Jann Wenner Loses His Mind

These songs?
http://www.rollingstoneextras.com/patron40songs/

Extra bonus points if you can explain what IN THE FUCK Britney Spears is doing on this list.

 

HST kept that magazine viable and respected. It's been all downhill since his death, and some would argue, before it.

 

I've heard 26 of those 40 songs. :-\

 

Britney Spears is on there for the same reason that Donna Summers is - songs that opened the floodgates for a genre. Think of how many Britney clones have come and gone since that song came out. Hillary Duff. Christina Aguilera. Lindsay Lohan. It's seriously countless. I don't think they think she changed things for the better. But that song sent the RIAA scrambling.

 

And also set the tabloid agenda for the next decade or more, FWIW.

 

'Imagine' is a great song but doesn't belong on that list.
Same is true of 'TV Party.'
Same is true of 'Just like Heaven.'
I love all three of those songs, but I don't think they signaled any shift or change in popular music.

 

What no Humpty Dance? Travesty!

 

Bingo. Good call, Knute. That song definitely seemed to reinvigorate TeenyBopper pop. Not a good thing, but it did change what people were listening to.

I would have 'Straight Outta Compton' on that list somewhere and 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' should have been higher. Both signaled the start of a major shift in what people were listening to. They didn't invent their respective genres, but they were major catalysts in getting gangsta rap and grunge/alternative music on the airwaves.

I'm no music expert, so take that for what it's worth.

 

It's a marketing ploy. The more asinine stuff on the list, the more people will check it out and will, in turn, drink Patron tequila.

 

Why not, Chris.
I'm willing to say categorically that maybe three of those songs changed something resembling the world. (Changing music isn't the same thing.) The Elvis? OK. Even if you accept Dylan's folk period as having changed things, and I don't entirely, "Blowin' In The Wind" is the pick, not "Hard Rain." (Tiebreaker: getting played at the March On Washington in 1963.)

Songs that changed the world begin and end with The Internationale and The Marseillaise, and not even them, really.

 

Let's add Yankee Doodle and Battle Hymn of the Republic while we are revising the list.

 

I'm curious that of all of the Zeppelin songs they could have picked, that they took "Whole Lotta Love"

Great song, but I wonder if it was picked because some radio stations banned playing it...

I agree with Knute about Britney being on there... The list never says "Changed the world for the better..."