By the way, "JBG" was installed as the #1 song back in August. It was #2 before that. On the former list "RATC" was not even in the top ten. I moved up "RATC" much more than I moved up "JBG."

But how about some comments on the additions we just made, and on which song you think should be #500.

I voted for the Aretha record. She has just three songs on the list and one of them is a second artist listing on "The Weight." The other two are "Respect" and "Chain of Fools." I wanted to see one of her classic ballads make it, but it looks like a landslide so far for "River Deep, Mountain High."

You've gotta be happy with the mix of music from the 65 years of rock, from "Good Rockin' Tonight" by WH to "Rolling In The Deep" by Adele.

By my count there's about 44 hip hop records on the list, that's almost 9% of the list.

I didn't say the list overall was bad, I said it was a brutal list to do, because the criteria, no matter WHAT you use (and I was trying a bunch of different things when I attempted the same list) doesn't give enough of a differencial between songs to definitively rank them. It winds up a clusterfuck of equal songs and there's no way to fairly separate them. But yes, I think you did a very good job of grabbing songs from all eras and styles of rock and spreading them out so it doesn't lean heavily towards any one area too much. However at the very top there should be a clear cut favorite that the criteria DOES find defensible, but I'm following your criteria and the results of that don't justify the ranking at the top, that's all.

But why are you getting so defensive about this? Challenging me to a math test? YOU did the math, the two songs are tied by your calculations and yet one is ranked higher. Why is that? Granted, with so few numbers there's gonna be ties (after all, the highest song gets just 23 points and there's 500 spots on the list. It looks like you're about 477 points away from a mathematically sound numercial formula for the problem at hand). But my larger point is that you are not crediting them numerically for what you stated. You yourself said of RATC in the "historical impact" category - "it wins pretty easily", yet you give it the SAME score as JBG. How can "winning easily" and the "same score" be mathmatically defensible. If someone is 6'3" and someone else is 5'9" are they the same height? If someone's 43 years old and someone else is 31 are they same age? If you're going to use a numerical formula then there HAS to be baseline standards that prevent this. But I don't think mathematical formulas work at all, because there are no easily proven baselines. Is a number one song in 1965 worth the same as 2005? What about a song in 1951, before the pop charts opened to rock? Or 1954 when a rock song breaking into the pop charts was a much more significant feat than doing the same in 1984? Is a #1 record worth twice as much as a #50 record or 50 times as much, and how can something be fifty times as much when you're handing out 1,2, 3 or 4 points in that category? No matter how good at math you claim to be there is no numerical formula that you can come up with that anyone couldn't poke holes in until it looked like a lace curtain and you know it. That's the inherant problem with using math for this.

But that's just one issue. I accept that as one of the inevitible flaws in a list like this one. But what I don't get is you giving the maximum amount of influence to a song that has no major influence. JBG did not start any new trend, style or approach to rock music. While Berry's influence overall is immense, that song didn't capture most of it during the years he was most influential. The style he laid down before that was the same and thus primary influence goes to the earlier examples of it, and in some cases even more popular records that preceded it. The Beatles hit with Roll Over Beethoven and the Stones hit with Come On. The Beach Boys re-worked Sweet Little Sixteen to Surfin USA. Buddy Holly did Brown Eyed Handsome Man. Everyone did Memphis, which Chuck himself said was his most popular among other artists. JBG was seen in those years that followed to be just one of about a half dozen or more songs of his that was good, but no more so than any other. It didn't stand out in ANY conceivable way and had no influence that the others did not already give him.

But you're trying to throw out side points about popularity of movies (again, not taking into account the change in ticket prices, you can't compare two movies 12 years apart and say that doesn't matter) and other such things while ducking the main question about the figuring of the criteria itself. If JBG has the maximum amount of influence possible, as you claim it does, then it shouldn't be hard to explain precisely what that influence is. It needs to have either pioneered something that was then picked up on, or at the very least significantly spread the exposure of something already done before to a wider audience. It did neither. The historical impact score has to also be explained since you contradicted yourself badly, by saying RATC wins easily, then giving them the same score. That doesn't fly. All I'm asking is for you to explain all of this because we are, after all, talking about the top position on the entire list. I would think that getting the #1 position right so that the criteria easily defends it would be of interest to you.

Take your time, I'll wait.

Don't hold your breath.

It was enough of a shitstorm to drop "Stairway" from the top spot.

"RATC" is a 5.0 for impact and "JBG" was a 4.50 (rounded up to 5) so "RATC" won that catedgory by 11%, a clear win :-), but a whole number tie.

I'll vote for Aretha too. I think she should get another song on the list one way or another. "Natural Woman", "Think", and "I Say a Little Prayer" are good candidates too.

Okay, but the next time you question any list of mine, no matter how indefensible the ranking may be, I'll just refer back to you completely ducking the question of what Johnny B. Goode's so-called influence was, because you know full well it has none and that score is the reason why it was able to "tie" RATC and get the #1 position. I won't call it a fix, but it doesn't pass the smell test.

These comments crack me up.
"And my dad can beat up your dad"....



What does that have to do with anything?

Yeah, I'd probably have "Natural Woman" on the list -- even before "Never Loved a Man".

First off, Bruce's point system wasn't the final say in the list. Which should be obvious from the numbers he posted for the top ten--there are 21s ahead of 23s.

