100 Greatest Songs of All Time

In 2004, Rolling Stone published its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It’s one of the most widely read stories in the magazine’s history (viewed hundreds of millions of times on rollingstone .com). But no ranking is set in stone, and after nearly 20 years, the list was ready for an update. To create our new version of the RS 500 we convened a poll of more than 200 artists, musicians, and producers — from Sam Smith to Megan Thee Stallion and the Edge to Lucy Dacus — as well as prominent figures in the music industry and leading critics and journalists. They each sent in a ranked list of their top 50 songs, and we tabulated the results. Where the 2004 version of the list was dominated by rock and soul, the new edition contains more hip-hop, modern country, reggae, and R&B, while accounting for the rise of new styles like Latin pop; just as important, 21 songs in the top 100 were released this century. We’ve printed the top 100 in this issue. The classics are still here, but the canon keeps growing.