100 Most Important People in Popular Music

[Guest Homeless Guy Spare Some Change]

The position of John Lennon at the top of your list will be frowned upon and rightly so. Death does not make someone great. For me your list was instantly dismissed, but really now, The Beastie Boys more important than Elvis?

I don't know what your smoking but I'd like to try it...

thats an interesting point you have Mr Caboose, but i would just like to say that his untimely death made him the most important. What he had done upto his death was near perfect, and god only knows what he could have created if he had not been gunned down. Maybe if he was still alive people would not see him as the most important. But hey who knows, i love paul McCartney better anyway, but i'm sure you knew that.

[Kinetic 0]

And I think if you include Malcolm McLaren and Richard Hell, I'll have no more complaints.

 

Edit: Oh, and Marc Bolan! Christ, is he not on there?

Edited December 22, 2003 by Kinetic

[Guest Homeless Guy Spare Some Change]

i think the argument for lennon at the top for most people (and i think most people probably would put lennon at the top of their list) goes something like this:

 

beatles=most important group ever

 

lennon=most talented member of said group, judging from his songwriting contributions & his solo work

 

therefore, lennon=most important person

why is Paul McCartney not number 2 then?

[justsoyouknow 0]

i think the argument for lennon at the top for most people (and i think most people probably would put lennon at the top of their list) goes something like this:

 

beatles=most important group ever

 

lennon=most talented member of said group, judging from his songwriting contributions & his solo work

 

therefore, lennon=most important person

why is Paul McCartney not number 2 then?

Touche.

 

I REALLY don't get all of the Beatle's love that floats around. Everyone creams their pants over them, but they just strike me as the first boyband. And, stolen from the thread about Dylan's influence, Bob Dylan got the Beatles to start smoking pot, directly influencing their music, rendering him more important. Without Dylan, the Beatles wouldn't have become what they became.

 

And Tori Amos? What the fuck? Writing bad poetry and warbling at a piano is consideration for being important now?

 

Where's Graham Parsons? Where's Elton John?

[Kinetic 0]

I find the notion that Lennon and McCartney smoking pot enabled ideas to begin falling out of the sky pretty amusing.

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

Ozzy Osbourne, Tupac Shakur, and Roger Waters should be on there. Also, Bono below Toris Amos?

[justsoyouknow 0]

I find the notion that Lennon and McCartney smoking pot enabled ideas to begin falling out of the sky pretty amusing.

...You've smoked pot before, right? It expands your mind, enabling you to become more creative. Try it right before you have to write a paper or something.

[Nighthawk 0]

I need some better pot. All it does for me is make me hungry.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I REALLY don't get all of the Beatle's love that floats around. Everyone creams their pants over them, but they just strike me as the first boyband.

Really, once you hit Rubber Soul and especially Revolver, the boy band argument goes out the window. A boy band doesn't write "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "A Day In The Life."

[Kinetic 0]

Right, but you can't really give credit to Bob Dylan for everything from Rubber Soul on. Were I to smoke a lot of pot and become some sort of successful artist, I wouldn't track my dealer down and attempt to pay him residuals.

[justsoyouknow 0]

I need some better pot. All it does for me is make me hungry.

commercial will do that to you.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I'm waiting for Justin Timberlake to make his "Revolution 9."

[Red Baron 0]

Despite the fact that Nirvana basically single-handedly got us out of the 80's hair-band bullshit ... and the fact that Nirvana created two of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time .. Kurt changed the face of music. He wrote all the songs except for a couple. Kurt was Nirvana.

 

Kurt never changed anything. Kurt took what was starting out, and made it simple for the common folk. He wasn't the greatest writer, or song writer ever, or even qat that the time Nirvana was big. All he ever did was write some simple 3 notes, and it became a smash. He had no diveristy in his song-writing, his singing or his guitar playing. All he wanted is attention, got it, and couldn't handle it, and basically blasted his brains away.

 

 

a) he didn't die while he was still peaking, which is essential to the myth of any dead rock star's greatness (see cobain, morrison, hendrix, joplin); if people were only praising him so highly because he's dead, then the people previously mentioned would be praised more highly. the man faded away, he didn't burn out.

 

 

I'll agree with Cobain, Joplin, Morrison, but to lump Hendrix with those three is absurd. He was going to be a legend if he was still alive today as we speak. While granted he wasn't the best guitarist ever, or even at the time, his style of guitar soloing, has influenced so many people on the guitar through out the years

[Guest Brian]

I would still put(even though you said Jazz doesn't count) Miles Davis on the list, as he changed EVERYTHING with one album.

Bitches Brew, and I would also add Kind of Blue, were very influential.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Kurt never changed anything.

Wrong.

 

After the success of Nirvana, it became, for better or worse (usually the latter), okay for mainstream music to have sad/angry/depressing lyrics. Without Nirvana's ascent into popularity--and Cobain's ensuing icon status--the airwaves wouldn't be glutted with all this nü metal bullshit. All that crap you hear on FM rock radio is thanks to Nirvana.

[Guest Brian]

Hendrix's death propelled him, but he would have eventually gotten recognition.

