Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs

When Donna Summer was recording her album I Remember Yesterday , she wanted each song to evoke a different decade. "I Feel Love" was meant to represent the future of music, and as time has gone on, that label has been proven to be a prophecy. Co-produced by Giorgio Moroder and Peter Bellotte, "I Feel Love" is a hypnotic, ethereal piece of synth music that’s left an incomparable mark on music that...

It took two years for Nicki Minaj to take over the world. Following her 2009 mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty , she caught the attention of Lil Wayne who signed her. Minaj quickly became ubiquitous, taking over the charts and winning over rap heavyweights and pop divas with her next level guest verses. It was Nicki’s debut album Pink Friday and single “Super Bass” that made her a force to be reckoned wit...

When OutKast dropped “Ms. Jackson” in the fall of 2000, the world was stunned. Nobody had ever heard a hip-hop song that sounded anything like this. But there’s never been anybody like OutKast before. On this week’s episode, hosts Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos discuss “Ms. Jackson,” and how it fits into the long illustrious OutKast story. They’re joined by their brilliant Rolling Stone colleag...

One thing Cher's career has never been is predictable. This week, hosts Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos celebrate Cher's incredible legacy with her 1998 hit and best-selling song "Believe" as the focal point. They are joined by artist and DJ Bright Light Bright Light who opened for Cher on tour several years ago and has been a lifelong fan of the legend. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy i...

Only a few rare songs ever turn into pop classics. But this one turned into a classic twice. “Killing Me Softly” not only made Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time with the 1973 Roberta Flack hit at Number 273, but also with the 1996 Fugees hit which comes in at Number 359. It’s the only song on the list that appears in two different versions. On this week’s episode, hosts Ro...

BTS were already massive in their native South Korea in 2017 when they scored one of their defining hits, the emotional ballad “Spring Day.” It was a poignant tale of grief and loss. Three years later, “Dynamite” showed a totally different extreme of their music, going for dance-floor kicks. The Chic-style disco rush of “Dynamite” was a blast of sunshine, during the bleak days of the pandemic in t...

Coming in at #91 on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of All Time list, this week hosts Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanos discuss "Int'l Players Anthem" with special guest Bun B. The surviving member of UGK details the fateful way the song came together with OutKast including how their iconic video almost didn't happen. Bun B sings the praises of his UGK partner Pimp C, who died six months after "Int...

There are all other songwriters, and then there is Carole King. Nobody’s ever had an epic career quite like the Brooklyn girl who spent the Sixties writing classic hits for other artists—then spent the Seventies writing her own.    With her 1971 solo classic Tapestry , she set the standards that all young singer-songwriters still aspire to reach. She’s always gone her own way as a performer, a com...

Daddy Yankee’s original plan was to become a baseball player. However when a stray bullet hit him at age 17, he pivoted to focusing on his other passion: music. The Puerto Rican star ended up becoming an integral part of the creation and explosion of reggaeton, a Spanish-language genre that fuses dancehall and soca with hip-hop.  It was his 2004 breakout hit “Gasolina” and album Barrio Fino that h...

The Kinks were heading into uncharted territory in the Sixties. The London rockers blew up in the early days of the British invasion, topping the charts with violently rowdy bangers like “You Really Got Me.” But Ray Davies began to explore a new kind of introspective songwriting, telling stories of everyday heartbreak. “Waterloo Sunset” is his artistic triumph: the delicate 1967 ballad of a lonely...

Rob Base never thought “It Takes Two” would become a massive hit. He and DJ E-Z Rock were just aiming to make a neighborhood party record, straight from the streets of Harlem, to get bodies moving in their local clubs and skating rinks. But “It Takes Two” blew up into a monster hit around the world, forever changing hip-hop. The music business was shocked when this raw rap anthem crashed into the...

Gladys Knight and the Pips were two decades into their career when they released their signature song, “Midnight Train to Georgia”. Formed in 1952, the legendary band was comprised of Gladys Knight, her brother Bubba Knight and their cousins William Guest and Edward Patten. They were originally signed to Motown Records in1966 but found their time on the label to be an uphill battle, with acts like...

