Top 500 Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone (2012)

pretty sweet list, beatles rule

A very "boomer" canon, with a criteria that seems to be about 50% mainstream critical consensus + 50% commercial impact. Because of that, it sometimes feels too limited in time scope, but not limited enough to be peculiar and interesting.
Still, the emphasis on rock & roll pioneers is laudable and the majority of these albums are indeed great and deserve to be celebrated.

Very Good Picks Overall. As others have pointed out, this list has far too many compilations and greatest hits which hardly qualify as good records. In addition, this is some obvious boomer sh#t because most of the music is from the 1970s (and 60s). Many complain of the overwhelming amount of Beatles records near the top of the list but I actually don't mind this so much; indeed, from 1965-1969 the Beatles arguably made some of the greatest records of all time. However, with the inclusion of pre-1965 Beatles records in the list, I agree that it becomes a tad ridiculous. In conclusion, my biggest complaint is: NOT ENOUGH JAZZ!

Sorry for this but there's too much Beatles up the top, did these reviewers sit down for coffee with Paul Mccartney? A lot of good choices for me, but the order itself seems a bit all over the place.

From Larcx13 06/17/2020 17:28

500 albums list is definitely not an easy task even for a big magazine like the Rolling Stone. This is probably the best 500 albums list I've seen. Even though I don't agree with the large amount of Beatles records in the top 10. Good to see Bob Dylan up there though. In my opinion, Highway 61 is much better than Sgt. Pepper or Pet Sounds.

Great chart to start somewhere.

From Boltzmann 03/15/2020 18:27

The thing with charts made by a lot of people is that you'll get strange results with 3 Beatles albums in the top ten, because no one can agree on which is the best Beatles album.

Correction, 4 Beatles albums (I was checking whether I had exeggerated it, quite the contrary)

Seems a little... narrow minded

From Goliath 08/31/2019 08:41

Comments for this chart seem to have disappeared, (temporary glitch I suppose). Coming back to this chart after several months I now look at it in a slightly different light. This chart is an attempt to define the musical influences and importance over the last 70 years using an odd mix of artists and albums, the compilations contain influential material but should not themselves be considered as albums and as their release dates are far later than the music they contain, distort the time composition chart. As I said before these are not the greatest albums, they are however probably the most influential. Some of them I would not even listen too as they have been superseded as other artists have further developed the sound and style. Some have commented that there are no new albums in the list, it's a hard fact that modern music is way too derivative, over-produced, computer processed and full of stupidly simple lyrics, (not that lyrics are of high importance in my view, many lyrics make no sense, they just rhyme). There has been nothing new or influential since Kid A according to Rolling Stone. I happen to think they are right. Newer albums appear on the chart simply because they are the best of a bad bunch for the latest era, (shoot me down). I know people who look upon music before the year 2000 as some kind of old-fashioned 'dad' music for old people, music they would not consider listening to because it's for old people it's not 'hip'. This is of course as ridiculous as fashion itself, the albums from the 60's, 70's etc were created by the youth of the day. So are these the 'Greatest Albums'? No, but they are the most influential are are well worth checking out.

Not gonna argue that the Beatles aren’t great, but 4 of the top 10 seems a tad excessive