Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Times

Rolling Stone magazine has selected Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" as the Number 1 Greatest Song of All Time. Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke writes:

“No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time.”

The #2 song is the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". Over on Rust, the appropriately handled Barrel of Laughs, found it very amusing that:

"A magazine named "Rolling Stone" declares that a song named "Like A Rolling Stone" is the best song AND a song BY the Rolling Stones is the second best song ever. Can you say 'shameless self cross promotion'!"

So how did our man Neil stack up? Looking at the recent Neil Young's Greatest Hits CD, one would think Neil would have garnered a handful of slots. Actually, it looks like Neil wound up with a total of six slots. Of the six songs, Neil wrote four of the selections and performed only on two of the songs ("Suite:" and "For What It’s Worth"):

#63 "For What It’s Worth" by The Buffalo Springfield (listen)

#214 "Rockin' In The Free World" (Listen acoustic version or electric version.)

#297 "Heart of Gold" (Listen)

#321 "Cortez The Killer" (Listen)

#385 "Ohio" (Listen to studio version or live in concert)

#418 "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Listen to studion version or live version)

There has been some dispute about the credit of Young on "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" which was on the first CSN album and subsequently appeared on CSNY's 4 Way Street album. Was this the album the Rolling Stone editors were thinking?

And speaking of popularity contests and "shameless self cross promotion", over on Amazon.com, the sales rank of the Greatest Hits has been bouncing around the Top 25 and is now at #26.

---

---