Reinventing the Music Listicle —part 3 — The Top 15

We’ve written before regarding why Bill Wyman (author, not ex-Rolling Stone) is wrong, wrong, wrong in his listicle All 240 Artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ranked From Best to Worst that was published by Vulture and has never officially been apologized for!

Our previous two articles on this subject were imaginatively titled

The title of this article follows that tradition -

Those articles were originally written by me, IG Agent 19, and Agent 9, however IG Agent 9 went missing back around Thanksgiving, after watching a shitty movie from an alternate dimension that was being sold as a ‘beloved holiday classic’ by IG Agent 77 — to quote

IG Agent 77: Those articles weren’t parodies, also I’m going to watch the wonderful Thanksgiving holiday movie “Bartholomew” with some of the other agents, you two can come along if you want!

Which, first off those articles —

were obviously parodies, and second of all IG Agent 9 went to see that movie, took too many drugs during the party, freaked out and is reportedly holed up somewhere in Italy drawing an extremely big graph cataloguing evil in crayon on a villa wall.

So as a consequence there is just me to write this article, I recently tried doing a DJs of Evil post with IG Agent 18, to which I can only say — Never again.

Luckily I do have extensive notes IG Agent 9 made, and my memory of discussions on the subject.

In the second article

We changed Wyman’s incredibly wrong placement of Queen

Oh yeah, now I see it. Queen definitely shares the 97 spot with AC/DC, who are actually also a big dumb action movie so I was wrong when I said there were only two, but AC/DC has a little bit more sleaze and R rated nudity, and is closer to hyper-violent crime story thriller territory than the other two.

This is the essential point of these articles, it is just extremely unlikely that the ordering of importance of 240 artists should ever result in a direct linear 1 by 1 ranking, some spots will be shared by multiple artists.

The 1 by 1 ranking may appeal to a human desire for winners and losers and surety, but it is badly reductive and critically worthless, so here follows our changed ranking (with only minimal reasoning for the changes). We will write some further selections of articles in the coming months regarding reassessments of the individual rankings that Wyman made.

How did we decide the rankings here

Please note that the ranking is supposed to take into account such nebulous and arguable values as musical quality, but also the breadth of influence on other musicians.

In Wyman’s original article he says

The rankings below are made on the basis of the appropriateness of each artist’s induction, not their baseline quality or my personal fondness for the artists in question. In other words, was the act influential? Were they the first? Are they simply brilliant at whatever it is they do? Those to me are considerations that make for a hall of fame band. (There are a few bands I personally like a lot on the bottom half of the list.) I have one further criterion, too: Was their career worthy of being in a hall of fame? There are some acts, a few fairly influential, whom I’ve downgraded, basically for being dinks. You may disagree, but it’s my list.

Now one of the more common complaints one sees about his list is that people think he puts his personal fondness on the scale as well. Hard to really know but whatever.

I’m actually going to only lightly correct the list for these first 15 rankings, my reasons for ranking will of course be discussed on each particular ranking, but also in a later section of this article entitled “Musings on Influence”

Also note that in discussions regarding art the rules laid out in this article pertain:

1. Chuck Berry — The Beatles

It used to be that the Beatles would always be at #1 in these kinds of things, but in recent years Berry has started getting ranked first. I can’t help but think it is prompted by a feeling that it is somewhat gauche that 4 white guys from England should be the top of an art form created by black people.

But on the other hand Berry has always been placed near the top. Many innovations lyrically and musically can be placed at his feet, and I think it is reasonable to say it would be wrong to dislodge him from first place. Therefore Berry and The Beatles share the first place.

2. James Brown — Bob Dylan

I bet some idiot will start arguing about whose name should come first, per-emptive note to idiot — it doesn’t matter, I switch every other one.

I find I have a lot to say about these two, but sticking with my original resolution I will save it for a more in depth article later.

3. Prince

This ranking may also be affected by my personal tastes more than others

But also remember:

Prince was Reece’s Desert Island Band in Green Room — the opinion of a guy with a natural ability at kicking Nazi ass has got to be taken into account!

There is a common canard that Prince is just the sum of his influences — that he essentially is a composite of Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, and James Brown.

Which hey, if he was a composite of those artists why isn’t he at #1?