[justsoyouknow 0]

Kurt never changed anything.

Wrong.

 

After the success of Nirvana, it became, for better or worse (usually the latter), okay for mainstream music to have sad/angry/depressing lyrics. Without Nirvana's ascent into popularity--and Cobain's ensuing icon status--the airwaves wouldn't be glutted with all this nü metal bullshit. All that crap you hear on FM rock radio is thanks to Nirvana.

And, to a lesser extent, emo.

 

Personally, I despise Cobain as a musician, but you cannot deny that he has become an icon in the musical world ever since he killed himself. However, Rolling Stone placing him near the top of EVERY list that they make is asinine. For example, 100 greatest guitarists of all-time...Cobain is number 17, Angus Young is number 96. Kurt Cobain is a greater guitarist than Angus Fucking Young? No, but Young hasn't killed himself, so he isn't nearly as popular.

 

You hit the nail right on the head. Cobain is the posterboy for every one of those "look at me, I'm different" kids.

[Red Baron 0]

Kurt Cobain only took (or ripped off) off bands that were before Nirvana, and basically, single handlily destroyed Hair-Metal to existance. He gets credit where he shouldn't deserve. And if he did change something, it was done very poorly, and other grunge bands did it 10000x better.

[Kinetic 0]

That's to the extent that you even want to consider Nirvana a grunge band. Their sound was completely different than that of the other bands that they were lumped in with, i.e. Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and so on. The nu metal stuff on the radio now owes a much larger debt to those bands than Nirvana, whose only similarity with them is thematic. And, even so, Cobain's lyrics were a lot more oblique.

 

I'm a Nirvana apologist.

[Guest Homeless Guy Spare Some Change]

Bob Dylan influenced the beatles, and the beatles influenced bob dylan it makes sense

[Guest Van Mundegaarde]

Nows I get to play catch up.

 

First off Fear Havoc, Aerosmith is not on the list because they are a group whereas I am listing individual contributions to music and no one member of Aerosmith has done enough to stand out among the others listed.

 

Of course, I wanted to put Miles Davis in the list but he does not function within the realm of popular music so even though he influenced artists that do dwell in that territory he does not himself.

 

Actually I thought Barry Gordy was on the list. A bit of an oversight I suppose. And I picked Rick Rubin over Russell Simmons.

 

McCartney isn't number two because of a lazy solo career and responsibility for some of the weakest moments in the latter Beatles years (i.e. Maxwell's Silver Hammer, Honey Pie, I Will, etc...)

 

If you had to attach a direct reason for all of the Lilith Fair/women in rock craze of the late 1990's it would be Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes". That's why she's here...

 

People I was accused of leaving out:

 

42.) Elton John

53.) Roger Waters

 

And Bono isn't below Tori Amos, I refer you once more to the qualifier stating that "outside of the top ten, there is no particular order."

 

The Dylan/pot thing has been sufficiently upended already. As has the Beatles boyband arguement.

 

Though I'm not the biggest Nirvana fan around. Kurt DID change everything. How? He took what was around, made it his own and, in turn, made it more accessible to the average radio listening public. And that has made a considerable impact on everything since then in the mainstream, for better or worse.

 

And to appease some of the further discussions on this board I'll pick out of the list a tentative 11-20 to show who holds precedence over whom:

 

11.) Elvis Presley

12.) Keith Richards

13.) Brian Wilson

14.) Michael Jackson

15.) Jimi Hendrix

16.) Dr. Dre

17.) Frank Zappa

18.) James Brown

19.) Brian Eno

20.) Johnny Cash

[Guest NewYorkFox]

Personally, I'd put Damon Alburn to represent 90's British rock), Dan The Automator (for being a founding figure in a new form of hip-hop along with DJ Shadow) and The Neptunes (because they are possibly the main force behind good radio pop music so far this millenium) on the list. And I'd definitely put Joe Strummer in the top 10, or at least above Costello.

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

Sorry about the Waters thing, don't know how I missed that.

[Guest Derek Bailey]

This may show how clueless I am about even artists I love, but what makes Will Oldham so important?

[godthedog 0]

Paul Simon is more important to music than Jimi Hendrix, as he is as important to songwriting as hendrix is to guitar playing plus his career was far more expansive and yielded much more positive output. Had hendrix lived five years longer, he might have a good case for inclusion.

i don't see any evidence for this. every guitar player not in a punk band points to hendrix as an influence, but i can't think of anyone significant who's said "i wouldn't write songs today if it weren't for paul simon."

 

and three albums of greatness were more than enough to cement his status. 'electric ladyland' by itself contains more mind-blowing guitar work & experimentation than most could muster in a career.

