Oh, for the love of--
Beatles, Stones, Queen, and then the likes of the favorites of folks.
There, list done! We know who's getting those top spots, it's hardly worth the effort to put every band on earth in there...
MORE interesting would be Greatest Music PERIOD of all time.
How high can popular music rank against Mozart, Beethoven, Massanet, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Wagner (Anti-Semite and betrayer of Nietzsche's friendship though he may have been), and the rest? :)
Submitted humbly, obiwanobiwan's Top 10 Best Musical Pieces Pre-1900 and Top 10 Post 1900:
Pre-1900:
"Carmen"- Bizet
"The Magic Flute"- Mozart
"The Marriage of Figaro- Mozart
"Moonlight Sonata"- Beethoven
"9th Symphony"- Beethoven
"The Valkyrie"- Wagner (despicable man, but HAS to be on the list)
"La Boheme"- Puccini
"The Nutcracker Suite"- Tchaikovsky (though I actually prefer "Eugene Onegin" or "Romeo and Juleit," but those being adaptations of already-great literary works by Alexander Pushkin and William Shakespeare, respectively, that's cheating a bit...wow, look at all the talent right there--Pushkin, Shakespeare, and Tchaikovsky! lol...)
"HMS Pinafore"- by Gilbert and Sullivan (for popularizing what would become the stage musical, they HAVE to be here...)
"Thus Sprach Zarathustra"- Strauss (aka "The theme from 2001: A Space Oddysey"...and Nietzsche, albeit indirectly, makes another obiwanobiwan list!) :p
And now, for the list that will get shredded to pieces, I'm sure, even more than my one above...
Obiwanobiwan's Top 10 Best/Most Important Musical Pieces 1900-Present:
"Hey Jude"- The Beatles
"Imagine"- Lennon
"Bohemian Rhapsody"- Queen
"Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"- Many people, most famously, Louis Armstrong
"Ol' Man River"- sung by Paul Robeson, from the Rodgers/Hammerstein musical "Show Boat"
"I Can't Get No Satisfaction"- The Rolling Stones
"The Times Are A-Changing"- Bob Dylan
Overture of "Madame Butterfly"- Giacomo Puccini (premiered 1904, just barely cracking into the 1900s list)
"Singin' in the Rain"- sung by Gene Kelly, from the movie/musical "Singin' in the Rain"
"Yesterday"- The Beatles (most covered song ever...)
That's a wide range, obviously, I didn't limit it to just band-based musc...we have about half band-based music, two songs from musicals, an opera overture, and then a couple standards.
One thing about the musicals I picked--as above I didn't let an opera adaptation of a work in, I didn't let a musical adaptation of works in, either, so no "Les Miserables" or "My Fair Lady" or "Cabaret" to be found.
The Beatles obviously are the most represented on my list, and that'll cause a stir, I'm sure, with a song with all of them, a Lennon solo piece and then a piece that's basically McCartney but gets credited to the Fab Four as...well, it usually is, and John helped a bit, too.
There are a LOT of songs I left off I would've loved to have include...of the three Beatles/Beatles-related songs on there, it's a toss up, all three are legendary...I might rank "Hey Jude" and "Imagine" just above "Yesterday" just because the former is quite possibly the the most well-known pop song in the world (or at least was when it came out, I'd imagine still it is, or damn near close, EVERYONE knows it...) and the latter...I can't put into words, but it'd be close. "Let it Be" just missed the list, even I think four, and thus roughly half, of the list taken up with The Beatles is a bit much, and the other three all had an extra something going for them (most known pop song, the sheer legend surrounding "Imagine" coupled with the sheer poetry of its lyrics, and "Yesterday" being the most covered song ever) so it just got left out.
An honorary vote goes to both Elvis Presley and Ray Charles...both are deserving on a "Top 10 Artists" basis for the last century, but I didn't think any of their numbers could beat out the ones above.
I don't dare rank them in any order, and I ahve a feeling almost all those choices are going to be shot down, even The Beatles ones.
But oh well.
To close, just for the hell of it and because I honestly DO think they're the Best Band of All-Time and the Greatest Muscial Act/Artists of the 20th Century, my Top 10 of Beatles/Beatles' Members Songs, and just to make this post MORE controversial, I'll RANK them this time!
1. Hey Jude
2. Imagine
3. Yesterday
4. Let It Be
5. Revolution
6. I Am The Walrus
7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
8. Strawberry Fields Forever
9. The Medley
10. I Want To Hold Your Hand
For a Top 20:
11. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
12. Help!
13. All You Need Is Love
14. Across The Universe
15. Eleanor Rigby
16. Hello Goodbye
17. Here Comes The Sun
18. With A Little Help From My Friends
19. A Hard Day's Night
20. Yellow Submarine
obiwanobiwan's favorite song not on the list--"Fool on the Hill" (Makes me think of all the great writers and thinkers and philosophers...)
Well! I think that should be just enough for me to get ten million responses stating how ignorant I am about music, The Beatles, and life in general...but hey, remember--
We Can Work It Out! ;)
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