The best songs of all time isn’t your high school playlist

Music taste is subjective and I would like to say, subjectively, Rolling Stone’s ‘Top 500 songs of all time’ sucks.

I listen to a lot of different music, I have a song that is completely in German on my playlist because I like how it sounds. I listen to Claire de lune which is completely classical and then turn around and listen to Montero or Garth Brooks. Within the last week I bought Olivia Rodrigo’s album on vinyl and set it next to my The Mamas and the Papas record. 

I’m about 90% sure within the last three sentences I’ve created a better range of music than what’s included in the list from the Rolling Stone.

Arguments could be made that the list caters towards Gen Z and Millenials, but even those groups have asked where the heck Rolling Stone got this list. 

I looked for the answer and found that they polled artists, songwriters, producers, journalists, Rolling Stone staff, and industry members. 

Asking these people should make sense, you’d think they should have the best taste or understanding of what makes good music. However, the question they were asked was in my opinion heavily flawed. 

The people polled were asked to give a ranked ballot that listed their 50 favorite songs of all time. The question should have been what they were trying to find:

What are the best songs of all time? 

If I were asked for my favorite songs it would include whatever I was listening to a lot right now. I might mention something by Olivia Rodrigo or Cassie Dasilva or even Conan Gray. 

If you asked me about the best songs of all time, my answers would be completely different. While I love finding new music, new doesn’t equal the best or even better than other songs. 

I don’t blame the respondents for this awful list. 

I think if they were asked the question that their responses were going to be used for, the list would have looked a lot different. 

Starting with the fact that ‘Hey Ya!’ by OutKast wouldn’t have been number ten. 

I can think of ten Beatles songs that are more skillfully composed than ‘Hey Ya!’. If not ten songs by the Beatles I could easily find ten musicians with songs better than it to fill the top ten. 

I like “Hey Ya!’ but the fact that it’s on the list – let alone over 400 – is just poor taste. 

There are a ton of other songs that should be on the list. The list featured no classical songs, barely any country songs (which includes no Alan Jackson, George Strait, Reba, Garth Brooks or a ton of other country artists that I think created songs better than ‘Hey Ya!’), very few songs that have any significance for other cultures and other categories that go completely unrepresented. (But don’t worry every single 90s song that I’ve never heard of made it!)

Which is just another issue with this list, it only caters to Americans and then still misses. 

The list completely ignores classical music, which I get isn’t super popular, but it’s supposed to be the best songs of all time. 

You’re gonna look at me and tell me that you could come up with some of the super complicated classical music that’s out there. 

If you can props to you, I’d love to hear it but I doubt it’s as good as the songs from Mozart or other composers that have been popular for hundreds of years. If you’re going to make a list and be bold enough to call it the top 500 songs of all time, then you need to step up and look a little further than the coast line for opinions. 

Or, hey, there’s always asking the question that you plan on printing.