500 Greatest Albums of All Times, The
500 Greatest Albums of All Times, The
From the editors of Rolling Stone magazine comes a new book, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time—a tribute to the finest popular music of all time. Whether you’re looking for advice to round out your music collection or just inspiration for a heated argument, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is the essential guide to the best music of modern times from the world’s greatest music magazine. The albums included in this comprehensive book were chosen by 273 of the world’s pre-eminent musicians and critics ranging from Fats Domino to Moby. From the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers to Nirvana’s Nevermind, Ray Charles’ The Birth of Soul to the White Stripes Elephant, this book is packed with classics. Behind-the-scenes stori
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The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition
It is often difficult to assess the many new emerging music genres without some guidance from a well-respected voice to help differentiate the good from the mediocre, the classic from the fleeting. THE NEW ROLLING STONE ALBUM GUIDE provides readers with such direction, categorising the new sounds with insightful analyses and critical judgement. The new guide celebrates rock’s diversity and it’s constant metamorphoses. Continuing the useful one-to-five-star ratings of THE ROLLING STONE ALBUM GUIDE, published in 1992, the new volume gets a fresh makeover with the addition of new artists, as well as updated entries, without compromising the indispensable material in the original guide. In addition, a new introduction addresses the changes in t
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Good for discussion, but flawed in several ways,
Like the various “top 100″ movie lists, this wonderfully illustrated list of the top 500 albums is a great source of discussion: what belonged, what didn’t, what was too high, what was too low, and so on. Since much of this is a matter of taste (though some of the perspective on what is historically important in that it influenced what was to come is a bit more objective), I’ll refrain from commenting on individual albums. However, there are two bigger problems that are worth commenting upon.
The first is that the editors seem to not like and not value what is sometimes called “art rock.” I first noticed this when I thumbed through looking for the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed. I assumed it would be somewhere in the top 50, but it wasn’t even in their top 500. Neither were any other Moody Blues albums, when I would have thought that at least three (Days of Future Passed, For Our Children’s Children’s Children, and Seventh Sojourn) belonged (and, for my tastes, I would have included more). But as I looked around, I noticed that the whole subgenre seemed to be missing. There was no Genesis, no Yes, no Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Even if, as a matter of taste, the editors didn’t care much for this type of music, there should have been some representation of these artists. (I don’t like Eminem, but I understand why he was included.)
The second problem is one of scope. The book includes a small number of jazz albums — a few by Miles Davis and John Coltraine. This is either too many or way too few. The either should not have taken on jazz or should have given it it’s rightful place. If this were the best albums of all time and jazz was included, where is Dave Brubeck’s Take Five? There is some Miles Davis, but where is his very important rendition of Porgy and Bess? Where are the works of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, Billie Holliday, Ellah Fitzgerald, and so on. Either do jazz right or don’t do it at all. Don’t pretend that only a half a dozen jazz albums belong on the list of 500 best albums.
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|Alrighty then…,
I’ve read through Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums” guide and it has some real problems, all of which add up to it being extremely unhelpful for someone honestly looking for great albums. I considered giving this guide a higher rating simply because I agree that many of the albums included really are great, but the writing (or really, the lack thereof) is so bad that this book couldn’t possibly be helpful to anyone who was not already familiar with the albums. This book gets off to a preposterous start when the editor claims that the Beatles’ first album should be the number one album because it is the first one that HE bought, and getting all nostalgic about it makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Wha?! And this guy is the editor?! That’s not a basis for an argument for an album’s position on a list ranking greatest albums! That should have told me what I was getting myself into by continuing to read. If you were to ask yourself whether or not you know anything new about the music after reading the article for any given album in this book, most likely the answer will be no (especially for 11-500). You may know that the drummer spilled beer on his drum kit while recording the big hit single, or some other piece of at best marginally useful information, but that’s about it. And they don’t even put much effort into providing much in the way of that level of information beyond the first 10 albums, the rest only get a paragraph of completely obvious and/or useless information. For a while I was under the impression that “Rolling Stone” was a music magazine that was knowledgeable about and understood and appreciated music (well, rock music at least, in the most narrow definition of the term, and perhaps blues, the father of rock). This book and other publications such as their brazenly mindless album guide, truly show what little respect and appreciation that they have for music. I almost get the impression that they want to show that they are too cool to take music seriously enough to put any thought or effort into what they write. They rarely even attempt to make a convincing argument as to why the albums hold the positions that they do in this book. It’s clear after reading this guide AND their magazine review section for a while that the critics at Rolling Stone do not thoroughly listen to albums, and that they rate music based on things that have nothing to do with the merits of the material. They rate music based on type and image more than anything else, being much more concerned with shaping and pushing their idea of “cool” than with the actual merits of the music. It’s obvious that they don’t even understand jazz (which I guess goes hand in hand with not understanding even the fundamentals of music theory), but there are many areas of music that they don’t seem to understand or appreciate. I don’t see how it is at all helpful to judge music by how closely it adheres to aesthetic characteristics that are generally specific to the type that you like. Those that fit the mold will likely be overrated and those that don’t will likely be underrated. Rolling Stone takes this unbelievably self-indulgent approach throughout this book. So this guide ends up being really unhelpful. But hey, where else are you going to find a book with so many pretty and glossy artist and album cover photos
? Unless that’s what you’re looking for though, you’re better off saving your money. The ONLY consistently helpful and reliable expert critical review source that I’m aware of is “Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews”, so you should go over there and check out their site and their “5 Star Records” page in particular if you want a truly helpful guide to some great albums.
