When they got to the top 10 last night, Vh-1's Greatest of all Time list, kind of made sense to me. It's funny Toure tweeted his frustration about it yesterday, and I definitely get his point [In no universe does Eminem trump Earth, Wind and Fire, Curtis Mayfield and Mary J. Blige... On the other hand, Hendrix totally trumps Prince even without having as much material... John trumps Paul...cultural/global impact seems to also be a factor in how these votes went. I also saw a weird type of arithmetic for example, Michael Jackson placed higher than James Brown and Elvis, because he has elements of both and took his showmanship farther... ]. I think people are slightly more satisfied with genre lists or male/female lists, but even with those, no one comes away ever completely satisfied. Any lists where race inevitably plays a factor is also going to foster debate/provoke thought regardless. Another thing I wondered, was did all of these artists have to have videos? If not, it would have been cool to include a Blues artist or two...Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters...somebody. And as for the architects of Rock...We saw Little Richard [who should have been way higher in the countdown]. We saw James Brown, but what about Chuck Berry? Omissions like that bothered me...Not to mention no Chaka Khan or Minnie Riperton, maybe because they are more soul than rock? But that's subjective too, isn't it? But as I said at the beginning, no one is ever completely satisfied with lists like these...They're something to get people thinking and talking.
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