Rolling Stone's Best Songs of 2022

Rolling Stone is a joke. Ever since Rob Sheffield said Britney uses autotune the same way Dylan uses the harmonica, I’ve been done.

They’re trying to cater to younger generations for relevancy and it’s not working.

Rolling Stone has always catered to the young generation. You just got older, dear.

Not that I necessarily agree with the Britney comparison. There are many artists who use auto tune quite effectively; Britney's records are so pedestrian.

All garbage

Beyonce always pays media outlets to glorify her yet failed to make it into Billboard's Top 10 Artist of the Year which is calculated based on actual streaming and sales consumption.

Even Harry Styles, Adele, The Weeknd and Ed Sheeran made the list.

R1 Did Rolling Stone actually say that? Hahahahaha thats pretty damn funny!

R2 But the problem is they lost the younger generation.

They’re like the Madonna of music magazines. Trying hard to fit in where they don’t.

R5

Britney uses Auto-Tune the way Bob Dylan used his harmonica — for punctuation, for atmosphere, for an alienatingly weird sound effect. It’s a blast of vocal distortion, harsh on the surface, but expressive, capable of sounding wildly funny or abrasively pissed-off or seductive.

R4 You have no factual evidence based on that lie you just decided to make up. Fkin pathetic.

Rollingstone measures critical acclaim and cultural influence not popularity nor sales you dweeb.

[quote]Rollingstone measures critical acclaim and cultural influence

Critical acclaim = Beyonce pays critics to acclaim her.

Cultural influence = Beyonce pays the media to say that she's influential.

God I just listened to them. Most are absolutely shit. And the lyrics to some are exceedingly disgusting. Are like ten year old kids singing that Megan Thee Stallion crap and sounding like whores on the piers?

R4 She doesn’t pay them, she doesn’t need to.

She has an extremely rabid fanbase.

Since social media, magazines like Rolling Stone have just catered to rabid fanbases. Like how they gushed over Britney’s shitty demo, it was to cater to her crazy fans on Twitter.

Any type of criticism of these big pop stars would get backlash they don’t want.

Rosalia's Motomami was good (she's a good artist). The rest is trash.

R8 LOL nobody gives a fuck about Rolling Stone or any of that shit. They listen to what they want. Beyonce isn't even in the top ten most streamed artists. People would still rather listen to someone like Drake than Beyonce no matter what music publication rankings say.

R1, I have always though the 90s teen pop phenomenon is when Rolling Stone went down the drain. Looks like I was right. They used to write really good reviews.

Poptimism has gone too far now.

People need to stop pretending that pop stars deserve to be put on a pedestal; they don't. Leave the pedestals for people who aren't hyped and promoted to death by the media and their stans.

Rolling Stone hasn't mattered for 20+ years.

R14 The late 90’s destroyed the music industry. Rolling Stone, MTV, everything.

The music was HORRIBLE and the money was ROLLING.

I think by the time garage bands came around like The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Modest Mouse and The White Stripes, it was all too late. They did well but I think if the late 90’s hadn’t been ravaged by bubblegum pop and nu-mental, those bands would have sold twice as more and maintained some dignity.

Horrible songs. The best song I heard this year on the radio was "Heart of God" by Zach Williams and I'm not into religion. Great music, melody, and singer. He's not even on the list. Give it a listen.

Isn’t America still like 60% white. Why is the music industry so ghetto and latin?

R20 I know right. WTF is half this music and why is it so popular? No idea of what the lyrics are....

Good lawd the racists have rly come out. Sad.

Rolling Stone hasn’t been relevant to music for at least fifteen years. No one cares what they think. And Beyoncé will be deservedly shut out at the Grammys, unless she buys everything.

R18, it sure did. I felt that way even back then and I was only 12 in 1999. Say what you will about Mariah, Whitney and Celine but even their most stale music had good production values. But that teen pop and nu metal shit? Zero production values. It's all bland. That's why I never got the appeal of Backstreet Boys or Britney. Their music all sounds like it was generated from a pre-programmed computer.

I notice that on the site race is so often brought up in these discussions. Even on sites like reddit people will say their dislike of the music based on taste or liking country, classic rock. Perhaps because this site skews older, and despite being gay liberals they still think they are better than minorities. 60% of the population is white, what does state even mean. 90% of the population is straight, many of the greatest artist of all time are gay, much bigger representation than their share of the general population. Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Sam Smith, Melissa Etheridge, Luther Vandross. Rollingstone has always reflected the pulse of youth culture and popular charts.

Music went to shit in the late ‘90s as soon as Britney came on the scene.

[quote] Rollingstone has always reflected the pulse of youth culture and popular charts.

Rolling Stone hasn't reflected anything since about 1999 or so.

[quote] Rollingstone has always reflected the pulse of youth culture and popular charts.

RS now reflects the very thing it made fun of when it started - whatever corporate shit slingers want us to listen to and buy.

And a lot of it is total shit.