Per Life Mag....these are the top 100 musical artists:

1. Elvis Presley
2. The Beatles
3. Bob Dylan
4. James Brown
5. The Rolling Stones
6. Madonna
7. Stevie Wonder
8. Chuck Berry
9. Michael Jackson
10. Kurt Cobain
11. Eric Clapton
12. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
13. Smokey Robinson
14. Aretha Franklin
15. Bruce Springsteen
16. Jimi Hendrix
17. Ray Charles
18. The Everly Brothers
19. The Drifters
20. The Beach Boys
21. Buddy Holly
22. The Band
23. Bob Marley
24. The Four Tops
25. Grateful Dead
26. Public Enemy
27. Sting
28. U2
29. The Isley Brothers
30. Little Richard
31. Janis Joplin
32. The Moonglows
33. Tina Turner
34. The Clash
35. Roy Orbison
36. David Bowie
37. The Doors
38. The Four Seasons
39. Ramones
40. Otis Redding
41. The Supremes
42. The Who
43. Blondie
44. Sly and The Family Stone
45. Van Morrison
46. The Shirelles
47. Sam & Dave
48. Elvis Costello
49. The Velvet Underground
50. Prince
51. The Righteous Brothers
52. The Byrds
53. The Bee Gees
54. Sam Cooke
55. Led Zeppelin
56. The Coasters
57. Santana
58. The Sex Pistols
59. Steely Dan
60. Wilson Pickett
61. Linda Ronstadt
62. Dave Matthews
63. Talking Heads
64. The Temptations
65. The Allman Brothers Band
66. Paul Simon
67. The Kinks
68. Marvin Gaye
69. R.E.M.
70. Dion
71. Dr. Dre
72. Dusty Springfield
73. Elton John
74. Curtis Mayfield
75. Radiohead
76. Beastie Boys
77. Black Sabbath
78. The Mamas and the Papas
79. Joni Mitchell
80. John Fogerty
81. The Pretenders
82. Al Green
83. Fats Domino
84. Martha and the Vandellas
85. Fleetwood Mac
86. Smashing Pumpkins
87. Kiss
88. Jefferson Airplane
89. The Flamingos
90. Dionne Warwick
91. Gene Pitney
92. George Clinton
93. Tom Petty
94. Bjork
95. Beck
96. The Eagles
97. Traffic
98. Rage Against the Machine
99. Pearl Jam
100. Frank Zappa


Me, personally, I think they had a little too much crack and Jack Daniels at the offices of Life Magazine. Some of these are just plain ridiculous.... for example:

Madonna better than Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and Prince?!??!?!?!?!?!?!

P at # 50 says it all for me..... this is a joke!

codshort said:

Well, lists like these are always totally subjective and therefore worthless. Zappa at #100...pah.

McGee

I reckon if it had been 10 years ago Prince would have been much higher. He seems to have lost a lot of kudos with the popular press. But we know the truth. Or do we??

This is going to be a long thread. Remember, lists where art is concerned are ALWAYS subjective.

How did Kurt Cobain, by himself, get to be so high on the list. Thats a diss to his bandmates in Nirvana. Even still, its no way they were that great, looking at the incredible talents on this list.

i hate top X lists, they just sell mags/papers to their target market

its ok ppl, that wont change P's music, ok?

Bob

I looked through this mag while I was waiting in line at the supermarket. Complete joke. Then I remembered that Life mag is under the whole Time Warner matrix. I'm surprised Prince just made the top 50.
In a fair world, Prince would be much higher up. He's definitely more talented than Michael Jackson and Madonna put together. But I realize that though they are less talented than Prince, they've had more impact on society.
Remember when Madonna released the Sex book, and all these journalists were calling her a business genius. How much genius does it take to show pictures of your twat? Madonna just knew that there were a whole lot of idiots out there willing to pay 50 bucks for the thing.
Yep, the press loves MJ and Madonna, as cartoonish as they may be. Prince is just to real for them.

what is life magazine? is it a music 1?

all I know is that he beats the crap outta most of the people above him!
And what's all this hype about Elvis? Did he write one damn song? Did he play guitar extraordinarily well?

