The Most Important Artists in Rock and Popular Music

A Quantitative Assessment

INTRODUCTION

The only common thread joining all lists evaluating any form of art is that they spark controversy at the very least and at worst accusations of ignorance, prejudice, and utter lack of taste. We love and respect art, and we thought long and hard about how to measure artistic importance. We settled on a multi-dimensional approach for this analysis—an analysis of rock and popular music—but the dimensions were designed to be useful for evaluating the importance of artists of any kind. First, we offer a detailed description of our method before presenting our results. Following the results, we consider a number of thoughts about various aspects of the list in anticipation of some debate that we might provoke.

METHOD

Overview

2 male judges between 30 and 40 years of age generated eight dimensions or ways in which an artist can be important. The dimensions are the following: Influence, Generativity, Quality of Output, Creativity, Style Breadth, Landmark Work, Quantity of Output, and Popularity. We believe artistic importance can only be understood by considering these eight dimensions together; however, we acknowledge that thinking about lists within each of these dimensions alone is an interesting exercise. Across these dimensions, we rated over 150 artists and considered many more. Based on a number of decision criteria, 100 artists comprise our final list of Most Important Artists to Rock and Popular Music.

Scope

Our list focuses on rock and popular music from the United States and the United Kingdom, but ultimately the scope of the project involved the following genres: rock, pop, folk, country, rap, hip-hop, and blues. Some of the most difficult decisions we had to make involved artists who belong in non-rock genres that have directly influenced rock and pop: specifically, blues, country, reggae, jazz, folk, rap, and hip-hop. Including artists from blues, folk, country, reggae, hip-hop, and rap was an easy decision: they are inextricably woven into the fabric of rock and pop. Rock and pop artists reach into these other genres’ catalogues not only for stylistic inspiration but also for primary source material in the form of cover songs. Bob Marley could be viewed as a writer of standards as much as he is a reggae artist; the same goes for Robert Johnson and the blues or Hank Williams and country. It is almost impossible to imagine Bob Dylan without Jimmie Rodgers, and he certainly doesn’t exist without Woody Guthrie. In the case of each of these genres, we have generally reached back as far in history as is necessary to include those artists whose fingerprints can be found clearly on the records of the rock artists who make the list. An alternative approach would be to generate multiple lists each tied strictly to one genre. We welcome others to do just that.

A Difficult Omission (Jazz) with One Exception (Miles Davis)

Miles Davis is the lone jazz musician to appear on this list. Jazz has clearly influenced rock music (and vice versa) from the harmonic construction of certain soul, funk, and R&B to the improvisational dynamics of prog-rock, but the lineage is not clear. The greatest jazz artists—Duke Ellington, for example—are difficult to trace directly into rock (though you may hear the Duke in umpteen horn arrangements through history). Jazz has been assimilated as a general form, without much specific lineage. For that reason, we have left it mostly out of the list, with one exception: Miles Davis. The reason we have included Miles is most simply that he was not really just a jazz artist. We allowed his consideration because he is important in the history of rock as a recording artist who used rock music and inspired rock techniques, from modal improvisation to tape editing. On The Corner is one of the most important funk records there is, and it is impossible to count the number of artists who were inspired by Bitches Brew. Miles Davis uniquely represents the nexus of rock and jazz, and he belongs here.

Unit of Analysis

The unit of analysis is the musical artist, defined as person or group that produced at least two distinct albums. An artist who collaborated with multiple other artists but whose identity drove each collaboration was considered as a single artist. Two examples are illustrative. Richard Thompson’s work with Linda Thompson was aggregated under “Richard Thompson.” His work with Fairport Convention was considered separately. John Lennon’s work with Yoko Ono was aggregated under “John Lennon.” His work with The Beatles was considered separately.

Procedure

In the first round of analysis, the 2 judges independently listed 20 artists within each dimension on a 3-point scale (1, 2, 3; higher numbers represented greater importance on each dimension). Both judges agreed that the number of artists seemed too small to capture a number of essentially important artists and that more than 20 artists easily came to mind for each dimension. In the second round of analysis, the dimensions each were expanded to 40 (for Generativity, Creativity, and Style Breadth) or 50 artists (for Influence, Landmark Work, Quality of Output, Quantity of Output, and Popularity). Both judges agreed that it was difficult to generate additional artists within each dimension, so we stopped there. A fourth point on the scale was added to further differentiate artists (final scale: 1-4). After each judge independently listed the artists, a master list of all artists that were considered was compiled to insure that both judges at least considered the same set of artists. Each judge then made any adjustments to his dimension lists that he saw as necessary. All of the dimensions received equal weight (1.0), except for Quantity of Output and Popularity, which the two judges agreed to assign a weight of 0.5 to represent equally the supply side and demand side of importance via quantity. Below is the list of dimensions:

• Influence: the extent to which the artist’s work can be seen or heard in other artists’ work over time (weight: 1.0)

• Generativity: the extent to which the artist’s work is the primary inspiration for other artists' work (weight: 1.0)

• Quality of Output: the average quality of work produced by the artist (weight: 1.0)

• Creativity: the extent to which the artist’s work was novel for its time (weight: 1.0)

• Style Breadth: the extent to which the artist has produced work of varying styles, or has included elements of multiple genres (weight: 1.0)

• Landmark Work: the artist produced an exemplary work that is a landmark for music of a certain style or genre (weight: 1.0)

• Quantity of Output: the quantity of work produced by the artist (weight: 0.5)

• Popularity: total sales in the United States and the United Kingdom (weight: 0.5)

Final selection. A musical artist made the final list if the artist appeared in more than one dimension across both judges’ ratings. The final list totaled 100 musical artists. These artists were ranked based on their points received from both judges. Ties were resolved according to the following logic (in order of priority):

1. The judges reached better agreement about the artist than they did for other artists who received the same point total.

