The Most Popular Music in History
Some Views on the Best Music, Tracks, Albums and Songs Ever Produced
Jun 25, 2009
What is the best track ever written, or what is the best album of all time? These, and others like them, are questions that have exercised peoples' minds ever since music developed in the earliest stages of human development. They have also been at the root of many of the arguments that have characterised the generation gap in the period since the invention of the teenager and the birth of pop music.
Magazines, television shows and now websites love lists of 'the best of', not least because they fill space relatively cheaply and are loved by thei readers. Here are just a few of those lists of the best music ever.
The Rolling Stone Best Albums of All Time
Rolling Stone is one of the most respected music papers of the last 50 years and ran a poll of its readers to try to determine what was the best album of all time. The results produced some surprises but included some really great music including five albums by The Beatles.
Here is the top 20 of the Rolling Stone top 500 albums of all time.
- Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles
- Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
- Revolver, The Beatles
- Highway 61 Revisited, Bob Dylan
- Rubber Soul, The Beatles
- What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye
- Exile on Main Street, The Rolling Stones
- London Calling, The Clash
- Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan
- The White Album, The Beatles
- The Sun Sessions, Elvis Presley
- Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
- The Velvet Underground and Nico, The Velvet Underground
- Abbey Road, The Beatles
- Are You Experienced?, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
- Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
- Nevermind, Nirvana
- Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
- Astral Weeks, Van Morrison
- Thriller, Michael Jackson.
What can be clearly seen here is the audience demographic for the Rolling Stone readership. Established in 1967 but coming to national and international prominence in the early 1970s with its political coverage of US elections by, amongst others, Hunter S Thompson, the magazine's readers have clearly stayed with it over the years. Over half of the tracks belong to the 60s generation, with two representing the music that preceded and influenced it. Only two albums are post-1978.
The Bestsongsever.com Website
The development of the internet has allowed easier collection of information about people’s favourite music. One such site, www.besteversongs.com has come up with a list of the best ever songs and here’s the top 20.
- Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
- Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin
- Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
- Imagine, John Lennon
- Hotel California, The Eagles
- Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd
- Hey Jude, The Beatles
- Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
- All Along the Watchtower, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
- A Day in the Life, The Beatles
- Sweet Child O’ Mine, Guns N’ Roses
- Sultans of Swing, Dire Straits
- Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd
- Nothing Else Matters, Metallica
- Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
- Light My Fire, The Doors
- Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
- (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones
- Let it Be, The Beatles
- November Rain, Guns N’ Roses
The besteversongs.com list also demonstrates a nostalgic tendency with a combination of 1960s classics tempered by a smattering of the later rock which flowed from the psychedelic era without ever being part of it. It shows that despite the potential for a wider spread of audience for general internet-based polls rather than those associated with a specific publication, this is not a necessary consequence.
The Everyhit List
One other way of trying to decide what is the best ever song is to use surveys undertaken by other people and the website everyhit.com has done just that, scouring the lists of best ever music to compile a best of best of lists of songs. As might be expected, this list comprises a wider selection of music and artists, but the selection is still only slightly wider, remaining focused around the classic pop music of the 1960s.
Their compilation list has the following top 20.
- Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
- Imagine, John Lennon
- Angels, Robbie Williams
- Hey Jude, The Beatles
- Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana
- Live Forever, Oasis
- Wonderwall, Oasis
- One, U2
- Bitter Suite Symphony, Verve
- With or Without You, U2
- Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, The Beatles
- Good Vibrations, The Beachboys
- Losing My Religion, REM
- Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan
- God Only Knows, The Beach Boys
- Everybody Hurts, REM
- Waterloo Sunset, The Kinks
- Don’t Look Back in Anger, Oasis
- A White Shade of Pale, Procol Harum
- Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin.
So, What is the Best Ever Music of All Time?
There are almost as many lists of best ever music out there as there are songs and the listener can select the one they want to validate their own taste in music as being the best. To paraphrase the concluding words from the cult TV series The Naked City, there are a million lists of the best ever music out there. This has been one of them.
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