4. Elvis Presley — Little Richard — Buddy Holly

If you put those three together into one artist that hypothetical superstar would be taking the number 1 spot and pushing Berry and The Beatles down.

In the Metafilter post where I first encountered Wyman’s listicle someone argued that Elvis should come first. He does sometimes comes first in these lists but here are the arguments against

1. For a lot of people after the 60s Presley was nothing but a cautionary tale. Thus he was probably not very influential on anyone important after about 67.
2. The top in any field is generally held by people of great natural ability and unbelievably strong work ethics, Elvis had great natural ability but was lazy and quite willing to rest on his laurels. He would never be the absolute top at anything (for a long range of time at any rate)
3. Elvis famously got his break because Sam Phillips the owner of Sun Studio thinks he can get rich if he found a white guy that sounded like a black guy — if that is the premise it seems unlikely that said white guy would be higher ranked than the black guys he sounded like. (influence wise)
4. Elvis did not write his own songs and so forth — lots of people make this argument — but really even when he was a major artist his competitors were writing their own songs (Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly) and when the Beatles came along it became almost a requirement for Rock and Roll credibility.

5. The Rolling Stones — Nirvana — Led Zeppelin

It seems fitting to put these three together, as they all carried the hard rockers that groove banner for their respective generations. Most hard rockers are just hard but do not groove in any way - scowling sonic alpha males that spend their time at the gym desperate to look badass. You’re right — I mean Metallica. The problem with these hard guys is they are all rock and no roll.

The bands listed here are too self assured to waste their time posing (except a bit The Stones who spent their first decade trying to outdo The Beatles)

I would say enough of that except to note a quote from Metafilter about Nirvana’s placement on the original list (which was at #8)

Opens link. Scrolls to #1. Does not see Kurt Cobain. Closes tab. Garbage. And I’m not just saying that because Nirvana was popular during my formative years.

Yeah, dude you kinda are — and it’s pretty pathetic.

Who’s the hard rockers that groove for the 2000s? I guess Jack White.

6. Muddy Waters — Otis Redding

another pre-emptive note for idiot: Images that are different sizes do not denote a different rankings of the musicians.

7. Ramones — The Clash — The Sex Pistols — Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five — Run-DMC — Public Enemy

Putting the first three together because they basically helped define what Rock would be after them. If they were one band they would be up at the 5 spot.

But the next three should also be at the same level, and perhaps a few other early hip hop artists for defining what the musical landscape for hip hop would be. Actually, this placement — influence wise — is perhaps more due to the fact that important hip hop artists have been given short shrift by the Hall of Fame.

So this ranking here is very much based on influence, but also to be honest I probably personally rate everyone but Run-DMC that high. Again, personal tastes should be disregarded as much as possible when creating the rankings.

8. Aretha Franklin

As you can see I was mostly in agreement with Wyman, but am now starting to diverge.

At any rate in terms of quality maybe The Queen of Soul should be up around #5. Maybe with Otis and Muddy Waters, she did outdo Otis on Respect, after all. It seems weird that someone named the Queen of a major musical genre should be ranked at #8 on a list based mainly on influence. This ranking may be reconsidered in the future.

9. Joni Mitchell — Marvin Gaye — David Bowie — Stevie Wonder

I was going to make Bowie and Wonder #10 and then I realized I was falling into the same trap as Wyman did, I could definitely place Bowie and Wonder higher than Mitchell and Gaye at times — if the ranking is up in the air like that it probably means they actually share the spot.

Out of these 4 I would say that Bowie is the one most to my taste and Mitchell the least, but in terms of quality I think that Bowie might have been the most varying. But enough digression, onward.

10. The Jimi Hendrix Experience

In an article giving an overview of our music resources

It was noted that Hendrix was an IG agent with designation Agent 22, and that he “was appropriately placed in the aforementioned bad ranking.” which was a pun given that Wyman had also placed him at #22 in his listing, but also appropriate because of course if we were ranking sequentially and not placing multiple entries at the same level Hendrix might very well fall to 22.

11. Sly and the Family Stone — Parliament-Funkadelic

Two bands that helped form the utopian funk vision. Again, would like to say more but will have to wait to a later, more focused article.

