Rolling Stone’s discards – how political are they?

Although always sceptical thereof because of having read Joe S. Harrington’s Top 100 Albums and David Keenan’s The Best Albums Ever...Honest in the early 2000s, I have always loved lists of bests and worsts, and albums have been a natural face of this tendency ever since I read Harrington for the first time.

Former amazon.com writer “janitor-x” introduced me to Rolling Stone’s original 500 Greatest Albums from a very critical perspective in the middle 2000s, and I have since viewed this and most other professional lists in a very negative manner. That has not meant I have lost interest in these lists – comparing lists has always been of interest to me.

The criticisms of Rolling Stone’s earlier 500 Greatest Albums lists were many and varied. Danny A. Vogel argued the list took no account of the genuine underground history of rock, whilst “janitor-x” viewed Rolling Stone as a purely pop magazine trying to base its selections upon politics and relevance to Boomer hippie culture. In “janitor-x”’s view, a pop magazine must base its charts purely upon sales.

Whilst the 2012 revision was minor, for 2020 Rolling Stone made a variety of major revisions:

1. increasing the number of albums since 2000 to 86
2. a radical change of the top 50 to reduce the dominance of the Beatles and Bob Dylan
3. a major emphasis on music viewed as relevant to the Millennial Generation (born since about 1980)
4. a major effort to expand the presence of black and female artists on this list
   

On the Internet – mainly on YouTube – I have recently been devouring criticism of Rolling Stone’s updated 500 Greatest Albums. The majority of reaction is undoubtedly unfavourable, and often downright critical. The common argument – somewhat echoing “janitor-x” from fifteen years ago – is that Rolling Stone’s list essentially reflects the taste of left-wing “social justice warriors” (commonly known as SJWs), or musical affirmative action for blacks and women.

There is also widespread criticism of omitted artists present in 2012 and 2003. Having made a table comparing various best-albums list as an .xlsx file, I added all the albums from Rolling Stone’s 2020 list to compare with its 2012 one. Once I began studying YouTube and Reddit assessments of the new Top 500, I began asking myself to what extent Rolling Stone’s discarded artists reflect the musical preferences of those politically opposed to Rolling Stone – working- and middle-class white Americans. To do this, I:

1. tabulated all the artists who were unrepresented in the 2020 list but had been represented in 2012
1. this tabulation was approximately in chronological order of their earliest album on the 2012 list (some exceptions were made for compilations)
   
2. categorized these artists by genre to see if they belonged to a genre typically associated with working- and middle-class whites. Genres associated with working- and middle-class whites include:
   
1. heavy metal
2. hard rock
3. heartland rock
4. punk excluding art-punk
5. country and country-rock
3. added other details of individual artists’ religious and political views if they would have affected whether Rolling Stone might have discarded them for political reasons
4. added a green background for artists clearly not discarded for political reasons
5. added a brown background for artists who may have been discarded for political reasons
1. in this group, three shades of orange were used for the text in order of increasing likelihood of politics being behind Rolling Stone’s discarding of the artist in question
   

My results are tabulated below:

Artist	Approximate category	Comments
Little Walter	Early blues artist
Bobby Bland	Early blues artist
Howling Wolf	Early blues artist
John Lee Hooker	Early blues artist
Phil Spector	Pop
Stan Getz and João Gilberto	Pop
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Jackie Wilson	Early soul artist
John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers	Early blues artist
Frank Zappa/The Mothers of Invention		His satirical tendencies make him a possible target for big-city Millennials, as satire was popular with poor whites
Albert King	Early blues artist
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band	College/hippie music	May have been removed due to the unavailability of Trout Mask Replica on streaming services.
Moby Grape	College/hippie music
The Drifters	Pop
Boz Scaggs	Pop
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Carpenters	Pop
Neil Diamond	Pop
Linda Ronstadt	Pop/Country	By genre a possible target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennials, especially as she performed in apartheid South Africa
Alice Cooper	Hard rock/metal	As a Republican and Christian a certain target for Rolling Stone and for big city Millennial critics
Jethro Tull
Mott The Hoople	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
ZZ Top	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Professor Longhair	Early blues artist
The O‘Jays	1970s soul
War	1970s soul
Jackson Browne	Singer/songwriter	A possible target as a standard white rocker, but political sentiments in 1980s make this less likely
Barry White	1970s soul
Gram Parsons	Country	By genre and Christian sentiments (read Bill Kaufmann) a certain target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennial critics
LaBelle	1970s soul
Cheap Trick	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Steve Miller Band		A quite possible target as a standard white rocker, and much more likely so than Browne
Bee Gees	Pop
Meatloaf	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Graham Parker and the Rumour	College/hippie music
Public Image Limited	College/hippie music
Echo and the Bunnymen	College/hippie music
Eurythmics	Pop
Jesus and Mary Chain	College/hippie music
The Pogues		Their punk and Irish leanings make them a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
Steve Earle	Country	By genre a likely target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics, although politics should reduce this
Def Leppard	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big city Millennial critics
EPMD	Rap	Surprising omission give Millennial focus on rap and the left-wing politics of the genre
Jane’s Addiction	College/hippie music Hard rock/metal	Although to a large extent a college band, their metal links make them a possible target
Don Henley	Pop
Soundgarden	Hard rock/metal	By genre a quite possible target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennial critics
Moby	College/hippie music
My Morning Jacket		Some genre labels do suggest a possible target for Rolling Stone and big-city Millennial critics
MGMT	College/hippie music

Of the fifty omitted artists, about a dozen (circa 25 percent) do seem to seriously reflect the political polarisation of modern America, in coming from genres that are perceived to be consumed by working-class whites supportive of a far-right Republican Party that over the past half-century has created systematic social injustice towards black Americans.

Eight omitted artists fall approximately into the category of “college music” or, for earlier bands, hippie music. Although these tended to share the left-wing politics of urban millennials – who, opinion polls suggest, may prefer even Stalinism to capitalism – they differ in being much less confrontational than the ghetto blacks who form the core audience for rap. Although rappers were never so critical of hippie culture as punks and metal artists frequently were – no doubt because hippie culture was never relevant for blacks – I do not see the natural compatibility between them tacitly assumed by “janitor-x”. “Peace and love” are opposite to the ideals of (most) rap, which are based upon brutal confrontation with the ruling class.

Another eight omitted artists fall into the category of “pop” – highly popular artists who did not make a single important musical innovation and who have lost cultural significance. Interestingly, as many as eleven omitted artists are black, something that contradicts popular claims of affirmative action. Except for rappers EPMD, all of these achieved their reputations before the “punk revolution”.

Alongside the omitted pop artists – all of whom come from before the original Bush Senior Era rap revolution – the omission of ten pre-punk black artists does support the claim that Rolling Stone’s primary reason for updating its 500 Greatest Albums was to become relevant to Millennials, rather than politics. Nevertheless, it should not be assumed that relevance to the Millennial Generation is necessarily a purer motive than promoting left-wing politics – something “janitor-x” has seen as always fundamental to Rolling Stone.