Rolling Stone reimagines its 500 Best Albums of All Time list with 240 new additions

Almost half of the iconic list has been changed in its latest reimagining.
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Rolling Stone has updated its popular 500 Best Albums of All Time list, with 154 albums replaced with new titles in the iconic countdown.

The list, which is one of the most revered albums rankings ever, was first published in 2003 and had a slight update in 2012. Rolling Stone reports that the RS 500 has had over 63 million views on their website. 

Reimagining the list from scratch, almost half (240) of the albums are different from the original 2003 version. 86 of the records were released this century, and 154 are older albums that have since been deemed classics.

MORE: The UK's best-selling albums of all time

New albums added to the 500 list include Taylor Swift’s Red, Adele’s 21, Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, Maad City, Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head, Daddy Yankee’s Barrio Fino, Shania Twain’s Come on Over, Sonic Youth’s Goo, and Harry Styles’ Fine Line. View full list here.

To create the new rundown, Rolling Stone tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures, including Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish; Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, Stevie Nicks, and Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman.

A new podcast series accompanies the updated list, starting with an indepth look at 10 albums with rich back stories. Each episode will feature interviews with the artists, musicians and producers involved in the record.

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Christopher Metivier

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Gosh, some of you take yourselves so serious. What makes any of you scholars on music? Music is art and all art is subject to different points of view. I wonder how many of the albums that some of you don't think belong on the list are actually albums that you've listened to??? By the way...WHO CARES??? It's just for fun, isn't it? Write your own list and you'll find people won't like it either. No way that any list is ever going to please everyone.

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Nabz

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Where's The Stone Rose's gone? One of the best British albums ever made.

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Karl Culer

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Who gives a flying what this magazine thinks. About as relevant as that ridiculous Hall of fame . Self serving, self important business.

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Jacob Lavigne-Ippersiel

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such an obvious attempt at pleasing social justice warriors...

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Shawn

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Yes, this is lowering standards to the lowest common denominator to please those so-called "culture warriors" who judge the merits of music based on who made it or what group those who made it belong to and not artistic merit. Rewarding mediocrity/idiocy and those who create toxic culture brings down not only our culture as a whole but those groups that they pretend to serve.

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Jacob Lavigne-Ippersiel

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I think you're my dad

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Shawn

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Thanks man, that cracked me up. Your dad sounds like someone I'd hang out with.

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Jacob Lavigne-Ippersiel

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I mean I've been trying to explain this on the internet but every time I do, people just start attacking me personally, going on my profile trying to find thing to diminish my opinion, even though I don't attack anyone and just state my opinion that music is not as good as it once was. There was a time when people were massively buying and listening to the Beatles and Queen and bands who pushed the limits of music and recording, and now they massively buy Taylor Swift and other manufactured pop material, that can't be good for musical evolution. It tells record companies to keep investing on instant reward pop music over real artists

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Shawn

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I am impressed Jacob. Social media and the internet bring out the worst in many people especially those who are the most childish and thus would listen to the most childish music. It is sad that so many people have been infantilized by, as you call it, "instant reward pop music." Infantilization is pervasive all through our society as most of the biggest mass music, movies, etc become lower level, more base, cartoonish and childish every year. Just look at the prevalence of names that include things like BIG, Lil', Baby, etc. Even our political discourse and many of our political and thought leaders have become infantilized. I'm glad that you recognize the new ground that even massively popular bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Queen, Supertramp, Moody Blues, Black Sabbath, Yes, Genesis, CSNY, etc broke by incorporating many different styles of music, experimenting with different states of mind/mood, instruments, sophisticated melodies/harmonies, etc into a cohesive sound with raw emotion mixing quite often with lyrics about personal, political, cultural and spiritual evolution/development/enlightenment. They challenged us to read Burroughs, Tolkien, Leary, Orwell, Huxley, Byron, Lovecraft, Ram Dass, etc. That is the opposite of most modern pop (with it's uber simplistic melodic structures & lyrics) and most (not all) of the mass appeal rap music which (not only lacks much in the way of musicality but often uses developmentally disabled language/spelling), instead of seeking to inspire and bring people up, dumb people down and bring out the most childish, narcissistic, base, anti-intellectual, violent, egocentric nature of humanity. Perhaps, the find that I find the worst is the lack of any shred of authenticity. So many laughably bad posers. I do like many modern bands but not the mass appeal stuff.