12. Bo Diddley — Jerry Lee Lewis

In the original ranking of Bo Diddley Wyman says

I put Diddley above people like Jerry Lee because without his crazy breadth and humor married to his primal, juggernaut of a beat, rock would not be what it is today.

I sort of feel the urge to name him with Jerry Lee is a pretty good indicator they are actually at the same level. Personally not sure if Rock would have been significantly diverged without either of these two, but willing to suppose they are of high importance.

13. Bob Marley

I think maybe he should be higher, up with Jimi Hendrix. The only reason I put him this low is that while he was a big star in the rest of the world he didn’t really make it in the U.S during his primary years of output.

You’d think I would be the last person to argue for the importance of this but it has always been the market to break so it seems sort of weird to put someone that didn’t make it when they were outputting their major work up higher.

On the other hand the first paragraph of the quote from Wyman

He lived a life unrecognizable to most rockers, and got shot by real criminals, not millionaire Scarface wannabes sending out posses. His music changed the world, and brought international recognition to a poor little island no one outside of it cared about. “Redemption Song” is as good a composition as “Imagine”; he is one of the music’s greatest singers and most visionary bandleaders; and just about every track he recorded in his classic period is worth hearing. Marley died of cancer in 1981.

Is really an argument for putting this guy near the top. It’s definitely a weird paragraph to lead with when you’re putting him at #33 as Wyman does. Sure, I’m basically putting him in the same position as Wyman, after Jerry Lee, but is that fair?

What is Marley’s affect on those who came after him, who has he inspired? I could definitely imagine Kurt Cobain being into Marley and not giving a shit about Jerry Lee, who, let’s be honest, has maybe actually been more of an inspiration for Country than Rock.

Now I’m doing that thing again I said I wouldn’t, so just two parting shots:

1. Perhaps Marley is too big to adequately rank, in terms of quality is his major output really lesser than Berry and The Beatles? It’s really this influence and the unstated genuflection to popularity it implies that makes ranking more difficult. Someone can be great but of lesser influence than another person.
2. As the series Lost asked at one point “Who doesn’t like Bob Marley?”

This ranking may be reconsidered in the future. Maybe move him up to Jimi Hendrix level.

14. The Who — The Kinks — The Beach Boys — Johnny Cash — The Band — Ray Charles — The Velvet Underground — Smokey Robinson — Roxy Music

Whoa, lots of not very similar artists together at this level — why?

I just couldn’t separate them and say unarguably one of these was so much better than the others. The Who, The Kinks and The Beach Boys are at this level because they were the close second tier of their contemporaries. These groups were incredibly influential not just on the ones who came after them, but on those contemporaries. People always talk about influences that came before — but just as the contemporaries of a teenager are likely to be a bigger influence than their parents the contemporaries of an artist will probably push them farther than those initial influences ever could. It is hard not to see the influences of these three bands on The Beatles and to a smaller extent The Rolling Stones, but also of course on everyone that came after.

Supposedly when Pete Townsend told some members of The Sex Pistols that The Who was breaking up they lamented that it was their favorite group! Meaning that if the Sex Pistols are at #7 The Who has to be pretty close.

Dave Davies of The Kinks is often credited with the invention of Heavy Metal.

The Beach Boys / Beatles rivalry is pretty well known, and maybe the Beach Boys would have won if it wasn’t for Brian Wilson not handling the stress and Mike Love being a dickhead who destroys any long term artistic value as part of his personal brand. I mean really, I could totally imagine someone saying “Man, who doesn’t like the Beach Boys” in a universe where Mike Love does not exist, but in our universe it has been rendered unimaginable by his continual sabotage and general dickery. Am I ranking the Beach Boys lower because I dislike Mike Love — NO! I dislike Mike Love because he made the Beach Boys worse.

Why is Johnny Cash at this level — in the original Vulture list it says

The greatest country rocker of them all, if you’re using the term to mean country stars who came to rock and roll. A gracious albeit haunted presence to the end.

Ok well there’s nothing in the rules about evaluating from the time they ‘came to rock’ which realistically would be in the 60s when he worked with Bob Dylan? Or perhaps Wyman means the last decade of his life.

