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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

306

Aretha Franklin, ‘Chain of Fools’

One of five indelible Top 10 smashes Franklin cranked out in 1967, “Chain of Fools” was written by Don Covay, who was inspired by his memories of seeing field hands at work while growing up in South Carolina. He showed it to producer Jerry Wexler, who thought it would be good for Franklin. When something didn’t feel quite finished about the recording, Wexler played it for Brill Building songwriter Ellie Greenwich, who came up with a second background vocal, and sang it herself. As engineer Tom Dowd later recalled, “It came to life.”

305

The Police, ‘Every Breath You Take’

For their biggest hit, the Police went back to basics, junking an elaborate synth part that distracted from the song’s hypnotic bass line in favor of a lick that guitarist Andy Summers recorded in one live take. Sting admitted that the lyrics — which sounded tender but were actually bitter — were pulled from the rock & roll cliché handbook. “‘Every Breath You Take’ is an archetypal song,” he told Rolling Stone. “If you have a major chord followed by a relative minor, you’re not original.”

304

Kraftwerk, ‘Trans-Europe Express’

The German group’s hymn to the electronic future reveled in repetition, exerting a huge influence on early hip-hop (see Afrika Bambaata’s “Planet Rock”) and dance music; David Bowie was an avowed fan of the group’s “singular determination to stand apart from stereotypical American chord sequences.” But even while changing the pop landscape, Kraftwerk kept dreaming of the future. “Trans-Europe Express was done with huge machinery,” Ralf Hütter said in 1991. “We’re still carrying a lot of weight from city to city. We’re dreaming of carrying a briefcase from place to place with a laptop.”

303

TLC, ‘No Scrubs’

TLC’s impassioned assertion of their material and romantic must-haves pissed off sensitive men so much that one group of them wrote, recorded, and distributed a response track called “No Pigeons.” TLC released two versions of the song to capture as many radio formats as they could, one without Left Eye’s rap verse and one with, and in turn, the song, all confidence and attitude, became ubiquitous. “Guys started checking themselves, like, ‘Am I a scrub?’” DMV-area DJ Face recalled. “You had to really think.”

302

Pink Floyd, ‘Wish You Were Here’

Despite sky-high band tensions during the recording of the Floyd’s 1975 album, Wish You Were Here, Roger Waters and David Gilmour were able to come together for its title track, an elegy for burned-out ex-frontman Syd Barrett. During the recording, Barrett mysteriously appeared in the studio in such bad shape that, at first, nobody in the band recognized him. “He stood up and said, ‘Right, when do I put my guitar on?’” keyboardist Rick Wright recalled. “And, of course, he didn’t have a guitar with him. And we said, ‘Sorry, Syd, the guitar’s all done.’”

301

Bob Seger, ‘Night Moves’

Seger spent the first decade of his career building up a loyal base of rock aficionados thanks to his high-energy live show, but it wasn’t until “Night Moves” that mainstream audiences followed. That’s because the nostalgic tale of fumbling, innocent teenage love was relatable to most everyone who caught it on the radio, bringing Seger his first of many Top 10 hits that would arrive over the next decade. “It still has the exact meaning it’s always had for me,” Seger said in 1994. “The freedom and looseness I had during high school.”