This is why I refused to renew my subscription last month. As if I need a huge magazine filled with lists and lists of useless information. No thank you.
Rolling Stone magazine list just latest of the ‘greatest’
THE WASHINGTON POST
Rolling Stone has published a special collectors issue titled “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
Actually, “All Time” turns out to be “the rock ‘n’ roll era.” A panel of distinguished savants – including Joni Mitchell, Ozzy Osbourne and Jello Biafra – voted for their favorite songs, and the accounting firm of Ernst & Young tabulated the votes. And the greatest song of all time is (drumroll, please) . . .
“Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan!
Following close behind are “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, “Imagine” by John Lennon and –
Wait a minute! Hold it right there. Didn’t Rolling Stone do this same thing last year?
No, it just seems that way. Last year, Rolling Stone published “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” And in 2002, it published “Readers Poll Results: 100 Greatest Albums of All Time.” Which came out six months after “The 50 Coolest Albums of All Time.”
Meanwhile, this year RS has published a cover story on great rock musicians – “The Immortals: 50 Greatest of All Time” – and a special issue of rock photographs – “The 50 Greatest Portraits and the Stories Behind Them.”
All of this raises some questions: Is Rolling Stone becoming a nostalgia magazine for aging baby boomers? Or is rock ‘n’ roll a dying art form that isn’t producing new music worth writing about? Or both?
Only 82 of RS’s 500 greatest songs were recorded after 1980.