Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time

Rogifan

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Nov 14, 2011
25,551
34,180
www.rollingstone.com

The 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time

From Billy Ray Cyrus and Britney Spears to Grateful Dead, CCR — a great debut single is the opening line in a convo you never want to end.
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com

Top 10:
  1. Britney Spears, “…Baby One More Time”
  2. The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back”
  3. The Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the U.K.”
  4. Run-DMC, “Sucker M.C.’s/It’s Like That”
  5. Chuck Berry, “Maybellene”
  6. R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe”
  7. Led Zeppelin, “Good Times Bad Times”
  8. Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right”
  9. The Ramones, “Blitzkrieg Bop”
  10. The Smiths, “Hand in Glove”
Britney Spears at #1 but no Whitney Houston - whose debut album was the first album by a female artist to debut at #1 on the Billboard Charts and has sold over 20M copies - anywhere on the list. No Guns N’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle even though Appetite for Destruction has sold over 20 million copies and one could argue its one of the best album intros ever. I’m sure there are plenty of other omissions from this hot garbage of a list.
 
  • Like
  • Sad
Reactions: Huntn, compwiz1202, decafjava and 1 other person
Rogifan said:
www.rollingstone.com

The 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time

From Billy Ray Cyrus and Britney Spears to Grateful Dead, CCR — a great debut single is the opening line in a convo you never want to end.
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com

Top 10:
  1. Britney Spears, “…Baby One More Time”
  2. The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back”
  3. The Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the U.K.”
  4. Run-DMC, “Sucker M.C.’s/It’s Like That”
  5. Chuck Berry, “Maybellene”
  6. R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe”
  7. Led Zeppelin, “Good Times Bad Times”
  8. Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right”
  9. The Ramones, “Blitzkrieg Bop”
  10. The Smiths, “Hand in Glove”
Britney Spears at #1 but no Whitney Houston - whose debut album was the first album by a female artist to debut at #1 on the Billboard Charts and has sold over 20M copies - anywhere on the list. No Guns N’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle even though Appetite for Destruction has sold over 20 million copies and one could argue its one of the best album intros ever. I’m sure there are plenty of other omissions from this hot garbage of a list.
Click to expand...
No Mariah Carey who has had more number one singles than any artist except the Beatles.
 
  • Love
Reactions: compwiz1202
Shanghaichica said:
No Mariah Carey who has had more number one singles than any artist except the Beatles.
Click to expand...

It's kind of a specific chart, debut singles, that established a "new" artist, sound, career, kind of a music pivot point. I mean, it's pretty vague about the ranking, but just in looking at the performance of Spears debut single vs. Carey's, the former outperformed it by like 10x, has had like 285 million streamings, etc.

(I'm a fan of neither, so I got no dog in this hunt as they say :D)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Scepticalscribe, decafjava and AngerDanger
Not sure if it is lack of basic reading skills, or the urge to be outraged about anything, no matter what but right now!!
 
D.T. said:
It's kind of a specific chart, debut singles, that established a "new" artist, sound, career, kind of a music pivot point. I mean, it's pretty vague about the ranking, but just in looking at the performance of Spears debut single vs. Carey's, the former outperformed it by like 10x, has had like 285 million streamings, etc.

(I'm a fan of neither, so I got no dog in this hunt as they say :D)
Click to expand...
Well if this is about Billboard charts a lot of these songs/artists shouldn’t be there. I still think Welcome to the Jungle is a horrible omission. Appetite for Destruction was going nowhere. David Geffen leaned hard on MTV to play the Welcome to the Jungle video. MTV ran it late one night. Their phone lines lit up with viewers requesting they play it again. Once it got heavy rotation on MTV the album sales took off. The video was cool but it wasn’t like Sledgehammer or Thriller. It took off because of the song.
 
Bug-Creator said:
Another one lacking basic reading skills....

"The 100 greatest DEBUT singles of all time"

Billy Joels debut would have been "Captain Jack" (depending on definition, but "Piano Man" was released years later so it surely isn't that).
Click to expand...
Captain Jack wasn't officially released as a single. He wasn't even signed to a label yet. Take it from Rolling Stone themselves-

www.rollingstone.com

Readers' Poll: The Best Billy Joel Songs of All Time

Selections include 'Vienna,' 'Captain Jack' and 'Goodnight Saigon'
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com

"“Captain Jack” was never a single, but it’s one of the most important songs in Billy Joel’s catalog. A live performance of the song that was taped at a Philadelphia radio station received a lot of local airtime in 1972. It got the attention of Columbia Records, who signed him to their roster."

Piano Man was officially his first single in North America.

Yes, Captain Jack was played on the radio. But it was a live performance that circulated, and a studio version hadn't been recorded yet.
 