But evaluating his whole career, just some quick bullet points as I have a lot to get through

1. Johnny Cash recorded at Sun Studio — he was a major influence on his contemporaries.
2. He worked with Dylan in the 60s.
3. His songs were a big influence on a lot of other groups that were firmly in Rock, including one of the others at this level — The Band.
4. And he was the greatest country rocker, which means he really influenced a big part of the 70s and modern rock.

The Band, The Velvet Underground and Roxy Music seem similarly influential in a way — lots of rockers visited the Band just to play with them (which Wyman notes), and the Velvet Underground supposedly inspired everyone that bought their original records to go out and form a band .

Aside from that the Band revivified maybe some vanishing strands that had fed into rock, and the Velvet Underground created new possibilities that became important to a lot of bands that will be following in the rankings very soon.

In Wyman’s article Roxy Music gets this quote

You can hear Roxy’s influence throughout punk, New Wave, post-punk, the New Romantic Era, and beyond.

Why Ray Charles — well Wyman says

Reinvented soul, and came close to reinventing country, too.

Someone who reinvents a major genre has to rank high.

Smokey Robinson — a major influence on a musical strain that was of similar import to the those the other bands at this level touched but that basically went unnoticed by them. All that said Bob Dylan certainly listened to Smokey Robinson.

I will probably write more on Charles and Smokey in the future, and the reasons for their placement, but this entry has become overlong.

15. Neil Young — Van Morrison — Paul Simon — Bruce Springsteen — The Supremes — The Temptations — Elvis Costello — Al Green

Whoa, another group of dissimilar artists, what gives?

I think as we move down past the top levels there will be more of this, there a lots of good acts that will be as good as each other, or will have reasonably similar levels of influence, even if that influence is distributed in different segments of the population, so now we’re hitting the natural level of the acts that were not the greatest but nearly there and there will be a lot struggling and fighting it out at the relatively same level. This is probably the level where people get most pissed off also, people get pissed off at the higher ranked levels because they tend to have either a personal dislike or are tired of the artist (for example in the Metafilter post one commenter describes the Beatles as “a band that I personally think the world would benefit from a 50 year moratorium on playing their songs”, which in a roundabout way is an argument for their tremendous influence)

I remember some book in which the poets of rock (other than Dylan were named) and the first three were among those named that were contemporaneous with the guy sharing the #2 spot (Lou Reed, another obvious poet of Rock is in with VU) — this was obviously read and written too long ago for me to have more than a vague memory of it.

I have quite a weakness for Van Morrison ( required shame how he turned out noted parenthetically) so he might be this high by mistake, Wyman put him at 29 which of course meant he was higher than a number of people I’ve put higher or sharing the spot here. But I think most writers have a weakness for the poets for rock.

Paul Simon was put after 100 by Wyman, one of the crazier things he did. Influence wise, and again note — influence is also on contemporaries — he is definitely higher even if we are ranking artists sequentially.

Another thing I’d like to note — one thing you know about a major talent is often their elevator goes all the way to the top for a lot longer than most people can manage. There’s a myth of the early burnout, and sure Rock and Roll has its share of that because of the drugs and other pressures, but that is really the exception.

Simon did pretty good for at least 3 decades, Wyman notes that people should be praised if they packed it in on time, there is something to recommend not getting old and embarrassing, but in the case of people like Young, Simon, and Springsteen they did go all the way to the top for a long time. I think Van Morrison grew erratic after slightly more than one decade so maybe he shouldn’t be here and I am letting my personal preference blind me to his true level — but I do think of him with the Band in the Last Waltz

Now as it happens I generally dislike this song, but not here. Here I love it. And I think this and another song I never cared for in album form, from Neil Young in the Last Waltz

These two performances really demonstrate I think the principle that the major influence is often on contemporaries, and that those slightly lower in the ranking are in fact major influences on those further up. It does not just flow downward and towards the future, it flows sideways and up as well, the influence of a major artist fills the present. Wyman doesn’t really seem to get that in his article, and really I don’t know that the Rock and Roll hall of Fame does either. Although you’d think at least some of those old farts would.

Aside from quality as long as the ranking needs to take influence in consideration these guys have to rank high.

The Supremes and The Tempations are here because some representation of the girl groups / Motown sound needs to be at this level, and frankly maybe should move up.