This list is fucking ridiculous...oh yeah, Jimi Hendrix DEFINITELY takes a back seat to Madonna as far as rock and roll is concerned...(eyeroll)...but then again, this list is no more ridiculous than Rolling Stone's list of the 100 top pop songs...lol...seems like all lists are a bit laughable, to say the least...

The Top 100 Rock & Rollers of All Time
(An Excerpt) LIFE.com PRESENTS THE TOP 25
Every kid who has ever spent Friday night at a concert or a dance, or been mesmerized by the light of a jukebox, has his or her own Top 100. And it's safe to say that no two Top 100s are alike. The fun is in the fighting. What do you mean Jimi's not No. 1? Hey, where's Britney? Of LIFE's Top 100 we can say only this for certain: They rocked our world. We're betting a lot of them rocked yours.
1. ELVIS PRESLEY
In the 20th century, only a few individuals in the world of popular music were so far above and beyond what surrounded them that they became stars of a different, greater magnitude. Bing Crosby was one, so was Frank Sinatra. The third member of that tiny but brilliant constellation was a young man who emerged from a hardscrabble Mississippi background to become a phenomenon that may have been the biggest of them all — Elvis.

2. THE BEATLES
John Lennon, never a falsely modest man, once said that without Elvis, there was no Beatles. Indeed, the rockabilly craze ignited by Elvis was the formative influence on each of the four young Beatles-in-waiting as they grew up in near-poor to middle class circumstances in the oil-slicked English port city of Liverpool. Without Elvis, the Beatles wouldn't have wanted to be what they eventually became.

3. BOB DYLAN
In the mid-1950s a high school freshman in Hibbing, Minn., named Bobby Zimmerman, whose ultimate ambition was "to join Little Richard," formed a band called the Golden Chords. Thus began the astonishing musical journey of the one who, even before leaving the Midwest for New York City in 1961, had been reborn as Bob Dylan. At first performing in a style resonant of his hero, Woody Guthrie, Dylan conquered the world in stages: the Greenwich Village folk scene, the rock arena, the Nashville crowd. As the millennium turned, he was playing at special audiences for Presidents and popes, meanwhile creating new, vibrant music that continued to thrill.

4. JAMES BROWN
The most influential black artist in rock's history, Brown burst onto the scene in 1956 when he and the Famous Flames recorded "Please, Please, Please." Like many another, he had a gospel background, but he also drew on stints as a semipro boxer and baseball player. His stage shows were an explosion of jumps, splits and rapid-fire dance moves that earned him the nickname Mr. Dynamite.

5. THE ROLLING STONES
For many they are, simply, the World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band. In the early '60s, Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts joined forces in London for music that was mostly covers of Chuck Berry and Chicago blues. While those influences would remain, Jagger and Richards soon became a team that wrote one great song after another.

6. MADONNA
Christopher Ciccone once called his sister Madonna Louise "her own masterpiece." That she is, an intricately crafted figure of great rarity who may or may not be a feminist icon, may or may not be much of a singer, may or may not be a narcissistic empty vessel, but is one thing for sure: a rock star of the highest order, one with savvy, style and legs.

7. STEVIE WONDER
Stevie Wonder is one of the most "musical" people rock has ever known, musical in the sense that Louis Armstrong was musical, where the sound is always special. He opened everyone's ears when his third single, "Fingertips (Part 2)," and its accompanying album both hit No. 1 in 1963. His vital, inventive singing and harmonica playing made it clear that someone important had arrived. For the rest of the decade, he hit one pop homer after another, equally comfortable with gentle ballads or swirling rockers.

8. CHUCK BERRY
He was rock's first poet, spinning three-minute sagas of teen angst that cleverly reflected that manic-depressive reality, whether it was the doldrums of school ("the teacher don't know how mean she looks"), the liberation of the automobile ("we parked way out on the Kokomo") or the allure of fine young things ("she's too cute to be a minute over seventeen"). Driving the lyrics were some of rock's immortal melodies, with guitar licks (and piano riffs from Johnnie Johnson) that remain fresh despite having graced the songs of a thousand others.

