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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

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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

257

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, ‘Heat Wave’

The Motown empire really got going in 1963, and the record that underlined the label’s ascent was this buoyant summertime smash: “It became the song that summer,” Reeves recalled. No surprise that it came from the company’s premiere writer-producer team, Holland-Dozier-Holland — who, gearing up for world domination with the Supremes, worked with their audience in mind: “I realized that females bought the most records, and they always seemed to be falling in love with somebody,” Eddie Holland said in 2019.

256

Metallica, ‘Master of Puppets’

Metallica have always been at their best when they’re raging against confinement, whether that’s institutional, governmental, religious, familial, or — in arguably the greatest song, on their greatest album — chemical. “‘Master of Puppets’ deals pretty much with drugs,” Hetfield once said of this eight-and-a-half-minute masterwork. “How things get switched around, instead of you controlling what you’re taking and doing, it’s drugs controlling you.” Sung from the perspective of the narcotic itself, the song moves from merciless thrash to a mournful ballad interlude, simulating the perilous highs and crushing lows of a life lived at the end of addiction’s strings.

255

Loretta Lynn, ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’

In the late Sixties, many country singers stopped wearing overalls and skirts and changed into suits and gowns, which reflected the music’s transformation into the more elegant and urbane style known as the Nashville Sound. In 1970, Lynn turned that trend on its end with an autobiographical song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” that celebrated rural life, in all its difficulties. She wrote it on a $17 guitar that refused to stay in tune, singing about reading the Bible by coal-oil light, going without shoes in summer, her mother’s hands bleeding from hard work. “Every word is true,” she later said.

254

The Supremes, ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’

Lamont Dozier of Motown’s famed Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team came up with the idea for “Stop! In the Name of Love” after his girlfriend at the time caught him cheating in a motel: “This particular girl was very headstrong,” he recalled. “So we got into an argument. She started swinging, missed me, hit the floor. And I laughed and said, ‘Please stop! Stop in the name of love.’” The silliness of the moment stopped the fight, and immediately struck Dozier as song material, and after affixing it to a killer Brian Holland hook, it became the Supremes’ fourth of five straight Number Ones.

253

Willie Nelson, ‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain’

The simplicity of this 1947 composition by Fred Rose made it the perfect vehicle for Nelson, who was then working on his ambitious concept album Red Headed Stranger. “I was gathering songs that I thought told that story. And I just thought that ‘Blue Eyes’ was the perfect song for that spot,” Nelson said. “Simple and to the point. Beautiful, sad love song.” The track marked a turning point for Nelson, whose career at the time was still mostly defined by the lush production style of Nashville in the Sixties. After nearly two decades of trying, it became his first country Number One hit as a singer.

252

Parliament, ‘Flash Light’

“Flash Light” is the P-Funk Nation’s groove manifesto. Clinton built his Parliament-Funkadelic universe over a run of Seventies concept albums, never faking the funk. “We’re going to get the message out,” Clinton told Rolling Stone in 1978. “We want to put the show on Broadway — tell the story straightforward so people understand that funk mean funk.” “Flash Light” became one of their rare crossover hits, laying out the P-Funk philosophy, with Clinton commanding “Dance, sucker!” over Worrel’s bass line (played on a Moog synth). It all builds up to the orgiastic party chant “Everybody’s got a little light under the sun!”

251

Gloria Gaynor, ‘I Will Survive’

By the mid-Seventies, Gaynor’s career was falling apart. Donna Summer had replaced her as the leading disco diva, and 32-year-old Gaynor had suffered the death of her mother and had recently undergone spinal surgery after tripping onstage and triggering temporary paralysis. So when she belted out “I Will Survive,” she brought extra attitude. The track was originally a B side, but after enterprising DJs started to play it at discos, it turned into a smash. “I never tire of ‘I Will Survive,’” Gaynor told Rolling Stone in 2016. “I love doing it for the audience.”