Friday, July 1, 2011

VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 1980s

About 5 years ago, VH1 had a five part series called "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s".  Searching on the VH1 website, I could only find the first hour with #100 to #81.  I guess they're really more in the business of selling TV ads than distributing lists for people to quibble with, but I was able to find the whole top 100 elsewhere.

I made my own list of the top 500 songs of the 1980s a little while ago, which I'll be posting here soon.  My top 500 does not include VH1's #1 or #2.  Is it just me?  Rolling Stone recently published a special collectors edition entitled "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".  Rolling Stone's list is skewed towards the 60s and 70s, but it does include 55 songs from the 1980s.

One might expect that if VH1's #1 and #2 were really great that they might be among the 55 80s songs in Rolling Stones top 500.  They're nowhere to be seen.  VH1's #3 made it to #166 on my list and didn't make the Rolling Stone list.  VH1's #4 is at #58 on the Rolling Stone list, which is almost as high as any 80s song makes it on the Rolling Stone list.

So what does this tell us?  I think it suggests I am not appreciably more snooty than Rolling Stone's critics pool and that VH1 has something pretty different in mind when they call something great.  The VH1 list is not actually all that dreadful, but the very top of the list is a bit of a head scratcher in my opinion.

No comments:

Post a Comment