Yeah, Bo Rhap was much more ground-breaking as a vocal performance than an overall song.

I also think the new list is awful, I think acclaim and lasting popularity should be much more important than influence on a list list like this one.

Why?

I think the emphasis on popularity was a lot of what was wrong with the old list.

Probably because there is no medium that is only influenced by a portion of a work. There is no way of measuring the influence of a song precisely, because some influence may also be drawn from the artist behind the song. Only a handful of songs can claim to have significantly influenced music on their own.

Because you can't really be that influenced by a single song, artists and musician should be ranked based on influence, but for single songs, I think acclaim/reputation should be much more important. I find it silly that people want Stairway that low when it is incredibly and acclaimed and it has been considered as one of the very greatest rock songs by multiple generations. I just think I'd prefer to have a list based on acclaim, but if you want to base this on influence, you're sure doing a good job.

Actually, I believe that the criteria should be ranked as such:

Acclaim > Popularity > Cultural Impact > Influence

I assume last time it was:

Popularity>Cultural Impact>Acclaim>Influence

Wanted and Deany, you are both making the mistake of mixing up influence and inspiration once again. How many artists were inspired by a certain song is not important. The question is whether that song introduced new musical elements to rock or popularized them. It's possible to judge that.

Not, it was the emphasis on classic rock radio.

I think its possible to be influenced by a single song.

I think the wrong thing about that is that the list will always be biased in favour of super-old songs which happen to be musically much inferior and some of the even forgotten compared to the songs that came after them in the glory days of rock.



Perfect.

Give me a non-Fifties example of a song that single-handedly introduced something new that had a significant effect on music. It takes an entire bunch of songs to introduce something new, not just one song. I still believe acclaim should be the most important criterion, followed by either cultural impact or popularity.

Depends on what you want the list to represent. I think, if a song has a considerable amount of influence, it should boost its credentials immensely, because it means that the song is highly significant to rock history. The criteria should be of equal importance in my opinion, though certain criteria wouldn't matter in some of the matchups (for example influence shouldn't be decisive, when you compare two songs with very little influence).

What to do you mean with "musically inferior"? Do you mean the complexity of the musical material? If so that shouldn't be a factor on this list at all. Also saying that older songs are always or at least often musically inferior compared to newer songs is quite simply bullshit.

I want the list to represent what it's supposed to represent: a list of the greatest songs of all time. This is turning into a most influential list.