Time Dilation...

So I did something today I haven't done in about 20 years -- I bought a copy of Rolling Stone magazine. Issue 1066, to be precise, which was a special issue focusing on "The 100 Greatest Singers of All Time."

I used to subscribe to RS, but it spent less time focusing on music and more time being trendy, and I got tired of flipping through 40 Ralph Lauren ad pages to get to the table of contents. I noticed the magazine is smaller now, and it's exchanged the staple-binding I remember for a glued-in style. Most of the reasons I stopped buying it are still there. This issue features reviews of 32 new and re-issued albums. A bare handful have more than 80 words and even the feature review -- Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy, which against all expectations arrived before actual Chinese democracy did -- is less than 750 words long. None of them receives less than two stars. Combine the uninformative star ratings with the drive-by reviews, and there's hardly much more there than a reviewer saying, "I liked it" or, "I didn't like it" to suggest why a particular album should separate me from fifteen of my dollars. Since I don't know these people, that ain't it, kid.

RS is, in many ways, still a product of its time and is mired in the 1960s. The "Greatest Singers" feature bears that out. Only four of the top 50 (Bono, #32, Whitney Houston, #34, Jeff Buckley, #39 and Kurt Cobain, #45) are actually under 50, or would be if they were alive (Cobain died in 1994 and Buckley in 1997). Only three (Christina Aguilera, #58, Mariah Carey, #79 and Mary J. Blige, #100) are under 40. Fully half of them either broke onto the national pop/rock/country music scene or had their heydey in it during the 1960s. Since the rankings were chosen by votes from musicians, most of whom are either contemporaries of those musicians or who would have been teen-agers listening to them, this shouldn't surprise anyone. The page that lists the voters also makes clear that they were asked to judge singers of the rock era, mostly post-1955, rather than "all time." Enrico Caruso rests easier.

Also unsurprising is the lack of diversity in the listings -- six singers who worked primarily in country music and two who had much work in gospel. Of that pair, Al Green, #14, is celebrated for his secular songs by commenter Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, who is apparently a member of a band called The Roots. Only Mavis Staples, #56, is mentioned as a gospel singer, even though Bob Dylan, #7 and Bono, #32, and the late Patsy Cline, #46, have been known to sing songs of a religious bent. There are a surprising number of blues artists on the list, as well as some older rockers who had more exposure in the 1950s than most other times.

Someone named Jonathan Lethman writes an essay to try to explain why the phrase "greatest singers" is being used instead of "performers who got the most votes in our poll." He pretty much has to in order to explain why punk croaker Iggy Pop, #75, comes in ahead of one of popular music's best tenors, Art Garfunkel, #86, or two of its best harmonizers, the Everly Brothers, at #90. Nobody who listens to much rock, soul, blues or country is under the illusion that technical perfection of voice alone makes a great peformer or performance. That's OK, because I don't listen to Howlin' Wolf, #31, in order to hear purity of pitch, tone or diction. I listen to hear him howl, rasp and moan about the evil that's goin' on when there's another mule kickin' in his stall. Wolf was a great performer, but he's no great singer on most of his recorded work.

Some modern music performers are both, of course. The top spot in the poll is given to Aretha Franklin, who has a great voice and is also a great soul performer. Elvis, #3, often showed some amazing range and Freddy Mercury, #18, could sing anywhere in four octaves.

Silly lists, sketchy reviews and pouty models selling clothes aside, there's just not all that much in a Rolling Stone any more, and a bunch of what is in there is stuck in a time loop that the magazine seems desperately to want to keep alive.. So thanks for the memories, RS. See you in 2028, along about issue 1326.