2. The artist does not appear in the Influence dimension. Any artist on the final list probably exerted some influence, and if the artist was not represented in the Influence dimension, it was probably due to truncation of that dimension; thus, the artist should, in effect, receive some small number of points for Influence.

3. The artist was considered seriously by at least one judge for inclusion in an additional dimension but ultimately was not listed in that dimension. Again, this artist would have received additional points, in effect, if the dimension had not been truncated.

4. Ties not broken by criteria #1-3 were broken by the subjective decisions of the judges.

We acknowledge that the ratings could have some error (e.g., #29 could be less important than #30), so a more useful way to think about the artists might be in a hierarchy of 10 tiers, which we provide as well.

DISCUSSION

As with any project of this size, we made a number of consequential decisions. Behind each decision is some logic to substantiate it; however, we know that these decisions introduce some limitations in our list. We have discussed these limitations with a number of individuals and share below our responses to some of the most frequent comments that we have received.

Ancestry vs. Heritage (An Example to Help Understand Musical Importance)

To discuss the distinction between ancestry and heritage, we present an illustrative example comparing Elvis Presley to The Beatles.

Elvis invented rock and roll, didn’t he? So why is he at #7 in a list of most important artists? Would the Beatles have been around without him? The fact is that the accumulated sounds of rock/pop music—the scope of this exercise—were invented by everybody. Elvis Presley played a supremely important role in evolving and popularizing a lasciviously delivered hybrid of R&B and country music that came to signify rock and roll. But there is almost no music today that sounds like Elvis, and there hasn’t been for quite some time except in occasional revival/novelty acts. Just as the most important people in history are not Neanderthals, the most important music is not typically the music that came first, however influential or generative it was.

Demographic Diversity

Sex. While there are many, many female artists whose music we could not live without, there are very few women on our list, and none in a high place. Why? Primarily because our system rewards originality, and many of the greatest female artists are known more as the best females in a genre rather than progenitors themselves. The explanation for this is largely sociological: society did not accept women in music as early as it accepted men, and women have more competing pressures due to child-rearing, which also truncates their productivity of output. There are, of course, exceptions—Madonna and Joni Mitchell are good examples. And there are some who might not have invented a genre but whose particular expression of it inspired a great, long line of successors—Aretha Franklin and The Supremes for starters. Still, we (the judges) are men subject to our own biases, and we welcome female judges to enrich our panel. After all, where are Janis Joplin, Wanda Jackson, Missy Elliott, Joan Baez, Patsy Cline, and many others?

Race/Ethnicity. In a world in which musical preference is still often lumped together with race, it is unavoidable that our list will appear racially or ethnically biased to some. There are plenty of non-whites in total, but the top 10 is disproportionately white. How can we list the Rolling Stones so high when their act was essentially a combination of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard? How could we say earlier that Elvis Presley invented rock and roll when he was a ripoff artist himself? And isn’t today’s popular music dominated by black artists? It sure is, and if we were rating importance from the pure perspective of the here and now, our list would be different. But our current vantage point is the accumulated body of rock and popular music since the 1950s. While we would argue that our list represents a fair weighting of the accumulated influences of the last 50 or so years, we are undoubtedly swayed by having grown up in mostly white culture, listening to mostly white radio stations (for, let us face it, radio is by and large still segregated), and, perhaps most relevant, reading a white-dominated music press. We invite judges of different racial and ethnic backgrounds to contribute their ratings for a future edition of this list.

An Omitted Dimension: Sociological/Political Importance

We did not include a dimension capturing sociological or political importance. Such a dimension would capture an important role that musical artists have played historically (e.g., artists who were “the first woman to do ‘x’,” or so-called Latin crossover artists, or rap artists who highlight racial tensions and inequality, or “political protest” artists such as Pete Seeger). Had we included this dimension, we believe our list would have included more proportionate representation across demographic groups. We chose not to include this dimension because it was too distant from the artistic achievement merit that we set out to measure.

CONCLUSION

Thank you for taking this seriously. We welcome your comments on and your contributions to this list. Constructing this list has taken over three years; however, it has not been three years non-stop. Much of the work has been in the waiting—remembering an artist and listening for awhile before deciding that artist's final place, spending time around people who do not love our favorite bands, and sitting in an easy chair to catch another "Best of" list on TV to force us to think about what it means to be important to one's art form rather than simply the best. Whatever your initial reactions to this list are, we encourage you to let them stew for awhile before entering the fray.

REFERENCES

The judges' own music collections
Wikipedia articles on artists and genres
Wikipedia's List of Best Selling Albums Worldwide
AllMusic.com
www.acclaimedmusic.net
BestEverAlbums
NME on Guinness' 100 Most Successful Acts of All Time
Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
RobertChristgau.com
MetaCritic