My Personal Reranking of Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums (Ongoing!)

 A few of my friends decided to embark on the project of gradually reranking Rolling Stones' top 500 albums of all time. I'm not very good at talking about muisc, so hopefully part of this project will also be me getting better at that, though I may not write something for every album. If you'd like to check out their lists, here's a link to the next website in the ring.

Newest additions: 69 Love Songs - Born to Run - Back to Black

1. What's Going On, Marvin Gaye (RS: 1)
2. Nevermind, Nirvana (RS: 6)
3. Blue, Joni Mitchell (RS: 3)
4. Aja, Steely Dan (RS: 63)
5. Can't Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan (RS: 168)
6. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West (RS: 17)
7. Tapestry, Carole King (RS: 25)
8. 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields (RS: 406)
9. SOUR, Olivia Rodrigo (RS: 358)
10. Graduation, Kanye West (RS: 204)
11. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen (RS: 21)
12. Rumours, Fleetwood Mac (RS: 7)
13. Abbey Road, The Beatles (RS: 5)
14. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys (RS: 2) 
15. Back to Black, Amy Winehouse (RS: 33)

What's Going On, Marvin Gaye

    I can always listen to this album—it feels timeless both in it's sound and messages, and I'd be really surprised if anything ended up beating it out of number 1. (6/15/26)

Nevermind, Nirvana

    Every song off of Nevermind is awesome, except maybe "Polly," which is still pretty good, all things considered, but the album also flows in a really nice way that is impressive given the aforementioned awesomeness of every song on it. I really value flow when ranking these! Classic! Great stuff! Right up my alley.  Some of my friends were talking about how they don't like "Endless Nameless" and that's fair but I think its a great ending to the album and also just a good song. (6/15/26)

Blue, Joni Mitchell

    Every song is so deeply honest and emotional, but at the same time has like a truth about them which makes this album feel full of folk songs I should've heard before a thousand times. And, like, obviously, wow, Joni Mitchell can sing! Very close to Nevermind—depends more on the mood I'm in, truthfully. (6/22/26)

Aja, Steely Dan

    If this was an album with just "Deacon Blues," it would be a pretty easy include to the upper echelons here, but miraculously this album also has other songs which are really good (but obviously not as good as "Deacon Blues.") Maybe slightly punished because I have been listening to it on repeat a lot lately and am nearing the end of being able to do that. But don't get me wrong—great. (6/22/26)

Can't Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan

    I'm trying to listen more roughly in order of Rolling Stone's list now, but I realized that I listened to it maybe twice today so it's as good a time as any to rank it. Needless to say, I really love this album. If anything, I think it's ranking may suffer right now from the fact I've been overplaying it! Every song on this album is fantastic, and it comes together for a really cohesive and truly wonderful sound. I love Steely Dan! I love singing along to music, and maybe it's just because I know this album so well, but I could really listen to it any day and it would pick me up. Maybe it's just the associations I have with it but this album sounds like cooking and dancing and talking with the people I want to surround myself with and that's special. And it has "Dirty Work!" Jesus Christ, "Dirty Work!" (7/28/26)

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West

    I guess the trouble about having six Kanye albums on the Rolling Stones list is that, at some point reranking them, you have to sort of deal with the CLAWIAHN in the room (Currently Living Artist Who Is A Huge Nazi). There are other artists on this list who are bad people, like pretty without a doubt, but (as far as I know!) only one CLAWIAHN. I'm inclined to say that I want to just fully separate the art from the artist, but I really don't know how reasonable or possible that is, especially in Kanye's case. I guess what fascinates me about this album now, besides from how truly gargantuan it is, is that it feels like a Kanye who almost gets it. "All of the Lights" feels self-aware in a way, but at the same time who the hell would put that SNL line in a song like "Power?" Still, there's a pretty huge difference (PhD) between just being a dick and being a Nazi. 

