Almost two decades ago, the prestigious Rolling Stone magazine published a dizzying, and not without controversy, list of the “500 best songs in history .” In that list appeared many well-known groups and bands that, due to their global repercussion, quality and unanimity from the critics, deserved to be remembered forever.
This 2021, the magazine itself has dared to update that list with the new “500 best songs in history” that adapt to the new times, although there are surprises in which they form the top 10 of the list.
In this new conception of the list, more than 250 artists, musicians and producers have participated, as well as critics and specialized journalists who managed to agree to update this material.
According to the magazine itself, each participant in the voting sent a list with their 50 best songs of all time, making a huge carousel of songs that totaled 4,000 . Among these results, the new list of the 500 best of all time came out.
Top 10
The leaders of Rolling Stone themselves announced that it is a more inclusive list, “the result is a broader and more inclusive vision of pop, music that continues to rewrite its history with each beat .” In this we find mainly hip-hop, pop-rock, indie, reggae or R&B, which are still the most listened to music styles today.
A curious note is to see how, among those 500 most relevant songs in history, we only find three in Spanish and one in Portuguese. The rest are songs in English, and mostly released in the United States. Therefore, the list must be taken with a certain vision from where it is made.
Of the ten that make up the top 10, eight are classics that were written in the 20th century, and only two are themes that are already entering the early years of the 21st century:
- Respect, de Aretha Franklin (1967)
- Fight the power, de Public Enemy (1989)
- A change is gonna come, de Sam Cooke (1964)
- Like a rolling stone, de Bob Dylan (1965)
- Smells like a teen spirit, de Nirvana (1991)
- What’s going on, de Marvin Gaye (1971)
- Strawberry fields forever, de The Beatles (1967)
- Get ur freak on, de Missy Elliott (2001)
- Dreams, de Fleetwood Mac (1977)
- Hey ya!, de Outkasst (2003)
Highlights include the top 10 of ‘Satisfaction’ by The Rolling Stones, ‘Imagine’ by John Lenon, ‘Hey Jude’ by the Beatles or ‘Johnny B. Goode’ by Chuck Berry . And it is that this new ranking has been updated a lot in its top ten in history, with Aretha Franklin in the first position, unseating Bod Dylan and his ‘Like a rolling Stone’, -the first song on the list in 2004- until the fourth place.
The first song in Spanish is found in position 50 with ‘Gasolina’ by Daddy Yankee.
