STONE COLD:
The Pop 100 Reimagines Rock and Roll History

by Rob Brookman

Quibbling with Rolling Stone's periodic aesthetic edicts is a little like taking issue with a George W. Bush's stump speech. Both are so thoroughly hamstrung by the native conservatism of their vast audience - and so fundamentally rooted in the desire neither to rankle nor to challenge - they appear simultaneously inevitable and unassailable.

Don't believe the hype. Even if the magazine isn't the pacesetter it once was, Rolling Stone's sheer circulation numbers give it a lopsided influence on mass-market tastes and on the pop-music cannon itself. And that makes baffling goofs like its Pop 100 list of the best tunes in the popular library particularly worthy targets for critical dissection.

What's initially perplexing about the list - the question of whether we need a Pop 100 aside - is Rolling Stone's choice of bedfellows in the exercise, MTV. "The Pop 100 is a true collaboration," the feature's introductory essay hedges, perhaps recusing the magazine from association with picks like the Backstreet Boys (No. 10), Blackstreet (No. 91), Alanis Morissette (No. 34) and the ubiquitous Britney Spears (No. 25). But that only makes the pairing more curious. Certainly a publication with more than 30 years of music criticism under the hood doesn't need the services of a network whose idea of artistic virtue is breast-level cameras at a spring-break bikini-fest? Certainly RS's ink-stained wretches don't need "a crew of MTV programmers, producers and researchers" diluting the integrity of their, ahem, hard-earned journalistic judgement? I mean, this isn't an economic relationship, is it?

Perhaps most inexplicable and outrageous, however, is Rolling Stone's straight-faced explanation that, in compiling the Pop 100, the editors "took the arrival of the Beatles in America as the starting point of modern pop era." To kids who think the modern pop era started with the arrival of Radiohead, the magazine's line in the sand may not appear especially radical. But for those convinced that Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, young Ray Charles, Fats Domino and more than few other old-timers had at least as large an impact on "pop" as N'Sync or the Wallflowers (or Lennon/McCartney, for that matter), assigning the music an arbitrary mid-60s birthdate is revisionism, pure and simple.

Revisionism, indeed. Personally, I have no beef with the misguided soul who genuinely believes "Sweet Child 'O Mine" (No. 13) is 57 ticks better than "Good Vibrations" (No. 70), or that "Hotel California" (No. 11) trumps "Tracks of My Tears" (No. 47) to the tune of 36. But I suspect genuine belief had nothing to do with the Pop 100. More accurately, the list seems a thinly veiled attempt to reposition music history in a manner that shines favorably on the individual histories of two very large, very stodgy media companies. Rolling Stone anoints "Yesterday" the best single ever? Well, what a coincidence: John Lennon was coverboy of the first RS ever! And who brought you more exhaustive coverage of his untimely and tragic death? A Backstreet Boys tune lands in the top 10 of all time? Remember, kids, you saw 'em strutting their stuff on MTV first!

Through the gauze-covered lens of the Pop 100, rock and roll is, in fact, indistinguishable from the identity assigned to it by Rolling Stone and MTV - no more jarring or surprising or moving than the familiar face in a glossy magazine spread or the oft-seen video flickering on your TV screen. As for acts like the Ronnettes, Elvis Costello, the Velvet Underground, Sam Cooke, Public Enemy, the Byrds, the Everly Brothers, the Clash, New Order, Jackie Wilson, Talking Heads and so on, don't strain your eyes scanning for them in the Pop 100.

In the final analysis, none managed to fill the corporate coffers like, say Billy Joel (No. 60), the Goo Goo Dolls (No. 39) or Hanson (No. 28). Listen to it with the sound of cash registers ringing in your ears, and "When Will I Be Loved" is no "MMMBop." It's certainly no "I Will Always Love You" (No. 40).

In that sense, the Pop 100 is more than a missed opportunity to introduce the MTV generation to significant, exciting music spanning both commercial boundaries and generational lines. It's yet another move to recast the pop songbook as a marketing tool, simple and plain. Sure, it's been tried before - since the dawn of recorded music, in fact. But it's rarely been done as artlessly.

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