    Truthfully, before all of the Nazi stuff, I was a big Kanye fan. But how do I rank it given the whole CLAWIAHN thing? To me, the only way is to rank it honestly—the music can be good, maybe even great, but you can't listen to it without hearing Kanye, and that's a dude who leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth for obvious reasons. (6/22/26)

69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields

    I’m really struggling to get down my thoughts on this album. Its sort of an album you have to talk about in ranges—massive, basically an anthology of songs, some of which are tiny and fragmentary while others are full and fleshed out. The tone is inconsistent; Merritt’s vocals are affecting, always appropriate for the song, whether haunting and melancholic or fully comedic. This album contains some tracks I’d consider to be among the best love songs of all time! “The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side,” in particular, may be my all-time favorite, but “Papa Was A Rodeo,” “All My Little Words,” “I Think I Need A New Heart,” and “Abigail, Belle of Kilronan” are all phenomenal too (among others). 

    Even the “bad” songs, though, I generally find make me feel something, and almost all of them are inventive and unique takes on the concept of a love song. 69 Love Songs is without a doubt guilty of things which I’m gonna dock future albums for—it’s inconsistent, full of duds, and three hours long. At the same time, I really love this album, so, like, who cares? It’s great. (9/15/26)

Sour, Oliva Rodrigo

    Listen! I like this a lot. Rodrigo captures a feeling of teenage angst really sort of perfectly while also that telling a contained story. "brutal," "good 4 u," and "jealousy jealousy" are great songs I have only appreciated more as time has gone on from when this album first came out. I will say: I don't like "drivers license" very much and I think the all lowercase song titles are tacky. But overall I'm quite the fan! (6/22/26)

Graduation, Kanye West

    The Wikipedia page for this album says that it was inspired by West touring with U2 at huge stadium shows, and that he wanted something he could perform in that setting. When that's what Graduation is doing, it works and I'm mostly really with it. The crowd sounds in "Homecoming," (easily the standout song here) for example, are really awesome! I think they work to make the song a lot more uplifting. I feel like this album largely feels quite cohesive with the exception of a couple of songs, which, in fairness, I don't really like on their own anyway ("Drunk and Hot Girls," for instance, is unsurprisingly a real stinker). Many of West's lyrics here make me laugh out loud for better and for worse ("somethin' in your blouse got me feeling so aroused"), and I'll admit that "Good Night" sounds like it's from this rapper I keep seeing on my Instagram reels who makes songs for small kids about how they should like listen in class and not bite and stuff. That song's probably fine it just really gave me that vibe and that definitely hurt it for me. (7/28/26)

Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

    Born to Run is really hard to rate for me. On the first 2/3rds of my first listen, I was genuinely wowed by it. But as I listened to it a couple more times so I could rate it, it really lost a lot of staying power for me. The same is true of "Born to Run" (the song) for me; every couple of months I’ll remember it exists, listen once, be wowed, and then listen again and feel nothing. A lot of this album sounds very similar in a way that doesn’t, FOR ME! build on itself. I know Mj really loved "Jungleland," but after an album of on their face similar songs I felt it was difficult to appreciate fully (though I do still really like that song). Anyway, I think I get it, and Springsteen just isn’t making music for the way I am trying to listen to music. I’m sure this one’s position will fluctuate as I listen to it with fresh ears again. (9/15)26)

Rumours, Fleetwood Mac

    I listened to this one a few times before ranking it because I felt like something wasn't clicking for me. I like a lot of songs off this album—like some of them quite a bit! But I felt like, in the context of the album, they felt less than the sum of their parts. The songs blended together into a sound I liked quite a bit but which didn't blow me away like how I had hoped they would especially given how highly Rolling Stone ranks this one. Is that a me problem? A problem of expectations, even? Yeah. Definitely. Did that have to be phrased as a rhetorical question? No. Definitely not. (7/28/26)

Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys

    I definitely don't dislike Pet Sounds or anything, but it just didn't click with me. I'm sure I'll give it another listen eventually, but it didn't wow me now. I'm inclined to say it'll grow on me. (6/15/26)

Back to Black, Amy Winehouse

    I love the jazzy elements of Back to Black, but, honestly, the poppier elements really don’t do it for me. Winehouse has a voice I really love half the time and that I’m not huge on the other half. The lyrics are a highlight— they are very honest while still retaining a cleverness I appreciate, but, truthfully, most of the songs just don’t make me feel much. I think this is an album I’d probably appreciate a lot more with higher audio quality. (9/15/26)