Anyway, sorry to be so longwinded. Thanks for speaking your truth to those sick souls and I'm sorry that they find unethical ways of attacking you. When they can't beat you intellectually, they go low. Keep speaking your truth and don't let them bring you down.

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Nu No

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WTF is that list? Rolling Stone lost their minds for good? They put 2 Beyoncé albums inside the TOP 100 of all time? Sorry to her fans but those albums shouldn't even be TOP 500. Yet none from Madonna inside the TOP 100 (despite being biggest influence of all time in female artists worldwide). "Confessions on a Dancefloor" is not even on this TOP 500 list despite being critically aclaimed and being the album that by far went to #01 in most countries official charts worldwide (and also having the song "Hung Up" that also holds the record for getting to #01 in most countries official charts) - despite that without that album there would not exist over a dozen important others dance albums, including the new Dua Lipa album. At least 300 albums there should not be TOP 500 and a lot of Amazing albums are missing. Rolling Stone magazine have been buyest more and more and the past decade but this time got to a new peak when albums that have no reason to be TOP 500 are even inside the TOP 50. If not it's just a few people that work there personal taste: RIDICULOUS to say the least.

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Shawn

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Yes, Madonna was uber influential and the most successful solo female artist of all time but didn't receive her due. There is no way to justify Beyonce's placing so high on here. Neither did George Michael get his due. "Older" is an absolute masterpiece that was a huge hit in the rest of the world but was largely ignored in the US after he came out. What about Frank Sinatra? Elton John, the biggest selling act of the 1970's. Crosby Stills and Nash's first album defined the 70's sound for at least the first half of the decade yet was way down the list. The Moody Blues' "Days Of Future Passed" virtually created progressive rock while King Crimson's "Court Of The Crimson King" defined it. How could the Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" not be in the top 400 when it, along with Sgt Pepper, defined not only the Summer Of Love but psychedelic music for years to come?

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Shawn

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The good news is that in 20 years, no one will be remembering much of the garbage that was added. It will sound like some of the cheesiest, most embarrassing 1980's stuff sounds now while the classics will still be classics as they have already shown their staying power as many regularly still chart today. I mean, listening to Kanye West is something no one wants to admit to doing these days but in 20 years, he'll be even more of a joke.

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Shawn

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Rolling Stone has lost all credibility when they put so much imbecilic, third grade poetry from rap non-artists up there. And all of the dreadful commercial garbage. Not only is Dark Side Of The Moon not in the top 50, not a single Pink Floyd record in the top 50? Sgt. Pepper Not in the top 20? The only thing that I can agree on is Pet Sounds being at number 2. Rolling Stone has given up all of it's countercultural credentials and caved in to the uptight, commercial, politically correct mob who want to rewrite history.

Of course, what should we expect when RS had people like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Gene Simmons, Raekwon, etc. as well as many other "luminaries" (I use that term loosely as they in actuality are much more dim than luminous at least in terms of wit and taste) of the modern music biz. The same cats that gave us the "millenial whoop" and drove the music industry into the ground.

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Nu No

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You are so right! This list is TOTAL FAKE! Places were bought or it's just a dozen people that work there personal taste. We can also say the list is AMERICAN as it only lists Albums that were extremely successful in US when released and keep being catalog sellers (even if those artists have much better works that didn't sell so well there despite causing more impact on the future of music and society).

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Shawn

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I'm glad that you agree about the list. Good point about it being so American. I found it extremely biased against UK, Euro and other non-US artists. There was an agenda besides music to this list.