![]() Williams, who was born in Louisiana, describes the South in a loving, fearful tone (“Broken down shacks, engine parts” in one song, “Busted-down doors and borrowed cash” in another) and mourns pals who fell prey to hard liquor, drugs, or dreams of stardom. The title track is one of Williams’ best: Over guitars that owe more to the Stones than to the Opry, she tells a story about the rootlessness of American life. It took three torturous years to finish, but it was worth it there are no bad songs on this alt-country masterwork. Lucinda Williams, ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’.Tabloid types tied themselves in knots trying to figure out which song was about which ex, but the real news was Swift’s songwriting on high points like the astonishing “All Too Well,” as vivid a post-breakup remembrance as any artist has ever produced. “I Know You Were Trouble” rode a dubstep groove, and the title track was a swirl of banjos, dusty guitars, and talk-box elation. The lead single, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” was stomping, swaying electro-twang. Taylor Swift shocked the world with her fourth album, breaking away from country music to make a record that recalled classics by the Beatles and Prince in the way it pulled from across the pop and rock landscape and transformed every sound it touched. But it was the rustic beauty of the Band’s music and the incisive drama of their own reflections on family and obligations, such as “The Weight,” that made Big Pink an instant homespun classic. ![]() Dylan contributed “I Shall Be Released” and co-wrote two other tunes. ![]() “We didn’t want to just ride his shirttail,” drummer Levon Helm said. Dylan offered to play on the album the Band said no thanks. While he recuperated, the Band backed him on the demos later known as The Basement Tapes and made their own debut. “Big Pink” was a pink house in Woodstock, New York, where the Band - Bob Dylan’s 1965-66 backup band on tour - moved to be near Dylan after his motorcycle accident. Jonathan Bernstein, Pat Blashill, Jon Blistein, Nathan Brackett, David Browne, Anthony DeCurtis, Matt Diehl, Jon Dolan, Chuck Eddy, Ben Edmonds, Gavin Edwards, Jenny Eliscu, Brenna Ehrlrich, Suzy Exposito, David Fricke, Elisa Gardner, Holly George-Warren, Andy Greene, Kory Grow, Will Hermes, Brian Hiatt, Christian Hoard, Charles Holmes, Mark Kemp, Greg Kot, Elias Leight, Joe Levy, Angie Martoccio, David McGee, Chris Molanphy, Tom Moon, Jason Newman, Rob O’Connor, Park Puterbaugh, Jody Rosen, Austin Scaggs, Karen Schoemer, Bud Scoppa, Claire Shaffer, Rob Sheffield, Hank Shteamer, Brittany Spanos, Rob Tannenbaum, David Thigpen, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Barry Walters, Jonah Weiner The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better. But that was part of what made rebooting the RS 500 fascinating and fun 86 of the albums on the list are from this century, and 154 are new additions that weren’t on the 2003 or 2012 versions. ![]() Of course, it could still be argued that embarking on a project like this is increasingly difficult in an era of streaming and fragmented taste. (As in 2003, we allowed votes for compilations and greatest-hits albums, mainly because a well-made compilation can be just as coherent and significant as an LP, because compilations helped shaped music history, and because many hugely important artists recorded their best work before the album had arrived as a prominent format.) ![]() When we first did the RS 500 in 2003, people were talking about the “death of the album.” The album -and especially the album release - is more relevant than ever. The electorate includes Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack, and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail as well as veteran musicians, such as Adam Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks. To do so, we received and tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures (from radio programmers to label heads, like Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman). So we decided to remake our greatest albums list from scratch. But no list is definitive - tastes change, new genres emerge, the history of music keeps being rewritten. Over the years, it’s been the most widely read - and argued over - feature in the history of the magazine (last year, the RS 500 got over 63 million views on the site). Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time was originally published in 2003, with a slight update in 2012. ![]()
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