Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time 2010

404 Pages·2010·43.88 MB·English

storemags & fantamag - magazines for all
500
The
Greatest Songs
of All Time
The ultimate playlist, created by the editors
of Rolling Stone and a panel of experts
Introduction by Jay-Z
My Top 10
Brian Wilson, Kelly Clarkson, Tom Morello, Missy Elliott,
James Hetfield, ?uestlove, Slash, Solomon Burke and
Ozzy Osbourne name the songs that touched their lives.
What Makes a Great Song
The best songwriters and producers in music talk about their finest
moments, including Leiber and Stoller on “Yakety Yak,” Eddie Holland
on “Where Did Our Love Go,” Linda Perry on “Beautiful,” Max Martin
on “Since U Been Gone” and John Fogerty on “Proud Mary.”
How We Made the List
The blue-ribbon panel of writers, musicians and experts.
Index
The Rolling Stone 500 by artist.
The Numbers
The longest and shortest RS 500 songs, the oldest and newest,
and everything in between.
storemags & fantamag - magazines for all
S
E
G
A
M
Y I
T
T
E
G
/
S
N
R
E
F
D
E
R
/
K
&
K
/
R
E
EI
M
E
NI
A
R
T
E
P
Jimi Hendrix spinning
a few of his personal
favorites in London, 1967
Jann S. Wenner
editor and publisher
managing editor:Pbee=ZgZ(cid:1)executive editor: Jason Fine

editor:GZmaZg;kZ\d^mm(cid:1)art director: Joe Hutchinson
creative director:Ch]bI^\dfZg(cid:1)deputy managing editor: John Dioso
contributing editors: Alan Light, Tom Nawrocki
deputy art director:FZ\E^pbl(cid:1)senior photo editor: Sacha Lecca
copy editor:CnebZAhef^l(cid:1)research editor: Meredith Clark
production manager: Eleni Tzinakos
COVER, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RETNA UK/LANDOV; © APPLE CORPS LTD.; NEAL PRESTON/CORBIS; PLITZ/
GOODTIMES/CACHE AGENCY; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; HARRY GOODWIN/REX USA; MICHAEL
PUTLAND/RETNA; KEVIN WINTER/GETTY IMAGES. BACK COVER, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: MICHAEL OCHS
ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; PLATON/CPI; EVERETT COLLECTION; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; KEVIN
MAZUR/WIREIMAGE; ALBERT WATSON; ELLIOTT LANDY/CORBIS; MARK SELIGER/CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES
{Introduction}
by Jay-Z
A great song doesn’t attempt
to be anything – it just is.
When you hear a great song, you can think of where you were when
you first heard it, the sounds, the smells. It takes the emotions of a
moment and holds it for years to come. It transcends time. A great
song has all the key elements – melody; emotion; a strong statement
that becomes part of the lexicon; and great production. Think of
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” by Queen. That song had everything – differ-
ent melodies, opera, R&B, rock – and it explored all of those differ-
ent genres in an authentic way, where it felt natural.
When I’m writing a song that I know is going to work, it’s a feel-
ing of euphoria. It’s how a basketball player must feel when he starts
hitting every shot, when you’re in that zone. As soon as you start, you
get that magic feeling, an extra feeling. Songs like that come out in
five minutes; if I work on them more than, say, 20 minutes, they’re
probably not going to work.
When I was starting out, I was just trying to tell stories. I wasn’t
thinking about melodies. Then I started to marry storytelling with
every thing I was learning from all these other great records: the great
storemags & fantamag - magazines for all
writers like Babyface and Lionel Richie; Rakim’s technique and syn-
Chronic
copation; Dre’s whole package on the albums; Quincy Jones,
the greatest producer of all time; Rick Rubin, who’s not too far be-
hind because of all his genre-jumping.
Technology has caused the songwriting process to lose some of the
magic. A lot of times now, people working on a song aren’t in the same
room. Imagine if Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones hadn’t been in
the same room! Those records would have been totally different. I’ve
had times when I changed one word because of something that some-
body said in the studio, and it changed the whole song. It’s so impor-
tant to have other people in the room, vibing, saying, “No, this part
is good, put that there.”
I spend a lot of time fighting myself to stay out of the way of a
great song. It’s hard for me to leave a song alone, in its natural state.
I want it to have that mass appeal, but once I start trying to push it
too far, you can feel that something isn’t right. When you can hear
what a writer is trying to do, it’s like watching a dancer and seeing
him counting his steps. Music is emotional – if you’re singing that
you’re in love with somebody but it doesn’t really feel like you are,
people can tell.
Some of my best songs aren’t the biggest ones. A song like “Can I
Live” is so full of emotion to me – it was better than “Hard Knock
Life” or “Empire State of Mind,” but it lacked that accessibility.
Off the Wall
Michael Jackson’s album may not have been bigger than
Thriller,
but the songs had better melodies.
But when a phrase gets stuck in your head like a great melody and
becomes part of everyday culture, that’s when it can become some-
thing great. When your music signifies a time in the culture or contin-
ues on in everyday life, like “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”
or “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Or when something like “Bling Bling”
even makes it into the dictionary. Then you know you’ve done your job.
{1}
Like a
Rolling
Stone
BOB DYLAN
Writer: Dylan | Producer: Tom Wilson | Released: July ’65, Columbia
12 WEEKS; NO. 2
storemags & fantamag - magazines for all
Dylan recording
“Like a Rolling
Stone” in New
York in 1965
PHOTOGRAPH BY © DANIEL KRAMER
Wyman, Jones,
Jagger, Watts
and Richards
(from left) in 1965
DAVID FARRELL/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES