The 2000 Most Important Artists in Rock and Roll: Re-ranking Project and Compiling Project

I want to use this blog for other types of writing about music, too. I have a lot of opinions about music that are general, and particularly about canonicity. I also thought this blog would be a good place for me to launch a project where I will either count up or down on a long list that I am still working on compiling. The list (one that is borne out of my own opinion and analysis) will be entitled The 2000 Most Important Artists in Rock and Roll. I am really looking forward to the project and would like to reach out in a few ways for help or readers’ input along the way of the project. In this blog entry, I just want to outline how I’m conceiving of it and what parts I want to feature or include in the project.

            I have been long fascinated by the concept of canonicity within popular culture, particularly within popular music. I have been very fascinated over many years with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and have written a lot on Twitter about their induction processes, their museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and the way that they have honored various inductees (or in fact the way that they have snubbed others or insulted others). I feel that there are many things that could be done better about the RRHoF and have written that way on Twitter quite a lot, but I have quite a bit of respect for the overall project and quite a bit of the work that the foundation has done to give respect to great people and bands while also educating the public about a genre that is receding from its ubiquity in the public discourse.

The ceremonies have been very frustrating to watch but also very entertaining at many times over the years, and the website is a good source of information about a number of artists, though it hasn’t aimed for any sort of encyclopedic or journalistic prominence. The major role of the magazine Rolling Stone in the affairs of the RRHoF has perhaps made the website writers want to shy away from working much in documenting the rock and roll culture encyclopedically, given that the magazine and the book-length publications coming from it have been doing it for just as long or in fact longer.

I have thought of this project as one that will give the readers information about a huge range of artists, ranging from the huge artists that are usually thought of as the “pantheon” in rock and roll criticism or in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, to minor artists who have made a significant contribution to the artform over the years. The title of the list, “The 2000 Most Important Artists in Rock and Roll,” tells you that I don’t want to rank my favorite artists here, and it also isn’t a ranking of artists from the most talented to the least. My goal is to rank these 2000 artists in order of their importance in the cultural history of rock and roll. That means there will be some artists that I think of as less entertaining or less talented who place higher in the list than others that I listen to and that I enjoy listening to, and also that there will be some artists that have work that I find morally objectionable, or who have done morally objectionable things, who will be on the list, including in high places from time to time. I want to be clear that I am just ranking them based on how I view their importance to the rock and roll culture, and that there are some artists who have influenced or perpetuated that culture profoundly or majorly who have also done horrible things, including murdering their partner in a hotel, or who have made music that I don’t particularly care to hear. There have been other writers who have ranked the “best” or “the most influential”; I’m ranking 2000 artists on importance to the history of the genre.

My list is currently at about 1300 artists or so. I began compiling a list in the 2000s just after I graduated from college and have gone back to it periodically over the years. I put quite a bit of thought into the re-ranking of the original list. The re-ranking that I put together is based on four categories (popularity, talent, influence, and career longevity) that I thought of for giving a score of 0.0-10.0 for each artist, later giving the artists adjusted scores and rankings for a total of 40 maximum. Then I worked on brainstorming a list of artists that have made a meaningful or significant impact on rock and roll in the past 10 or 17 years and then rescoring the original artists that were on the list of 1200 that I wrote originally. I am currently working on ordering or ranking the newer artists while also including other older or earlier artists who weren’t on the original list. The total of 2000 is a bit arbitrary, admittedly, but I think it will allow me to include just about any artists who have had a meaningful contribution or influence on the music or genre. I also feel that the genre or movement is reaching the last era that it is a major cultural force internationally, and therefore that once I reach 2000 that will pretty much include all the major artists that after the “rock and roll era” will come to be thought of as being important to the culture in that era.

Let’s talk a bit about how I view the “rock and roll era.” I think it began in roughly 1955 and will last until roughly 2025 for a 70-year span where rock and roll is a prominent art form. This time span is remarkable in that is very long for a cultural movement or genre in modern history, and it appears to be the longest time for any cultural movement in American history, for prominence within the broader American culture. (I recognize that arguments could be made that blackface minstrelsy or jazz music were prominent for that long or for longer.)

The genre will continue after 2025; I wouldn’t mean to suggest that there is a forthcoming moment where all those making rock music will put down their instruments or leave the recording studios without returning to them. I just think that we have been noticing in the past five years that rock and roll has been less prominent in comparison to other genres of music.

We are hearing fewer popular rock albums. We are hearing fewer rock or classic rock radio stations. The rock artists that get good reviews from music critics or win awards are less popular or widely talked about and they have fanbases that are either less enthusiastic or less interested in regarding rock and roll as a cohesive genre or cultural movement. I have been feeling that younger people are less likely to be listening to rock music or going to concerts in the current generation than the ones preceding them, including my generation currently in our late 30s.

The concept of an emergent, major rock band really wouldn’t be viewed as a foreign or surprising concept yet, in the way that a hit jazz song released recently currently would be. But it looks like we are heading for that time. The time of rock and roll music being ubiquitous is a very long one. I’m writing in 2020 in April. That means that I am looking 65 years and 3 months of time from Bill Haley and his Comets having a Top 40 hit of “Rock Around the Clock” to now. There have been very few top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the past five years that would be categorized into the “rock” category. I think that if I think about the 70-year timespan from 1955 to 2025, I will get the best overall picture of the culture.

I am planning on polling my fellow rock music enthusiasts on Twitter to get to a better, more well-put-together listing of The 2000 Most Important Artists in Rock and Roll that features your votes for part of it. You will have tweets coming from my Twitter that give you an artist and then ask you to give that artist a score for the 4 categories I mentioned earlier (popularity, talent, influence, and career longevity). I will be writing the tweet relating to the first artist, Elvis Presley, later today. I will try to get your thoughts on your favorite song from that artist too. Please feel free to play along. If you have questions about how I am compiling the total or information, please write a tweet for that. I will be explaining to anyone who puts forth a question. I think that it will take time for anyone for people on Twitter to find out about the re-ranking, but please try to vote in it.

I will try to have a long grouping of tweets about the project. I am unclear on how many people will want to participate, but I am aiming to get many people to participate in it.