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|About what you’d expect,
I’m pretty much obsessed with music lists so I could talk about this book all day so to keep things fairly brief I’m just going to weigh the pros and cons of this thing.
Pros:
-There’s a ton of really great albums on here. They cover a little bit of every genre. They got psychedelic rock, hardcore punk, disco, country, funk, indie rock, hip hop, reggae, blues, jazz, etc. This list will very likely introduce you to some albums you have never heard of before that you will really like.
-Like a lot of coffee table books it’s fun just flip through this until you see something that catches your attention.
-The large size of the book is nice. The first ten albums on the list each get a whole page featuring the album cover of that album. That just by itself is pretty cool. There’s also a lot of photos of musicians and bands that take up a whole 11″ by 11″ page.
-Aside from all of the info about the albums, there’s some interesting little sections throughout the book that will focus on certain musicians, music studios, composers, and other little tidbits about the creation of some of the albums.
Cons:
-To create this list, the folks at Rolling Stone asked a lot of people in the music biz to contribute lists of their favorite albums. A list of contributors is printed in the back of the book, and I noticed that there’s not a lot of people from the world of hip hop that contributed to the list. So that means there’s really not that many hip hop and rap albums on here. And honestly, some of the rap albums they chose are ranked higher than they should be. Jay-Z ranked ahead of Nas? Three Eminem albums? The Marshall Mathers LP is the only one that really needs to be on here.
-A lot of the albums they chose for this list that are from the 90s and 2000s aren’t that hot. Maybe enough time hasn’t passed for people to realize what some of the best albums are from those decades. Coldplay, No Doubt, Moby? Those aren’t bad albums, but come on, we can do better than that.
-There’s some really great albums that I just can’t believe aren’t on the list. Where’s Endtroducing by DJ Shadow? I guess every music list is like that for everyone though.
-The list is heavily weighted in favor of the 1960s and the 70s. Those two decades make up over 60% of the entire list.
-Too many greatest hits albums. Elton John and David Bowie each have 5 albums on the list plus a greatest hits album. Most of the songs on the greatest hits are on the other albums that made the list.
-The writing could really be more in depth. Maybe when they originally printed this in RS they didn’t have so much space to work with, but now that it’s at a bigger size some of the writing in here will be ridiculous. Like they’ll just have a little paragraph about an album but it’s blown up really big to take up the space on the page. The writing that is there is always pretty interesting though.
-Also, OK Computer needs to be higher on the list. What the hell, man?
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|Earlier Editions Were MUCH Better,
The two previous versions of the RS Album Guide that I own are some of the most frequently read music books in my house. I’ve long been awaiting a new volume, since most of my listening habits started after the release of the ’92 edition, and a lot of my favorite CDs were obviously not reviewed. So it’s not as if I don’t thoroughly enjoy the content of these books. But something is wrong with this update. Maybe access to the internet has made such books obsolete- why pay this kind of money when similar and much more thorough information is available online? Or maybe I’m just not as interested in pop culture trivia as I was ten years ago. Or maybe this book just isn’t written as well as the two previous versions were. I think it’s a combination of all three, with an emphasis on the latter.
