Thursday, August 26, 2010

Thoughts On VH1's new 100 Greatest Artists List

It is ridiculous to remove the following artists from the 1998 list:

Eric Clapton
The Eagles
Buddy Holly
Crosby, Stills And Nash
The Sex Pistols
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Roy Orbison
The Grateful Dead
Smokey Robinson
Frank Zappa
The Allman Brothers
Stevie Ray Vaughan
Rod Stewart
Simon And Garfunkel
Devo
T. Rex
Santana
Tom Waits
Diana Ross And The Supremes

The following artists are welcome new additions to the top 100:

AC/DC
Radiohead
Black Sabbath
Guns N Roses
Metallica
Jay-Z
Rage Against The Machine
Public Enemy
Genesis
Tupac Shakur
The Cure
Rush
Run DMC
NWA
Beastie Boys
Green Day
Pearl Jam
Outkast


Random thoughts:

Ray Charles and The Police drop more than 30 spots. Granted, it's crazy The Police were #10 on the original list, but what did Brother Ray do to fall out of favor?

Prince jumps to #7, ahead of James Brown and Elvis Presley. I doubt Prince would agree that he's more important to rock n roll than James Brown.

The Doors drop from #20 to #65. What, they should have kept releasing albums after Jim died? I don't get it.

Absence has been great for Freddie Mercury, as Queen jumps 20 spots with no output other than letting Paul Rodgers crap on Freddie's legacy.

Early rock artists sank like a stone this time around while R&B, Motown and Blues artists disappeared from the list entirely. I guess creating rock n roll isn't as important as it used to be.

Elvis Costello has released several great albums since 1998 and drops from #38 to #90. Why?

Nirvana shoots up from #42 to #14. Must be all that new content since '98.

Sorry, SRV. You're dead, but you're not Michael Jackson dead.

Current events have way too much influence on the people voting in this poll. In 1998, Michael Jackson came in #40, which was way too low, as voters probably felt icky about his legal problems at the time. This year he's somewhere in the top 5, which is a little bit too high. Had this poll taken place before Jackson's death, he'd be somewhere between 10 and 20, in all likelihood.

Madonna jumps from #86 to #16. Remarkable considering how little she's actually done creatively since 1998. She was recently voted into the Hall Of Fame though, so I'm guessing that is what's really behind her jump in the polls. This also could explain The Stooges 28 slot jump and the new inclusion of Genesis and ABBA.

Hard rock has a much larger presence in this list than in the previous one as horribly snubbed artists like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Rush, Metallica and Guns N Roses finally get their due.

Several great 90's artists make their debut as well. In 98 it would have been way too soon for Pearl Jam, Radiohead or Rage Against The Machine, but now we have some perspective and can see how great they were and still are.

Hip Hop and Rap also make their first appearances on this list. I don't know if I would have picked Jay-Z as the top artist of the genre or included LL Cool J, but who can argue with Public Enemy, N.W.A., Tupac, Biggie or Outkast?

Sade at #50? Well, that came out of nowhere.

Beyonce at #52 ahead of Little Richard? Nope. No artist whose career is that fresh belongs in a retrospective list of this nature. That goes the same for Coldplay, Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys as well.

Cheap Trick ahead of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? Absolutely not.

Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey? I'll buy that. Both are great singers with long track records. I do wish they had better written songs to sing, but I think the deserve the honor.

Justin Timberlake at #66 is the worst thing about this list by a mile. Two albums and less than ten years as a solo artist. Complete nonsense.

Coldplay doesn't deserve to be at #67, either, but they're probably worthy of the tail-end of the list.

Def Leppard at #70? Why? Are they supposed to be the token hair band or something?

Hall And Oates wouldn't be on this list if it weren't for "(500) Days Of Summer".

Overall, I think this list reflects the decline of VH1 as a rock n roll network. In the late 90's, VH1 was a network dedicated to the history of rock n roll and ever since has become more and more focused on reality television and pop culture, basically becoming a cheap MTV knockoff instead of a decent alternative. I'm still going to watch the presentation of the new list, but it's going to be hard to avoid throwing the remote at the TV when some of the more nonsensical rankings come up.

No comments:

Post a Comment