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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

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.”