2.) The Beatles might have been influenced. But influence and precedent are wholly different things. Lennon might have been influenced by Dylan, but Dylan never had the pop sensibility that Lennon had and as such was not a precedent in any other way than to say he wrote moodier more personal songs therefore inspirinbg John to do so. The way John did it hadn't been done before. As is the case with most of the Beatles later output. Even Brian Wilson was inspired by Rubber Soul (largely spearheaded by John as the stories go) to make Pet Sounds which then inspired Sgt. Pepper and so on and so forth. It is a lofty statement, but by no means unfounded.

to say "without any precedent for what they were writing" means "nobody had ever done any of this before." the "i'm going to write moody, acoustic, lyrical songs that actually have something to say" direction was already being explored by dylan. dylan was making music intended to be taken seriously when the beatles were still writing harmless pop songs and filming 'a hard day's night'. "you've got to hide your love away," "nowhere man" and "norwegian wood" are the absolute KEY songs for the change in lennon's direction (and it could be argued that lennon's change in direction is what spurred mccartney's own change in direction); & dylan was clearly doing this kind of stuff before any of those were recorded. the "let's make pop music into a valuable art form" thing that 'sgt pepper' is so often credited with? dylan was already doing that. the "let's change with every album & evolve as artists" thing? dylan was already doing that; by the time the beatles had *started* their major evolution with 'rubber soul', dylan had already changed directions twice: going personal/confessional/funny for 'another side of bob dylan' & gone electric for 'bringing it all back home'. 'rubber soul' is a much better album than either of them, but that's beside the point. the point is that lennon did NOT set the precedent. dylan himself may not have set the precedent, but he sure as hell did it before the beatles did.

 

point taken on the 'pet sounds' argument.

[godthedog 0]

i think the argument for lennon at the top for most people (and i think most people probably would put lennon at the top of their list) goes something like this:

 

beatles=most important group ever

 

lennon=most talented member of said group, judging from his songwriting contributions & his solo work

 

therefore, lennon=most important person

why is Paul McCartney not number 2 then?

Touche.

 

I REALLY don't get all of the Beatle's love that floats around. Everyone creams their pants over them, but they just strike me as the first boyband. And, stolen from the thread about Dylan's influence, Bob Dylan got the Beatles to start smoking pot, directly influencing their music, rendering him more important. Without Dylan, the Beatles wouldn't have become what they became.

 

And Tori Amos? What the fuck? Writing bad poetry and warbling at a piano is consideration for being important now?

 

Where's Graham Parsons? Where's Elton John?

the comment i made about dylan getting them to smoke pot was a joke. i mean, if that actually held up as an argument, then the guy who got bob dylan to smoke would be the most important ever; because he didn't just get dylan to start smoking pot, he also indirectly got the beatles to start smoking it.

 

and everyone creams over the beatles because although dylan may have done it first, they did it better. on just about any "greatest rock/pop albums" list you can find, there's almost never less than three beatles albums in the top ten, and that's not a coincidence; nor is it just a circular case of "oh, the beatles are the greatest group ever, so we have to give them the most spots". solid arguments can be made for 'sgt pepper', 'revolver', 'rubber soul', the white album & 'abbey road'. dylan never had the patience to really sit down & hone an album down to perfection, his muse just didn't work like that (i've heard stories that for much of 'blonde on blonde', he'd show up in the studio with a fresh song & record it as quickly as possible with the band, then the band would take a break while he wrote the next song, & the process would continue). as a result, dylan's cannon is filled to the brim with important albums ('another side...', 'highway 61', 'john wesley harding', lots of others), but isn't consistent enough to have as many "ten greatest records EVER" albums. i'd put 'blood on the tracks' up there, but in my opinion there's too many better albums out there to fit more of his stuff in.

[Guest Mindless_Aggression]

I'd say throw Mike Patton on there somewhere. But thats just me.

[Guest Doyo]

Great list, but there are some glaring omissions.

 

Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra - most popular musicians in America ever along with Elvis and Beatles. Both

recorded and performed up until around when they died, so they fit the 50 year window.

 

Barry Gibb - The Bee Gees disco era defining and sales record breaking stuff is enough for consideration,

but that is only a small part of their accomplishments. They had actually released something like 12

well received albums before doing any disco. They also wrote and produced lots of hit songs for a bunch

of other artists. At one time they had 5 songs in the top 10.

 

Quincy Jones - Besides his work as a solo artist he wrote and produced stuff for people such as

Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Paul Simon and Michael Jackson ("Off The Wall" and "Thriller")

 

Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambatta, Kool DJ Herc - inventors of rap music

 

George Jones - considered the ultimate country artist by many diehard fans of the genre

 

Diana Ross - huge success with the Supremes and as solo artist

 

B.B. King - no explanation needed

 

some others to consider:

Run DMC

Madonna

Lindsey Buckingham

Stevie Nicks

John Fogerty

Garth Brooks

Lemmy Kilmister

Alice Cooper

Paul Stanley

Gene Simmons

Axl Rose

Slash

 

and how can you list John Petrucci but not Eric Clapton, Joe Satriani, Stevie Ray Vaughn or Eddie Van Halen?

Edited December 23, 2003 by Doyo

[Guest]

I have one question: Why the hell is Dre at 13?

[B. Brian Brunzell 0]

I have one question: Why the hell is Dre at 13?

Probably because he helped re-invent the Rap genre, along with Ice-T. They brought the hardcore, in-your-face style of Gangsta Rap to the masses in the late 80s and early 90s. Dre's also a great producer, as shown in his work with Snoop and Eminem.