The 16-year old version of me would be very angry about your list! Replace Aretha with Motown (not a big stretch) and you would have a huge chunk of my early 1980s playlist on your boat leaving the island.
What a strange association !
A singles group vs an album group
I would say these records haven't got the same function
I discovered Police when I was 8 years old, Wilco more than 20 years later ...
I would say Wilco of course, although I don't know them so well (I guess the first complete album I got from them was in 2006)
but they really don't live in the same floor (not even in the same building or the same district) in the vast city of my mind...
5 points: Chuck Berry - Repeat. Still here, still remaining here for awhile I imagine.
4 points: Ray Charles - Repeat
3 points: Blondie - Repeat
2 point: Parliament/Funkadelic - Bumped up to two points with Jacko out of the running.
1 point: Leonard Cohen - A week ago, I relistened to all my stuff that I have of his, which kept him off my ballot last week. It just wasn't enough to keep him off for too long. Also, this could theoretically be The Police, but I think everyone else has done a satisfactory job making sure they won't be back for more.
Huzzah - The Smiths are gone at last, and I see The Byrds queueing up near the exit too.
This means I am replacing one act this time, and hopefully another next time....
1. Bob Dylan.
2. Van Morrison.
3. Bruce Springsteen.
4. Pixies. (moved up from 5th position after The Smiths' exit)
New:
5. U2. It's getting difficult now, everyone else on e the island I either like, or partially like, or I haven't heard - but I'm not going to vote against anyone I haven't heard, so Wilco is safe from me. U2 are one of those bands who have done a few great songs, quite a few good/ok songs, and lots of godawful overblown pompous rubbish that's up itself. The latter outweighs the good stuff, and so they go on my list.
By all means you should vote for the artists you like least, I was just wondering if you actually thought he was worse than everyone else on the list.
To really generalize, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen all have a distintive voices, are singer-songwriters, etc. but you prefer them over Bob Dylan? Not attacking you or anything, just wondering.
Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen offer three of the "best" (or most interesting) vocals in rock history.
With Dylan, I don't find it strange that someone wants to vote him out, as I would have done the same if we did this 10 years ago (before H61R sinked in).
As I would have, Henrik, and for the same reasons Harpo cites: "annoying whiny voice" and "Importance." After I came around on Bob, those two things faded into irrelevance.
Bob's "Importance" was almost entirely bestowed on him in the late 60s and 70s by overeager critics and fans who, once Dylan "went" electric, were desperate to have him validate their love of rock (and, by extension, the tastes of their generation). In other words, it's not SELF-importance (at least no more than you'd find in the average professional performer). I can no longer blame Bob for the overzealousness of his early fans.
As for the annoying whiny voice...nah, I'm tired of that tired argument. In a nutshell: it's not a flaw, it's a feature.