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List Price: $35.00 | | Publisher: Wenner
Salesrank: 427570
Released: November 16, 2005 |
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| Used Price: $15.00 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
From the editors of Rolling Stone magazine comes a new book, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time—a tribute to the finest popular music of all time. Whether you’re looking for advice to round out your music collection or just inspiration for a heated argument, Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is the essential guide to the best music of modern times from the world’s greatest music magazine.
The albums included in this comprehensive book were chosen by 273 of the world’s pre-eminent musicians and critics ranging from Fats Domino to Moby. From the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers to Nirvana’s Nevermind, Ray Charles’ The Birth of Soul to the White Stripes Elephant, this book is packed with classics. Behind-the-scenes stories of the making of these albums are included, as well as rare photos of legendary recording studios including Abbey Road and Muscle Shoals. Topping the list of 500 are Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (the Beatles, 1967), Pet Sounds (the Beach Boys, 1966), Revolver (the Beatles, 1966), Highway Revisited (Bob Dylan, 1965), Rubber Soul (the Beatles, 1965), What's Going On (Marvin Gaye, 1971), Exile on Main Street (the Rolling Stones, 1972), London Calling (the Clash, 1980), Blonde on Blonde (Bob Dylan, 1966 ), and The White Album (the Beatles, 1968 ).
500 Greatest Albums of All Times, The Reviews:
Decent coffee-table book to browse through 
2009-08-15 - "...the essential guide to the best music of modern times from the world's greatest music magazine..."
Absurd statement. Obviously, everyone will have his or her own opinions as to what constitutes the "greatest" (in what context?). Out of 500 selections I imagine we'd all find something we could agree upon. OK, hyperbole aside, this is a colorful coffee-table book worth thumbing through. Unless you're very young, it will also evoke memories of increasingly distant eras.
IT'S NOT THE GOSPEL, BUT IT DOES OFFER A CREDIBLE AND DEBATABLE FRAMEWORK FROM AN AMERICAN POP/ROCK MUSIC MAGAZINE ! 
2008-04-08 - Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list really isn't all that bad if you consider that no matter how they rank all of these great albums, it's never going to please everybody. In fact, I could write my own book about why they should have ranked this album higher or that one lower. For instance, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon is #43 and should actually be near the top. I say that, not because Pink Floyd is my favorite band (they're not), but because I think Dark Side Of The Moon is a true rock music masterpiece. I mean, Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (#25) is pretty good, but come on! Eighteen positions ahead of Dark Side Of The Moon?
Rankings aside, this is a pretty good book. The album covers are all pictured, and there's a short review of each of the 500 albums. Plus, there are short features on the recording details of a certain few albums like The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street [Limited Edition, and some great full page photos of some of the artists.
My personal favorite album of all time, The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East, only made it to #49, but that doesn't ruin this book for me. Not everybody in the world thinks like I do. The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the #1 album on the list, and I don't have a problem with that. It's a great album, a masterpiece. And this IS Rolling Stone magazine, so it shouldn't surprise anybody that The Beatles and Bob Dylan are heavily represented on the list.
No, it's not the final word on which albums are, in order, the greatest of all time, but it's a somewhat jumbled and interesting reference to the great majority of them. And it's always fun to note your differences of opinion while reading the list.
Not how I would have ranked them, but...
2008-03-13 - This is a well made book that ranks 500 albums and audaciously calls them the "greatest". Their rankings are all out of whack, but it stimulates discussion and has some pretty nice background info. on the albums and the bands that created them.
Good reference book and great gift
2008-01-07 - Although it's not perfect for die hard music buffs, this book is a great coffee table book and reference to a huge amount of albums for true music lovers. Maybe you won't agree with every entry, or the order they are ranked, but most of my favorite albums were included and we spent hours reading the comments and information about the albums we love. Just by the sheer number listed, it also is a great reference for music you always wanted to get into and may have forgotten about. At the very least, it's a great conversation builder to argue with friends about who are the greatest bands/albums of all time. This is a great gift for anyone who loves music or for someone who seems to have it all.
About what you'd expect
2007-11-28 - I'm pretty much obsessed with music lists so I could talk about this book all day so to keep things fairly brief I'm just going to weigh the pros and cons of this thing.
Pros:
-There's a ton of really great albums on here. They cover a little bit of every genre. They got psychedelic rock, hardcore punk, disco, country, funk, indie rock, hip hop, reggae, blues, jazz, etc. This list will very likely introduce you to some albums you have never heard of before that you will really like.
-Like a lot of coffee table books it's fun just flip through this until you see something that catches your attention.
-The large size of the book is nice. The first ten albums on the list each get a whole page featuring the album cover of that album. That just by itself is pretty cool. There's also a lot of photos of musicians and bands that take up a whole 11" by 11" page.
-Aside from all of the info about the albums, there's some interesting little sections throughout the book that will focus on certain musicians, music studios, composers, and other little tidbits about the creation of some of the albums.
Cons:
-To create this list, the folks at Rolling Stone asked a lot of people in the music biz to contribute lists of their favorite albums. A list of contributors is printed in the back of the book, and I noticed that there's not a lot of people from the world of hip hop that contributed to the list. So that means there's really not that many hip hop and rap albums on here. And honestly, some of the rap albums they chose are ranked higher than they should be. Jay-Z ranked ahead of Nas? Three Eminem albums? The Marshall Mathers LP is the only one that really needs to be on here.
-A lot of the albums they chose for this list that are from the 90s and 2000s aren't that hot. Maybe enough time hasn't passed for people to realize what some of the best albums are from those decades. Coldplay, No Doubt, Moby? Those aren't bad albums, but come on, we can do better than that.
-There's some really great albums that I just can't believe aren't on the list. Where's Endtroducing by DJ Shadow? I guess every music list is like that for everyone though.
-The list is heavily weighted in favor of the 1960s and the 70s. Those two decades make up over 60% of the entire list.
-Too many greatest hits albums. Elton John and David Bowie each have 5 albums on the list plus a greatest hits album. Most of the songs on the greatest hits are on the other albums that made the list.
-The writing could really be more in depth. Maybe when they originally printed this in RS they didn't have so much space to work with, but now that it's at a bigger size some of the writing in here will be ridiculous. Like they'll just have a little paragraph about an album but it's blown up really big to take up the space on the page. The writing that is there is always pretty interesting though.
-Also, OK Computer needs to be higher on the list. What the hell, man?
