/it appeared to me, when I first perused the list. There are only 36 album from the last ten years in the list (which is arguably 36 too many, but let’s leave that aside), 22 of which appear in the bottom half of the list, and 14 in the top half, so they don’t make too much of an impact. Although I would agree that a fair number of these 36 albums won’t be in the list in a few years time, there are some that I would not be surprised to see, because they have already made an impact that seems likely to be lasting. I would also note that only two albums from the last ten years appear in the top 50, from Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar. The latter I would almost certainly expect to see in lists to come in the future. Beyoncé, probably, also.

Leaving those aside, from the remaining 464 albums in the RS list, I was unfamiliar with only seven! I have not listened to every one. Nor even heard every one - but I either knew of the album, and/or it’s artwork, for 98% of the albums in the list, once albums from the last ten years were taken out (due to possible recency bias). I’m not claiming to be a great font of knowledge for music, because I’m not. But the fact I recognise albums I’ve never listened to, often by artists I’ve never knowingly heard a single note from, shows that those albums have had quite an impact over the years.

Ultimately, I do think it comes down exactly to what Lewian has said. All any list can do is pick between apples and oranges, and no matter how great a population of contributors, that doesn’t give any greater objectivity.

The RS list is attempting to cover rock and pop over a period from the 1950s through to the present day. The definition(s) of both rock and pop have changed over and over and over again over that long time span, and include country, folk, gospel, soul, funk, jazz, reggae, ska, rock, r&b, punk, metal, hip hop, etc. etc. Every one of those genres has changed over time, and depending on geography. Even at the time of its first appearance, for example, UK and US punk had very different sounds and styles, and what has been considered punk between then and now sounds very different.

Miles Davis was mentioned early on, and it’s notable that the two Davis albums in the RS list are Bitches Brew and A Kind Of Blue. Hard to argue either, right? John Coltrane has a couple of albums in the list, too. And his wife, Alice. And Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus…. There are not a great deal of more recent jazz albums in the list, but the classics are present.  The same for the classic reggae albums, etc. None of the albums are unexpected, and some might even say predictable. But then again, isn’t that what we should expect when seeing a list of the greatest albums? Surely they should be somewhat predictable - maybe not in where they appear so much as that they do appear. Again, this merely confirms the apples and oranges scenario as described by Lewian. 

Can were mentioned earlier, and they too make the RS list. 

Over time, I suspect that it will more likely be some of the albums in the ‘60s that appear in the bottom half of the RS list are dropped, rather than some of the albums in the list from the 2000s. Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, for example, are likely to remain fixtures of future lists for many years to come, and with good reason. Apples and oranges….

The list isn't of any interest to me because it's based on polling a wide cross section of people, so it's just a popularity contest. The same can be said of any such list including the PA top 100. The only lists which useful to me are those that are more narrowly curated (i.e. reflect the opinion of a single person, or a small group of people, with particular knowledge or interests that are relevant to me - e.g. the annual lists from places like The Quietus, PA collabs list).

I have zero interest in these types of 'lists'. I don't see them as serving any real purpose except to create content. I've seen one too many lists for top drummers that didn't include Carl Palmer, Bill Bruford or Keith Moon and likewise, top piano players that didn't include Keith Emerson or Patrick Moraz but did include Billy Joel or Elton John. Now I'm not saying they aren't accomplished piano players or that they don't have a place in rock history, but to include them and not some of the truly great rock piano players removes any real credibility from these lists AFAIC.

I guess my point is that when you're polling even as many as 300 people, and you're addressing such a wide field as "rock music", it doesn't make any difference if they are "experts" or not, because the particular niches of expertise / interest they have will cover the whole gamut of tastes and genres, and they will in effect cancel each other out. I doubt the results would be importantly different, or more or less interesting, if they'd picked 300 Rolling Stone readers at random. 

Now the poll on doom metal albums of ten people who spend all day listening to doom metal and are obsessed with it...that's going to be a useful list. 