I think "Johnny B. Goode" has at least as much influence as "Rock Around The Clock", probably more. This is largely because I don't agree with your definition of influence being so closely tied up with being the first to do something. In your conception of influence, if someone here's "Johnny B. Goode" and decides to play guitar, he's being influenced by whatever record did whatever inspired him first. Never mind the difficulty of trying to establish whatever that was; the plain definition of "influence" says that he was influenced by "Johnny B. Goode". The guitar has been THE key instrument in rock and roll ever since "Johnny B. Goode" came out. Yes, it was already a very important part of the rock sound before that, and, yes, Chuck had other records that sounded similar before that, and, yes, those records--along with others featuring the guitar of Bo Diddley or Scotty Moore or others--also had an impact on the primacy of the guitar. Would the place of the guitar in rock be different if "Johnny B. Goode" had never been recorded? Maybe not, but then, it's extremely hard to be sure that ANYTHING would be different if any one song had never been recorded. But I can certainly say this: A lot more of rock, across the spectrum, bears some of the "genes" of "Johnny B. Goode" than those of "Rock Around The Clock".

There's no right answer to what should be number one, but that's why I'm more comfortable with JBG at the top then RATC.

I do, BTW, agree with you that "The Twist" should be onsiderably higher.

Careful. Imagine how much more popular the hits of the 80s would seem than the hits of the 60s if we usually reported success in terms of worldwide dollars instead of units sold or chart success. The difference between the two is a combination of the expansion of non-US markets (Future made about $211 million US, Graffiti $115) and inflation. In fact, going by the average ticket prices the year they were released, Back To The Future sold about 59 million tickets in the US, and Graffiti about 64 million.

Then again, Future unquestionably was seen by WAY more people on TV and video, given the advent of cable TV and VCRs in the interim.

There's a HUGE problem with that thinking though, because it requires us to guess on what someone was influenced by. Berry himself has said that it wasn't until decades later that Johnny B. Goode was seen as his key recording, so all of the first generation who'd be MOST influenced by any Berry recording weren't influenced by that one any more than any other. That's what led me to come up with primary and secondary influence in the first place. It was the ONLY way to accurately and fairly assign influence without asking every artist, living and dead, what influenced them (which itself wouldn't be accurate, since many artists give different answers to the same questions over the years, depending on what they remember, what they've listened to or gotten back into most recently, who's asking the question and what the previous questions were, which tend to be in the same vein and lead to answers along that same trail). In other words, Bruce is guessing that JBG was more influential based on its lasting popularity and the fact it eventually became Berry's signature song, while I'm saying that the period where Berry's influence took hold the most (which I doubt he'd argue) would be the early to mid-60's, when that style of playing and writing was adapted by the next generation of artists (Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, etc.) and it wasn't that record specifically that they picked up on. You can't simply assign influence credit to a song that sounded remarkably like previous popular songs of the same artist which were heard just as much by the same artists that you are now were saying were influenced by JBG more than any other of his releases. It can't work that way and be fair or accurate.

The truth is we don't know what exact record caused someone to pick up a guitar, but what we DO know is where in rock things were first heard (innovation) and where that innovation spread wider than it ever had before, based on the popularity of the record it appeared on and the sounds of other records by other artists in the immediate aftermath of that record (secondary). JBG fails miserably on both counts. His own earlier records had the exact same approach, arrangements and styles, and there was no sudden explosion of JBG-sounding records that followed its release (especially since Berry himself was releasing similar sound records before and after it, such as Carol and so on). Did it have SOME influence? Of course, but it was the overall style and sound that had the influence, and that style and sound was on records of Berry's that were heard by the exact same people that later heard JBG. Or are you saying they were unaware of those influential attributes until JBG came out?

That's why the only way that evaluating influence can be defensible is to use that way. If someone has another way that is more accurate and provable, please let it be known by all means, but I've never seen one. Furthermore, the arrangement of Haley's record had notable influence itself. The record has everything rock has been largely known for ever since - the combination of instruments, the loud crashing drums, the fast guitar solo, the emphasis on the heavy backbeat, the lyrical focus of rebellion and self-aggrandizing of rock itself. Even JBG does that! I would say it's secondary, but there can be no question that the record's massive popularity spread that sound further than it had been before. I don't think either record is among the most influential of all-time, but there's no way that JBG has any notable influence unto itself that can be separated from Roll Over Beethoven or School Day, unless you're somehow saying that those records have NONE because JBG stole it all. It makes no sense and none of these arguments is answering the main question that I keep asking - where's the influence of that which didn't already exist? And how did a slightly smaller hit by the same artist spread that influence more so than bigger hits of Berry's in the same style that preceded it?

If you think that record has no influence you're insane, or you're totally misinterpreting what influence is.

Sampson said that the two movies were equally popular.

Going by acclaim, "I Never Loved A Man" is #196 on the RS Top 500, "A Natural Woman" did not make the list. One is in the grammy hall of fame and the other is on the R&R HOF list. "I Never Loved A man" was a gold single, "Natural Woman" was not. At acclaimedmusic.net "I never Loved A man" is #340 of all time, "Matural Woman" is #641.

Based on the criteria "I Never Loved A man" is a better choice.

JBG sounds very little like School Day.

Any system is just a guide, there's always subjectve decisions to be made. But the system can tell you when you're really off on a record, like I was when I left "Dabce To The Music" out of the top 300 originally. I inserted it at #250 a while ago.