I have been saying this along. A great artist is not required to have a huge cultural impact to be great. Also one of the greatest influence the Beatles and Bob Dylan have on music is their songwriting. Of course songwriting is part of being an artist to many musicians. If you take away the songwriting aspect you are basically taking away huge portion of influence. A rock band could be influenced by the song sound but in many aspects he or she is influenced just as much by the song structure, composition, chord progressions etc..

Cultural impact makes a great artist greater. The Beatles are a prime example of this. If you were to eliminate their entire impact on popular culture they'd be viewed like Bing Crosby, a massively popular and influential artist, but not transcendent. Their cultural impact set them apart from someone like that and one of the first things people think of when somebody mentions the Beatles is something related to the effect it had on popular culture as a whole.

The Beatles and Dylan are GETTING credit if the songs they write and perform get influence, but they are not going to, and will not, get credit for it TWICE in two seperate criteria. An artist is the performer credited on the record, nothing more. A songwriter is the person who writes the song. They are separate roles often, but not always, performed by the same individuals. Keep that straight. If you'd like me to start a most influential songwriter list I'd be happy to do so at some point.

I actually would like you to do a Greatest Cultural List of Rock artists and Greatest Musical Influence List of Rock Aritsts.

It's laughable IMO that having cultural influence equates in writing and performing great songs. In the case of someone like the Beatles or the Who they were well rounded artists because they actually wrote their songs. Songwriting is musical and the last time I checked being musical is a requirement in being an artist. Or does that count only for people who are just vocalists. Come on Sampson. I guess we disagree.

C'mon yourself. Look at where Dylan is on the most influential artists list. Do you THINK he possibly is that high because of the songs he wrote???? Of course, but it is not a seperate criteria because an ARTIST is a seperate entity from SONGWRITER. Yet Dylan gets credit for his records, which are recordings of songs that he WROTE! Hence the influence. Same with the Beatles. An artist was influenced by those records, and by extention by their writing, so they're already getting full credit for it as artists, but I can't credit the same thing twice, especially when an artist and songwriter are by definition two different things.

Why is this difficult to understand? I think it's clear as I can make it.

As for cultural influence, the last time I checked music is a cornerstone of popular culture and the influence of their careers on the direction pop culture takes is a huge deal. At one point though I was going to have the overall influence list you see here and then three sidebars with each category figured itself. That might be the better way to go. But on the main list they'd still be all factored equally and Presley, by virtue of a huge win in cultural would still win overall. I've checked it every way you possibly can and there's no way he doesn't win in that regard.

This isn't right at all. Every artist has the opportunity to make a cultural impact, so it's a fair criterion to apply across the board. Similarly, I can't think of a single significant artist that does not perform live. Even your two examples have toured extensively.

But songwriting is different. Many terrific artists are not songwriters. Sampson is exactly right that making songwriting another facet of the list criteria would bias the list towards artists who are also songwriters. We already have a list for songwriters. This is a list for artists.

Whistling is musical. Does it follow that artists who can whistle should be rated above those who can't?

Yes, of course "being musical" is a requirement for being an artist. But it hardly follows that all musical activity is part of being an artist. The Beatles didn't produce their own recordings; should we value their accomplishments less because of that?

I happen to agree with you that I'd put The Beatles at number one, but I also think that Elvis as an artist should get full credit for the records that came out under his name. Both The Beatles and Elvis had influence--both on music and on the wider culture--that is so massive it's almost inconceivable.

How about "Bad Boy" or "Slow Down"? I think those are pretty definitive. I've heard some artists cover "Bad Boy", for example, and none of them use the backing vocals from the original.

I think you can make a case for their "Boys" being definitive, too, but while you're right that those three songs weren't so exposed in their original versions, that wasn't true of all that many of their covers. Their versions of "Rock And Roll Music", "Roll Over Beethoven", and "Long Tall Sally", for example, are all classics in their own right, but the originals are such legendary recordings that there was no way in the world anyone else could have done a definitive version.

Those are songs you would've thought the Beatles versions would've superceded the originals, since they weren't as widely known, but they haven't. Larry Williams work in particular has been revisited by music fans and historians and is still considered definitive. On a purely personal note, I think the Stones actually top his version of "She Said Yeah", but even there the original still remains the go-to performance. As for "Boys", it got more noteriety because the Beatles did it of course (it was only a B-side for the Shirelles), but maybe because it sounds stupid being sung by males the original is definitive even now.

As far as the more well-known covers the Beatles chose to do - Roll Over Beethoven or Long Tall Sally - being done by major artists that were major hits so it'd be hard to surpass that, Presley did the same with Hound Dog (#1 for 7 weeks in 1953 and like "Boys", lyrically it is meant for a woman, but unlike the Beatles with Boys, Presley totally obliterated the meaning and claimed it for himself). Even when they had the same source - Arthur Alexander, The Beatles with Anna and Presley with Burning Love, the definitive version of the first remains Alexander while the definitive version of the second remains Presley.

Again personally speaking, I happen to prefer a lot of the originals Elvis cut, though his are great too, but his versions have overwhelmed the originals in the public consciousness. This doesn't make one artist "better" than another, it just shows that the Beatles were songwriters first, performers second, whereas Presley was a performer first and foremost. I think that's actually what makes them both so interesting, that they had totally different approaches to their craft.

I will never understand DDD´s bias against songwriters.

There is no bias against songwriting - songwriting achievements are counted. Why can't you see this?

You know perfectly that over the Guitar forum many times all of you have said that The Beatles and Cobain are not great guitarists, they are only great songwriters.

That's not true, though. George Harrison is in the top 30, and Kurt Cobain is in the top 250 - both are patently considered great guitarists.
What does the guitarist list have to do with these lists anyway?

It is just my general impression about DDD. Songwriters are underrated. That’s all.

On this list, 22 of the Top 25 are also known for their songwriting. How on earth is that biased against them? You need some actual evidence to back this up and there is none here. DDD has a lot of blind spots historically with some lists (unfortunately), but underrating songwriters is definitely not one of them.

If 22 of the Top 25 are also known for their songwriting, why don´t make it part of the criteria? I mean, been a great songwriter it is clearly a characteristic that most influential artist have and the list will not change that much.