^ And, talking about apples and oranges: why compare the sprinter Ben Johnson to Shakespeare?

-I don't really care about any kind of lists apart from my own. I only came by to say that I trust music enthusiasts more than music journalists - and examplified it with RYM's chart - which beats 300 people that get paid for having opinions about music - in every thinkable way.

^this....

"Credibility weight" for what exactly? For whether you will like album 1 more than album 2? That may well be true, and can be empirically tested by measuring whether RYM or RS is more in line with your personal ratings.

RYM may well be more in line with yours (otherwise you wouldn't advertise it that much here), RS with those of some others. Based on big numbers one could suspect that RYMs list is in line with more people than RSs list, but that's not at all clear, given that RYM raters are self selected, they are neither a random sample nor in any testable sense representative for anyone else. If 10000 RYM raters love an album, it means that they love that album. That's fair enough and can be taken as a recommendation, but it doesn't really mean more than that bare fact.  You sound as if you think that it means something more than that and even something more than that this is correlated with your personal taste (which as said above can be an empirically valid and testable statement). But beyond that - what do you think it means?

PS: London Calling vs. A Love Supreme is as great an example for apples vs. oranges as they come.

The playwright's name is Ben Jonson. I don't know if he was as fast as Ben Johnson, but he did escape some rather nasty bar fights.

Lewian wrote: Saperlipopette! wrote: Lewian wrote: I like the RYM list as what it is, no complaints there. I don't buy into the idea that objectivity comes with big numbers though. I certainly do - to an extent. When tens of thousands music lovers of all ages have sent an album like A Love Supreme to the 16th greatest album of all time is simply carries a lot more credible weight (to me) than London Calling at same place over at Rolling Stone. "Credibility weight" for what exactly? For whether you will like album 1 more than album 2? That may well be true, and can be empirically tested by measuring whether RYM or RS is more in line with your personal ratings. RYM may well be more in line with yours (otherwise you wouldn't advertise it that much here), RS with those of some others. Based on big numbers one could suspect that RYMs list is in line with more people than RSs list, but that's not at all clear, given that RYM raters are self selected, they are neither a random sample nor in any testable sense representative for anyone else. If 10000 RYM raters love an album, it means that they love that album. That's fair enough and can be taken as a recommendation, but it doesn't really mean more than that bare fact.  You sound as if you think that it means something more than that and even something more than that this is correlated with your personal taste (which as said above can be an empirically valid and testable statement). But beyond that - what do you think it means? PS: London Calling vs. A Love Supreme is as great an example for apples vs. oranges as they come.

It was just that they were at the same spot (but well A Love Supreme is supreme. History will undoubtly prove me correct) The RYM-list isn't very much in line with my tastes but it simply covers a lot more ground, has deeper musical knowledge and is more open than RS hipster/short memory-list. Other than that:

Saperlipopette! wrote: -I don't really care about any kind of lists apart from my own. I originally came by to say that I trust music enthusiasts more than music journalists - and examplified it with RYM's chart - which beats 300 people that get paid for having opinions about music - in just about any angle you approach it.

Anyway in general I trust knowledge and experience and very much oppose this cultural relativism where every expression and every opinion has equal worth. It makes us lazy. But the RYM-list and that are two seperate issues that I kind of made a mess of. But I always make a mess of issues such as these. Because of language barriers I come across as more of an elitist than I am - and don't sound as clever as should. Something like that.

I prefer Marlowe as well, although he was not as good at bar fights as Ben Jonson. 

These lists are usually rather idiotic. They always exclude music that those who make the lists have no clue about. Alt least the new list is more diverse than the first one from 2003 which was almost all about (British/American) rock. There is valuable music from other genres and other music cultures as well.

If instead they just called it something like The Editorial's 500 Favourite Albums, it would sound more honest to me, because that is acknowledging that there is great music beyond their (and anyone else's) horizon.

One could of course argue that other music forms aren't necessarily about 'albums'. Classical music f.e. is clearly not...