"For close to a half century, prog has been the breeding ground for rock’s most out-there, outsized and outlandish ideas: Thick-as-a-brick concept albums, an early embrace of synthesizers, overly complicated time signatures, Tolkienesque fantasies, travails from future days and scenes from a memory. In celebration of Rush’s  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/from-rush-with-love-59586/" rel="nofollow - first , here’s the best of the deliciously decadent genre that the punks failed to kill." - Rolling Stone Magazine

 

Yes, I was expecting worse too, especially after hearing about some of the Rap/Hip Hop "artists" on Rolling Stone's Top 500 albums list. There's a good cross section of albums in this list, including most of our prog favourites and also featuring lots of European bands and modern albums that often get overlooked, especially by me.

 

I'm listening to No. 30 on the list for the first time today. It's a great album! It's good to see there's at least one album from all of my favourite prog artists on the list, including:- Camel; Caravan; Dream Theater; Electric Light Orchestra; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Genesis; Jethro Tull; King Crimson; Mike Oldfield;  Pink Floyd; Porcupine Tree; Renaissance; Soft Machine; Strawbs; Tangerine Dream; Van der Graaf Generator; & Yes.

Why would hip hop not feature in their top 500 albums list? Why would you use inverted commas around artists? You know that you can dislike something or not be interested, without being so rudely dismissive? In any cross-genre list of greatest albums of all time, I would expect to see hip hop represented. Just as with rock or pop or metal or any other genre, there will be some artists who are more talented than others, but you shouldn’t write off an entire genre’s artistry just because it it not your thing.

Steven Wilson commented not so long ago that the most progressive music was being made by hip hop artists, and while I may not completely agree, I know where he is coming from, and why he said that. I could never claim to be a great hip hop fan, and there is definitely far more that I don’t like than I do - but there is some amazing music being made within that genre. Dismissing it all shows your ignorance more than anything else.

I’m not suggesting everyone has to like everything, nor that everyone has to be positive and warm and fuzzy all the time. There’s nothing wrong with criticism, but it should be informed and from experience. And by experience I don’t mean you’ve heard hip hop on the radio and don’t like what you’ve heard. By all means, say you don’t like what hip hop you’ve heard, but it’s just rude to imply that just because a musician composes or performs hip hop that they’re not an artist. By all means, wonder why hip hop appears in a greatest albums list, but perhaps instead of shaking your head and rolling your eyes, try and find out why.

I only know two albums - by ELO and the Strawbs - between #41 & #50.

All in all a predictable list. It doesn't necessarily represent my views (f.e. I think the early Zappa is much more interesting than 70's albums such as One Size Fits All) but I think I can agree on the top 2.

The vast majoirty of albums are from the 70's. Also, albums from outside the Enghish speaking countries are few (a few Italian and German albums).

Indeed this is quite striking. Somehow it looks like at 41 they went out of steam and chose the remaining ones randomly out of a pool of 500+. Also some will hate me for writing this but there's too much Rush fandom in this list.

It does look very much like that, which does make the whole idea of it being the 50 greatest suspect, if they couldn’t even come up with 50 strong albums! 😄

That said, there are only two Rush albums in there, aren’t there? And easily the two most influential of their albums. I don’t think they are universally agreed upon as Rush’s best, and they’re definitely not my two favourite Rush albums - but if someone asked me what were their two most influential albums, I’d be hard pressed not to name these two.

If a list of greatest of all time is taken to mean those that had the most impact and influence, then I don’t think the appearance of those two Rush albums is that far wrong. If the list of greatest of all time is simply meant as the best, then their presence is certainly less assured. But I always take greatest of all time lists to mean those with the most impact.

What I think is far more suspect is the lack of content outside the UK and US, and the way when it appears, that it does. It’s almost as if they realised they needed one album in the top 10, and another in the top 20, and just shoehorned them in. And when they’ve chosen albums not from the UK and US, they seem to not really follow the example they’ve used for the US and UK albums, often choosing neither the albums generally acclaimed as the best, or the most influential, from a band. They don’t look as if they’ve been chosen with as much knowledge as the remainder of the list - and seem to have been chosen in the same manner that 41-50 were. 🤔

This list is in stark contrast to the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (or whatever it is titled) that is being discussed in another post on the forum, which appears to have had far more thought put into it - presumably because they asked far more people for their opinions/votes.

[EDIT] I have just noticed a third Rush album in there. And three does seem a little too much. So I take back what I said, and have to agree that there is too much Rush fandom going on.

I like Logan's idea of featuring one album per artist, but on a positive note, there are just as many Pink Floyd & Genesis albums (three each) in the Top 50 as Rush albums.

 

It's a pity though that "The Ladder" album by Yes didn't quite make the Top 50.  

Yea, With Rolling Stone I expected the top five prog albums to be

Madonna, Bob Dylan, Run DMC, The Ramones & Prince. 

I would suspect we should be pretty happy with this list.

Yes, it's a pretty good list, all things considered. It doesn't have many of my favourites on there, but then again, my favourite albums are often the albums others love to hate. It's a shame ELP's Love Beach album didn't quite make the Top 50.

Different people asked for their contributions/votes. It might look odd at first glance, but it’s not really. I suspect this list may have come from the minds of only one writer (maybe two at a push). It looks more of an individual’s take, than the result of a group.

The 500 Albums list, on the other hand, had a crazy amount of people contributing to it (hence it being a “better” list overall than this one, and accounting for the differences when it comes to bands like Can).

As for the bottom 10, it's hit and miss, but I think it's good that they went with a few artists who had not been represented in the top 40.  I just think that acts like Crack the Sky and Happy the Man shouldn't be anywhere near the top 50 of anything, which betrays Rolling Stone's pro American bias

After going to the link I realized the article was old, I remember it simply because it was the start of RS trying to jump on the Rush band wagon and redeem themselves for all them years of ignoring them and progressive rock music overall. So my CAN comment makes sense now.

I still don't know who put it together, if only RS writers or they asked other artists to contribute.

Yea, but does ANY list have only our favs?? I try and look at these with a 80/20 rule, never 100%. Hopefully 80% of what we like/approve/agree with is there and the other 20% is the WTF choices that creates discussion. I mean what's a list without discussion.....

I figured it had been brought up because of the other list, that is from this year.... 🤷🏻‍♂️

Not shocked that they didn't have Cardiacs anywhere on the list, but it would have been a nice surprise.

Thank you for saying this.

Admittedly Dark Side Of the Moon barely counts as a prog album but I'm still happy to see it at the top if only because of its general impact and importance on music generally.

Why do you go out of your way to try to tear down or write off hip hop at every chance you get? Maybe you don't get it or it's not for you, but putting the word artists in quotations as a juvenile way to undercut the art is just another pathetic jab for no reason, and I've seen your black and white one size fits all Ben Shapiro reasoning as to why rap apparently "isn't music." 

Yes, it's a real shock not to find that and Heaven & Earth not in the list! Who'd have thought it?

To be honest, I wouldn't put Moving Pictures anywhere near the top 10. It's not even in my top 3 Rush albums but bar one or two surprises, it's a pretty good list.

 

I'm glad you reminded me about I.Q.. I've been trying to come up with a band beginning with the letter "I" for my third A-Z prog  playlist on YouTube.

First of all it's nice to see some krautrock albums in it (it's a rather neglected genre in the Progarchives list), and overall I think I am more in line with this list than the Progarchives one.

In any case, the list is also a product of what those who make it actually know about. I'm sure that if they were more famous, Danish classics like Culpeper's Orchard (1971) or M144 (1969) would be there too.