Rolling Stone 250

a"The 250 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century So Far": https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-songs-of-the-21st-century-1235410452/train-drops-of-jupiter-1235414778/

1

Clickbait.

The only thing all these songs have in common is they were listened to by the arbiters of this list, and probably ONLY by the arbiters of this list.

Let's be clear here, I'm taking the bait, by commenting. Yet I'm not going to quibble with the choices, BUT THE ENTIRE CONCEPT!

Which is rooted in a paradigm that's long gone.

Hell, I'd find it more interesting if it was a list of the 250 most listened songs from the 20th century! Seeing what survives!

Anyway, in the sixties, AM radio ruled. A hit was a hit, and if you were a fan of popular music, you knew them all, they were all on your local AM Top Forty station.

And then along came album rock and FM. Suddenly it wasn't about the single, but the entire body of work. What an act stood for, what they had to say. And in the sixties, the album rockers were still one step removed, off to the side.

But in the seventies, the script flipped. AM became a backwater. Cracks me up when people reference Top Forty hits from the seventies. All the action was on the FM dial, with AOR, which dominated. And so much money came raining down... Because albums cost more than singles and if you were a fan of the album, you were much more likely to buy a ticket to see the act, and then...

Corporate rock and disco came along and imploded the entire marketplace. Let's be clear, Boston was never corporate rock, and that initial album stands up to this day. But there became a formula, repeated endlessly with little artistic merit. Ditto on disco. There were some great early disco tracks, but then everybody got into the market and released tripe and...

Everything was moribund until MTV came along in the eighties to save the recording industry. It was about single hits once again. Which you could only get by buying the entire album.

The roots of the music took a back seat to how you looked, how good your video was. Those were the price of admission, and if you didn't tick those boxes, good luck.

And the labels LOVED this system. Because it was clearly defined. If you got on MTV you had a hit, and the new Top Forty stations on the FM dial took their playlist from MTV and with the introduction of the expensive CD, cash was plentiful. That's an understatement, the labels were rolling in dough, getting the acts to take low royalties on CDs to grow the format and never raising them.

And as rock started to become stale, with the hair bands, hip-hop came along to usurp the crown, being much more earthy and honest than the rock music of the day.

But in the nineties... Rock had a resurgence with indie labels. And this is where the action with rock remains... Off the radar screen. Acts who have an audience, can sell some tickets, but use their records as a blueprint at most. They don't focus on singles because they know there's nowhere for them in the singles marketplace. Which was terrestrial radio and is now the Spotify Top 50. Where you've got to appeal to a large group, the younger and more undeveloped the better, who will stream your tracks ad infinitum and give the impression that everybody is listening to them.

But they're not.

2

Now this "Rolling Stone" list does a halfway decent job of cherry-picking from all genres, although there are a lot of touring acts, mostly playing rock-based music, that are not represented. However, unless you're a fan of the Spotify Top 50, which the major labels are, which the press is, because it's comprehensible, you're going to read this list and get PISSED! Because the other genres are only paid lip-service, the listings are far from comprehensive.

If you're a fan of country music, which is bigger than ever, and has always focused on careers, you're going to be scratching your head wondering where all your favorites are. Yes, there's a track by Jason Isbell, more Americana than regular country, and Eric Church...good, but I don't see any Luke Bryan... "Play It Again" is a better song than at least half of the list, a lot of which is rhythm based, sans melody. But that's too mainstream for these wanker rankers.

Pick any genre you want... Metal, Latin... This smorgasbord pays lip service AT BEST! It's a complete misrepresentation of today's marketplace. Which is extremely diverse, and rarely comes together.

Morgan Wallen plays stadiums... What has he got in common with Taylor Swift or Beyoncé who plays the same places? NOTHING! Other than hit records in their formats. Sure, there are some people who like them all, but they're more like the brain dead fans listening to AM hits in the late sixties and seventies when all the action was over on the FM dial.

Let's go one step further... Today's music market is INCOMPREHENSIBLE!

In the old, pre-internet days, those in the industry knew every record on the chart. Now that's impossible, there's just too much. And sure, a lot of it is crap, but not all of it.

Meanwhile, all this focus on the Spotify Top 50 is doing a disservice to the marketplace in general. Rüfüs Du Soul plays the Rose Bowl... It'd be more interesting if the press made non-fans aware of success in other genres. But it's Spotify Top 50 all the time.

And the labels kind of like this, because they don't know how to break a record. Best to have defined formats/genres, so they can aim only for the Spotify Top 50, working the acts signed to their labels and overpaying for that which breaks on social media.

The whole construct is broken. It's a self-serving circle jerk. The major labels want it to be the way it always was, AND IT'S NOT! It's kind of like Napster... Who'd want anything but a CD? Why download music? How did that work out! And as far as people not wanting to pay for music...that was because the labels couldn't adjust their business model to offer what the customer wanted. Daniel Ek did this. And saved the recording industry.

Since we live in a Tower of Babel society, with all of us listening to different music, overriding enemies who touch everybody become the focus. Like Ticketmaster. Like Daniel Ek. As for those complaining that ticket prices are too high...only because everybody wants to pay the freight to go to the show! As for Daniel Ek... I'm still waiting for an explanation why those whose music isn't listened to should make a living as a result of streaming. That's a nonstarter... That's like saying you make bespoke, overpriced potholders and you want to make as much as the mass producer. That doesn't work in any other industry.

But I don't want to lose the plot here.

Taylor Swift set a record...based on vinyl, but other than Taylor and her team, who is impressed? Those who don't listen to her music?

That's how far we've come. The press is for those who don't care.

Where is all the K-pop on this list? That's a huge market. You may not want to listen to it, and that's fine...but the soundtrack from "KPop Demon Hunters" dominated the marketplace and...

Lists like this do a disservice. They perpetuate a myth. That we're one cohesive market. The question is how do we GROW the market, which depends on driving people to music in other genres they might enjoy that don't get the press, are not focused on as we hear endlessly about the Spotify Top 50 and their brand extensions.

Then again, who in the hell is reading "Rolling Stone"? It's a brand name and nothing more. Almost all of its content is behind a paywall, and most people are not paying.

Then again, that's one thing Apple News+ ("Rolling Stone" is included) has taught us. That all of the old school media outlets are fighting for attention via clickbait headlines. There's no there there.

I'd rather hear from TikTok users what their favorites are rather than these self-satisfied "writers."

Movie critics no longer matter. Rock criticism is dead. What makes you think you can recapture a past glory when the world has changed and no one cares? If I want to take the pulse of America, I go to TikTok. You might not like it, but there's more truth there than there is in almost all of the remnants of magazines from the last century.

There is good new music. The problem is not that it's not making enough money, but that potential fans can't find it.

Hell, you could look at this list and not only hate so much of the hit fodder, but not even recognize, never mind having heard, the entries!

That was impossible in the AM Top Forty mid-sixties and the MTV eighties, but that's where we are today.

CAN WE AT LEAST ADMIT IT?


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