Phillyist Looks Back at the 885 Greatest Artists of All Time

Star Foster
I have my quibbles here and there - but overall I'm pretty happy with the top ten. (After all, most of my original top ten made the cut. Not to mention Sondheim - which was a pleasant surprise.)

My biggest complaint is that for a supposed list of the greatest artists of all time, the top ten is pretty dense with Western rock and rollers from the last 50 years. Are The Stones REALLY superior to, say, Maria Callas?

And I still hold that Orpheus should have made the list...and have been somewhere, if not in the top 10, at least in the top 25.

Jillian Ivey
Well gee, of course the Beatles made it to #1. I'm not surprised, and I don't necessarily disagree with that choice. They may not have been the best band on the list, but as for their importance, I don't think they could be beat. (No pun intended.) Dylan at #2 and The Stones at #3, also not surprising. Actually, I'm not terribly surprised by who made it to the top ten—I'm far more surprised by who didn't. I mean, my god, Elvis, The Who, The Ramones? Even Jimi only hit eleven.

There were also a lot of "artists" whose inclusion on the list pissed me off because, well, they weren't artists. They were COMPOSERS. Sure, they probably played their own music back in the day, but the recordings of their music that we know are certainly not recordings of them performing. Mozart at 87, Beethoven at 97, Bach at 125, Tchaikovsky at 500 (at least this one noted that the music was performed by Erich Kunzel / Cincinnati Pops), and John Phillip Sousa at 837.

This is the problem with allowing just anyone to vote in your polls. Some people just don't know. The other problem is that some bands and artists have major cult followings even if they (a) suck, (b) only ever released one album that anyone ever heard, (c) only ever released one single anyone ever heard, or (d) have only been around for a few years and don't really deserve the notoriety yet. Some of these artists (I'll leave you to assign them to the right categories) include, but aren't limited to: R. Kelly, Semisonic, Nickelback (ew), The Verve (who I just saw on a karaoke list as a one-hit wonder), Jet, The Raconteurs (didn't they just release their only album a few months ago), Moxy Fruvous (I know exactly one person other than me who knows who they are), James Blunt, Matisyahu... That only covers the bottom third of the list; there are countless others.

Jim Genzano
Let me start off by giving you my top ten, as I submitted them to XPN, plus my runners-up, including how they placed on the actual list:

1. Bruce Springsteen (4)
2. Bob Dylan (2)
3. Led Zeppelin (6)
4. John Coltrane (49)
5. Miles Davis (26)
6. Sonic Youth (205)
7. Pink Floyd (9)
8. The Who (12)
9. Genesis (55)
10. ....And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (NA)

Runners-up: Sleater-Kinney (293), Radiohead (21), Mission of Burma (NA), Mars Volta (572), Elvis Costello (23), Built to Spill (515), Nine Inch Nails (172), Velvet Underground (85), Talking Heads (31), Steely Dan (27)

Almost all of the artists I chose made the list, and four cracked the top ten, so I'm pretty pleased about that. Including Trail of Dead was my way of mixing things up and showing my love for contemporary indie rock; I knew they'd never get anywhere near the top, but I'm a little disappointed they didn't even make the list. Same with Mission of Burma. Probably what upsets me most, however, is that the incredibly influential and talented indie rock godfathers Sonic Youth only made it as far as 205, getting beat out by people like Damien Rice and Sheryl Crow. Ick.

In general that was the most disturbing thing about the list: hearing a band you think is really fantastic and amazing, and then immediately afterward having some loser show up (often an upstart newcomer) just one or two positions higher on the list, who are now supposedly better than your favorite guys. For me, one of the toughest of these moments was having the fantastically evil, sinister, doom-laden Nick Cave get one-upped by the sugary Jewel and then the bland Barry Manilow. What?!

Anyway, I really thought Bob Dylan would make it all the way, but when I realized he was number two, there was nobody else who could be in the number one position. There's very little surprising about the final top ten, really, except perhaps the inclusion of Joni Mitchell. The fact that its unsurprising seems necessary, but also kind of boring. My wife had a fascinating idea on this topic, actually: hold a vote like this, but then throw out all votes for the obvious usual suspects, like The Beatles and Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin and so on, and then see what you're left with. The top ten of that list would be a lot more surprising and interesting. And it's something XPN might want to consider, as they're kind of running out of music-related things that they can do lists of! Seriously, what else can they find 885 of to count down?

Photo of the number in question by Flickr user LeoL30