(As in 2003, we allowed votes for compilations and greatest-hits albums, mainly because a well-made compilation can be just as coherent and significant as an LP, because compilations helped shaped music history, and because many hugely important artists recorded their best work before the album had arrived as a prominent format.) When we first did the RS 500 in 2003, people were talking about the “death of the album.” The album -and especially the album release - is more relevant than ever. The electorate includes Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack, and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail as well as veteran musicians, such as Adam Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks. To do so, we received and tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures (from radio programmers to label heads, like Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman). So we decided to remake our greatest albums list from scratch.

But no list is definitive - tastes change, new genres emerge, the history of music keeps being rewritten. Over the years, it’s been the most widely read - and argued over - feature in the history of the magazine (last year, the RS 500 got over 63 million views on the site). Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time was originally published in 2003, with a slight update in 2012.

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