Given the diversity of popular music these days, I think that such a book like this spreads itself too thin. I’m no fan of many of the bands that other reviews have complained about being omitted from the book, but I certainly understand why a Deep Purple or Metallica fan would be upset that a book by Rolling Stone Magazine would skip them. The reviews themselves just seem…I don’t know…skimpy. Obviously you can’t give indepth reviews of every album by every artist in a book of this scope, but it seems that there was much more information in the previous editions. The reviews seem much more cynical, too- I appreciate that they albums are being reviewed from a contemporary viewpoint, but certainly my favorite classic rock records can’t have aged THAT much, can they? Also, the print is enormous in this book, making its bulk somewhat deceptive. With smaller type, the book could have either been smaller and therefore less cumbersome (and less expensive), or far more information could have been packed in on the pages. As it stands, there’s usually not more than one artist per page, yet as mentioned, the reviews seem shorter and less substantial than earlier editions. The biographical info is noticably shorter, and rarely is any album given more than one or two sentences.
And sometimes the information just seems inaccurate or misinformed. The Springsteen review dismisses Bruce’s admittedly inferior but hardly terrible work of the 90s with 2 star reviews and little justifcation. I don’t mind someone giving something a poor review even if I happen to like it, but let’s hear why they dislike it. Same way with Pink Floyd- “The Wall” is dismissed as awful (which may or may not be true), but little explanation is offered as to why such a huge album is considered at best mediocre. Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” is dismissed because it “sucks”. Well, maybe it’s not a good song, but let’s come up with something better than “sucks, which is what you’d expect to read in an average chatroom conversation. Since when has Rolling Stone pandered to such a juvenile mentality? (Wait- don’t answer that.)
The book also makes some odd factual statements, such as the blurb about Springsteen’s drummer Max Weinberg and his guitarist Steve Van Zandt having greater commercial success in the 90s than did the “solo” Springsteen. Excuse me, but what did Max or Steve record in the 90s that sold more than anything put out by Bruce? Sure, they had TV success, but that’s comparing apples and oranges. Minor point, but just seems sloppy, like criticism for criticism’s sake. And finally, the thoroughness of the discographies seems a bit inconsistent. Some lists are quite inconclusive, while other artists of the same stature and caliber have only a handful of their albums listed.
Some positives include the addition of various artists from rap and other genres. While I think trying to include them only succeeds in biting off more than it can chew, I’m glad to be able to read about significant artists that fall outside of the narrow definition of rock and roll.
So this new edition of the Album Guide was a huge disappointment. It seems like depth and quality were sacrified for the sake of sheer quantity. Intelligent writing was thrown out the window for the sake of sounding trendily cynical. At $30, save your money and use it to pay a month or two of your internet bill, or buy one of the much more comprehensive Allmusic guides. I’ll never argue that the internet can replace a good solid book, but I’ll gladly take a good website managed by a true music lover over a sloppy and juvenile work such as this one.
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|George Harrison should not have been omitted,
Milli Vanilli’s place in Rolling Stone’s Album Guide is secure. Thank God, because they definitely earned it. I’m sure tons of people are holding off on purchasing their albums until they see how many stars Rolling Stone awarded them.
But I guess recently-inducted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer George Harrison, an artist who earned a high ranking on Rolling Stone’s own list of greatest guitarist, doesn’t really warrant a few paragraphs. After all, who still listens to “All Things Must Pass” anyway?
But if you’re interested in the umpteenth live All-Starr band release from Ringo, it is rated in this guide. That’s not to say Ringo should’ve been cut, but c’mon. If Ringo’s solo career deserves recognition, I think a half-page or so could’ve been reserved for George.
I don’t want it to seem like that’s my only beef with this new edition. I was dissapointed to see that quite a few entries are basically the same as in the previous edition. These guys had 12 years, I think they could’ve done better than “70 percent” new material (that’s by their own admission in the book’s forward).
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|If you think “Dark Side of the Moon” was just OK , you found your book~!,
What a waste of a twenty spot!!!! One star is too much….
Me, I Wished I Had Checked This Out From The Library…Then I could have brought it back. Once upon a time I would look to Rolling Stone for the best in popular music record reviews. No more! Now, much like the decline of the print magazine, the record guide also sucks much more than some of the albums reviewed. I guess I would rather listen to A-ha’s second album than read this. Notable for what it leaves out, including George Harrison, Widespead Panic, NIN, Metallica and Ry Cooder, among many others. 98 Degrees and Justin Timberlake ARE included. Take your money, and buy a subscription to Paste Magazine and bookmark the all music guide web site for your record reviews.
Also, the reviewers attempts to sound hip fall flatter than a stale joke. One of these kids thinks Pink Floyd’s “the wall” sucks.
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