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The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time

For the first time in 17 years, we’ve completely remade our list of the best songs ever. More than 250 artists, writers, and industry figures helped us choose a brand-new list full of historic favourites, world-changing anthems, and new classics

Photo Illustration by Sean McCabe. Photographs used within illustration by Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, 3; Paul Natkin/WireImage; Val Wilmer/Redferns/Getty Images; Theo Wargo/Getty Images; Jack Mitchell/Getty Images; C Flanigan/Getty Images; Scott Dudelson/Getty Images; Gie Knaeps/Getty Images; Emma McIntyre/Getty Images; Steven Nunez; STILLZ

In 2004, Rolling Stone published its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It’s one of the most widely read stories in our history, viewed hundreds of millions of times on this site. But a lot has changed since 2004; back then the iPod was relatively new, and Billie Eilish was three years old. So we’ve decided to give the list a total reboot. To create the new version of the RS 500 we convened a poll of more than 250 artists, musicians, and producers — from Angelique Kidjo to Zedd, Sam Smith to Megan Thee Stallion, M. Ward to Bill Ward — as well as figures from the music industry and leading critics and journalists. They each sent in a ranked list of their top 50 songs, and we tabulated the results.

How We Made the List and Who Voted

Nearly 4,000 songs received votes. Where the 2004 version of the list was dominated by early rock and soul, the new edition contains more hip-hop, modern country, indie rock, Latin pop, reggae, and R&B. More than half the songs here — 254 in all — weren’t present on the old list, including a third of the Top 100. The result is a more expansive, inclusive vision of pop, music that keeps rewriting its history with every beat.

From Rolling Stone US

153

Rick James, ‘Super Freak’

James was nearly done with his 1981 LP, Street Songs, when one day in the studio, he started noodling around on the bass and singing random lines like “She’s a very kinky girl.” He didn’t give it a second thought, until a bandmate told him to keep going. “Made it up on the spot,” James recalled in his memoir, Glow. “It just kinda grew out of me.” He called in the Temptations to help him sing the harmonies. “It’s not as funky as my usual stuff,” he told them. “But maybe that’ll mean white people will dance to it.” It also meant the biggest hit of his career, a Grammy winner for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, and a huge payday when MC Hammer sampled it for “U Can’t Touch This.”

152

Creedence Clearwater Revival, ‘Proud Mary’

“Proud Mary” began as a phrase in Fogerty’s three-ring-binder notebook. He didn’t know what to do with it until the day in 1968 when his honorable-discharge papers came in the mail from the Army, meaning he wouldn’t have to serve in Vietnam. He then ran into his apartment, picked up his Rickenbacker, and the song poured out of him in a state of euphoria over the course of just one hour. “I knew I had entered the land of greatness,” Fogerty wrote in his memoir, Fortunate Son. “Far above anything I had even thought about.” Two years later, Ike and Tina Turner completely reinvented the song as a funk epic.

151

The Shirelles, ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’

After a few minor Shirelles hits, Scepter Records founder Florence Greenberg asked King and Goffin to write the group a song. On the piano in Greenberg’s office, King finished a song the team had been working on. “I remember giving her baby a bottle while Carole was writing the song,” Greenberg said. Lead singer Shirley Owens initially found “Tomorrow” too countryish for the group, but Luther Dixon’s production changed her mind. King’s devotion to the song was so strong that she replaced a subpar percussionist and played kettledrum herself. With its forthright depiction of a sexual relationship, it became the first girl-group record to go Number One.