Al Green, again really following Wyman’s lead here. I think he was quite influential on that seventies sound but never had a great love for his work, I would not search it out but wouldn’t stop playing it if it came on, probably if you don’t search something out it just isn’t to your taste but if you still allow it to play after it comes on that does say something to its quality.

So that was the first 15 positions, covering a total of 47 bands in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Musings on Influence

As noted about the earlier quote from Wyman many people didn’t believe protestations that he did not rank bands based on his personal likes and dislikes. It does seem like a reasonable way to explain why some things just seemed weird about the ranking.

On the other hand the rankings are supposed to handle concepts that are just difficult to rank — specifically quality and influence.

So, in order to put to rest the idiots who will no doubt complain that I ranked things based on my personal preference — if I were to do so my #1 spot would be shared between Prince — The Clash — Bob Dylan — Elvis Costello, and the #2 spot between The Rolling Stones — David Bowie — The Talking Heads — Van Morrison. Many of the bands in the top 15 here would rank much lower, although obviously I would be somewhat hampered by needing to draw bands from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which really would warp the resulting list and give an untrue reflection of my tastes.

I look forward to the idiots, being idiots, neglecting this point and making their accusations nonetheless.

All that said there are rankings that may have been affected by my personal affections — it seems unlikely to me that Elvis Costello is not the equal of Springsteen in influence and position, but perhaps he should have been lower and I put him higher because of preference. No one can ever totally excise their personal taste from an evaluation, they can at best limit its effects.

One of the things about influence that rankles is it is heavily dependent on who came first. Critics often misunderstand how this works, Wyman as well. Really, reading a critic on matters of influence is to develop something of contempt for the reasoning capabilities of the breed.

Critics will say Without X then not Y, without Bob Dylan then rock and roll would have remained songs with simple lyrics and no connections to the poetic traditions he opened up would be an example formulation. Or without Bob Dylan then Van Morrison would never have written Into the Mystic.

Artists of course are annoyed by this formulation, there is no reason that someone having done something first should mean that what they did first would never have done. There will always be a first, because that is just how time works. But of course if you have been preceded by someone and you are naturally inclined to do something similar to what those before you have done, you will probably become familiar with their work and as such you will be influenced by them, it is not that without Bob Dylan there would not have been Elvis Costello, it is that you cannot be Elvis Costello without thinking about Bob Dylan and absorbing what he has done assuming a world in which Bob Dylan exists — but you can be Elvis Costello in a world without Dylan, even if we can’t say for sure what that world would look like. Would Elvis Costello be significantly different without Bob Dylan’s existence? I actually don’t think so, but will expand further on this as I write on Costello later.

Where I stayed close to Wyman’s rankings

Probably the place I stayed closest to Wyman’s rankings where I might have diverged is ranking Nirvana as high as I did, but I could see Wyman’s point. Do I not like Nirvana, sure I like them but not that much. But I think that Nirvana and Cobain left quite an imprint on two decades for their short time, so on this I followed Wyman’s lead, although of course putting them with The Stones and Led Zeppelin was my own interpretation of where that lead was pointing.

Where I strayed from Wyman’s rankings

Generally when I strayed from agreement with Wyman’s rankings it is in not ranking some people as high as he did. There are a number of bands and older artists that did not rank high on my list. This is because while undoubtedly influential I don’t think the artist’s they influenced would have been significantly different without them. I think the Beatles needed the influence of Berry, Little Richard, Presley and Buddy Holly — but Fats Domino was only a nice to have. That is a personal opinion of how influence works of course, but I will expand on it more in later rankings as it will become a more important concept to determine appropriate rankings of people.

This article was written by IG Agent 19.

RELATED ARTICLES

Two articles of critical theory that may be interesting for this are

Previous Articles in this series:

First article — where we first introduce the ranking article in Vulture, discuss what is great about but also some notes on what is wrong

Followed by

Where the poor rankings of Stevie Nicks and Queen are handled with hilarious aplomb. (we drop the bomb)

A tightly focused article on Elvis Costello and his influence.

The followup to this article — ranking from #16 to Infinity

Some other Music articles that may be of interest

For future References Music Resources can be tracked at