In 2003, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were not only emerging as one of the most stellar bands in a particularly thrilling New York rock scene, but also as one of the most exciting bands in the world. Their breakout hit "Maps" would be a major pop crossover moment, joining the lexicon of great and timeless rock and roll love songs. At the band's helm was Karen O, the firecracker of a lead vocalist whose son...

Drake has always been a magnet for attention. His strange journey has taken him from teen fame on Degrassi to blockbuster rap stardom. In 2024, his beef with Kendrick Lamar has blown up into one of the all-time biggest hip-hop beefs. They went from zero to 100 real quick, sending deadly insults and accusations back and forth. Yet he’s also still Drake, the pop icon and the certified loverboy who s...

On this week’s episode hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield break down Jeff Buckley's "Grace" as well as his much-too-short career due to his tragic passing at age 30. The pair are joined by Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne, who penned the 2001 biography about Jeff and his father Tim Buckley titled Dream Brother: The Life and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley . Browne had been an early fan...

Anyone who’s heard The Killers' "Mr. Brightside" has an almost Pavlovian response to the song's opening lines. It's hard to go anywhere in the world without watching a room or crowd immediately sing along to the synth-rock classic. First released in 2003, the group's unique sound mixed with Brandon Flowers' New Wave vocal delivery helped make this song about jealousy, deception and calling a cab o...

On this week’s episode of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs, hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield discuss the story of “Be My Baby,” breaking down the song’s massive impact on pop history. The song comes in at #22 on Rolling Stone’s list and is as universal as a pop song can be. It’s the song that made Ronnie Spector a timeless rock & roll legend, a teenage girl from Spanish Harlem who pac...

Even before Beyoncé kicked off her solo career, it was clear that she was a legend-in-the-making. As the de facto leader of Destiny's Child, she was a guiding light for the girl group and helped shepherd them to stardom in both the pop and R&B spaces. The group was at their height (and still very much together) as she launched her solo career, first with "Work It Out" for the Austin Powers in...

Kate Bush has always been a fiercely original art-pop icon. But with “Running Up That Hill,” she achieved a new kind of feat. “Running Up That Hill” was a massive Top Ten hit, dominating U.S. radio all over the summer of 2022—even though it was a song she released back in 1985. Her classic synth-goth anthem sounded ahead of its time in the Eighties, but only Kate Bush could make it a song that STI...

Taylor Swift knows a thing or two about swerving when her listeners and detractors least expect it, but nothing could prepare anyone for her total abandonment of country music on her 2014 album 1989 . Sure, she had teased some Max Martin-assisted pop hits on her previous album Red , but 1989 was a total 180 from the country starlet's past, trading her teardrop-soaked guitar for sassier synths inst...

On this episode of our 500 Greatest Songs podcast, we dive into the unique chemistry Missy Elliot and Timbaland have had throughout their careers. In the Nineties, Missy and Timbaland were just a pair of kids from Virginia — but they ended up changing the sound of hip-hop and pop forever. The two geniuses would collaborate on production for their friends and eventually on Missy Elliott's own succe...

This week our hosts Brittany and Rob look at one of the longest, craziest stories in pop music: the never-ending saga of “Hound Dog.” Big Mama Thornton came out with this massive R&B belter in 1952 and was the first hit from the legendary writing team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. The song comes in at #318 on the list, and instantly became a cultural phenomenon, inspiring countless cover v...

This week our hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield look at an Eighties dance-floor classic, from one of the all-time biggest pop legends: Madonna’s “Into The Groove.” It wasn’t Madonna’s first single (that was “Everybody”) or her first hit (that would be “Holiday”), but “Into The Groove” is the one that instantly evokes Madonna in her raw, gritty early days. It’s a cheap, fast, in-your-face dis...

You probably don’t know his face or his voice, but you definitely know his music. In this episode of 'Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs', hosts Brittany Spanos and Rob Sheffield take a deep dive into iconic songs like Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” and the enigmatic writer-producer behind them: Max Martin, the Swedish genius responsible for so many hits of the past quarter-century. Martin...

Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs list is one of the most popular — and most-argued over — features the magazine has ever produced. It’s a trip through eight decades of pop music, from Elvis Presley to Elvis Costello, Aretha to Ariana, hip-hop to art-pop, and beyond. Its rankings are hugely influential, and — if you disagree enough with them, at least — infamous. In the first episode of Rolling S...