9. MICHAEL JACKSON
Born in 1958, he was already a member of the Jackson 5 by age five, and hasn't left the stage since — a fact that made him a star beyond measure and, meantime, cost him dearly. He has often lamented his lost boyhood, and cited this as a reason for his wistful, childlike personality. Jackson's enigmatic nature — some call it plain old strangeness, what with the oddly evolving facial structure and skin tone — often overwhelms an appreciation of his extraordinary gifts.

10. KURT COBAIN
Growing up in a small town in Washington, he was a happy boy who loved the Beatles. His parents divorced when he was eight, and the next year Cobain became a devotee of heavier music: Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. (He once said that he hoped his band, Nirvana, might marry Beatlesque melody to Sabbath's power.) In 1987, Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic began expressing their anger in loud, edgy, intoxicating songs. Eventually joined by drummer Dave Grohl, they released, in 1991, a disc that was the very definition of seminal.

the best of the rest:

11. Eric Clapton
12. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young
13. Smokey Robinson
14. Aretha Franklin
15. Bruce Springsteen
16. Jimi Hendrix
17. Ray Charles
18. The Everly Brothers
19. The Drifters
20. The Beach Boys
21. Buddy Holly
22. The Band
23. Bob Marley
24. The Four Tops
25. Grateful Dead

from a look at the reasoning for the top ten, they aren't just considering the quality of the music. and with that in mind, I think the list is pretty accurate...


as much as I like Prince, he isnt the center of the music world....

What were they basing this on then Skeloton?


True...P is not the center of the musical world but he is WAYYYY better than Kurt Cobain, and at least 25 of the 50 above him.
[This message was edited Fri Mar 15 16:39:36 PST 2002 by codshort]

SkletonKee said:

No one group or artist is, but a lot of people have been acting like the Beatles and Elvis are ever since they made their first records.

We had a different debate per funk: SLY, JAMES BROWN, GEORGE CLINTON and PRINCE how do you rate their musical legacies. MAybe I should start the tread over here

PFunkJazz, thats an awesome question you pose...hmmm....ill have to think on that for a sec..

Re: Life Mag

Well, from looking at the life.com site, it looks as if they are celebrating the spirit of Rock N Roll. So I assumed they were celebrating those artist that best embodied that spirit...artist who's cultural impact best describes Rock & Roll... Then I look at the list and think, well, sure I might disagree with some of the placements...i agree with the overall feel of the list..

Kurt Cobain (and I agree it should be listed as Nirvana...while he did a lot of the songwriting, he didnt do it all himself) had massive impact on the music his times..and even now. Wait, why am I defended Cobain, I cant stand his music..at anyrate...I can respect his place in musical history...And I can see why these artist (YES, EVEN MADDY AND MJ) were placed higher then Prince...they captured the worlds attention for a longer period of time then Prince...They changed the way we looked at music (for the better (janet, you gotta give maddy credit for bringing us meshell,) or worse (britney, *nsync)...like it not, they changed the world of music.

I love Top 100 lists, even though I never take them seriously. It's just something inconsequential to complain about, and I LOVE to complain (it's an art, you know).

I think it's fascinating that Madonna's a more substantial artist than Frank Zappa. Hell, I think it's fascinating that PRINCE is listed as a more substantial artist than Zappa. Don't mean to put Prince down at all, but damn - ever heard Zappa on guitar? He should be up there with the Beatles and the Dylans of these lists.

With Prince, of course, not far behind. Certainly above Mrs. Ritchie.

SkletonKee said:

Well going by that criteria (capturing the world's attention for a specific amount of time), you'd have to list a lot of people on that list ahead of Cobain.



I give the man who signed Meshell the credit, Freddy DeMann. And Madonna has never changed anything of a purely musical sort.

Thanks for the thread CODSHORT. Nope I don't agree with this list. If you had a list like top 100 musical artists (overall), it would surely have to have some jazz artists on the list. I used to be in to list. But as life progressed and I progressed, they don't have the relevancy they once had. Critics are for the most part people like us. It's just their opinion. Interesting list though.

* Brother 9/15 aka CR3