Well he did release an LP (Gold Spring Harbor) before so "debut" would have been a stretch.

But my point remains the same, with all the plastic pop "artists" dominating the single charts ever since the 70s it's no surprise that real are artists aren't prominent on that list.

Even more as most real artists will need years till they get to the quality for a real classic.
 
  • Like
Reactions: decafjava
Bug-Creator said:
Well he did release an LP (Gold Spring Harbor) before so "debut" would have been a stretch.

But my point remains the same, with all the plastic pop "artists" dominating the single charts ever since the 70s it's no surprise that real are artists aren't prominent on that list.

Even more as most real artists will need years till they get to the quality for a real classic.
Click to expand...
Debut single doesn't mean first song they ever released. Big Boy by Jackson 5 was technically the first song they released and got local radio play in Indiana, just as Captain Jack did in Philadelphia, but I Want You Back was their debut national single, as this list rightfully reflects.
 
  • Like
Reactions: LizKat
D.T. said:
It's kind of a specific chart, debut singles, that established a "new" artist, sound, career, kind of a music pivot point. I mean, it's pretty vague about the ranking, but just in looking at the performance of Spears debut single vs. Carey's, the former outperformed it by like 10x, has had like 285 million streamings, etc.

(I'm a fan of neither, so I got no dog in this hunt as they say :D)
Click to expand...
Vision of Love inspired many artists such as Beyoncé and Mary J blige to start their careers. It popularised the melismatic signing style.
 
Bug-Creator said:
Another one lacking basic reading skills....

"The 100 greatest DEBUT singles of all time"

Billy Joels debut would have been "Captain Jack" (depending on definition, but "Piano Man" was released years later so it surely isn't that).
Click to expand...

Exactly.

By the brilliant and creative and superb standards of much of what they later produced, I would argue that "Love Me Do" was a pretty poor song; however, it was the first song of their own that the Beatles ever recorded and released, hence, it appears on this (inevitably) subjective list.
 
  • Like
Reactions: decafjava
Rogifan said:
www.rollingstone.com

The 100 Greatest Debut Singles of All Time

From Billy Ray Cyrus and Britney Spears to Grateful Dead, CCR — a great debut single is the opening line in a convo you never want to end.
www.rollingstone.com www.rollingstone.com

Top 10:
  1. Britney Spears, “…Baby One More Time”
  2. The Jackson 5, “I Want You Back”
  3. The Sex Pistols, “Anarchy in the U.K.”
  4. Run-DMC, “Sucker M.C.’s/It’s Like That”
  5. Chuck Berry, “Maybellene”
  6. R.E.M., “Radio Free Europe”
  7. Led Zeppelin, “Good Times Bad Times”
  8. Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right”
  9. The Ramones, “Blitzkrieg Bop”
  10. The Smiths, “Hand in Glove”
Britney Spears at #1 but no Whitney Houston - whose debut album was the first album by a female artist to debut at #1 on the Billboard Charts and has sold over 20M copies - anywhere on the list. No Guns N’ Roses Welcome to the Jungle even though Appetite for Destruction has sold over 20 million copies and one could argue its one of the best album intros ever. I’m sure there are plenty of other omissions from this hot garbage of a list.
Click to expand...
Welcome To The Jungle- One of the greatest rock songs encompassing a wide spectrum of human and musical emotions.

You*Must*Be*Assimilated! :D​

The Whitney Houston omission is shocking and revealing about the short comings of the list. :oops:
 
  • Like
Reactions: decafjava and Rogifan
D.T. said:
Like I said, I sort of "get" what they were going for, just attempting to parse it, it's not like they weren't aware of her, so the exclusion seems by design (and not a slight).

*shrug*
Click to expand...
Pop singers get short shrift. My goodness when when the RRHOF announced Whitney was one of their 2020 inductees social media went nuts. Even though by all metrics she deserves to be there (as does Barbra Streisand and as will Mariah Carey some day). Having the Sex Pistols in the top 10 on this list is a joke. If there ever was an overrated band it’s the Sex Pistols. The Clash were way better (and influential, imo).
[automerge]1589997860[/automerge]
Huntn said:
Welcome To The Jungle- One of the greatest rock songs encompassing a wide spectrum of human and musical emotions.

You*Must*Be*Assimilated! :D​

The Whitney Houston omission is shocking and revealing about the short comings of the list. :oops:
Click to expand...
I was in high school when that album dropped. I wore it out. It’s definitely in my top 5 rock albums of all time. Though I’m embarrassed to admit when I first heard Mr. Brownstone I though it was two different singers on the song. 😊
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Scepticalscribe and decafjava
I really like the wrap of the Rolling Stone's intro to their list:

"The list we ended up with is heavily titled toward singles that became building blocks to great careers, though there are a couple of seismic one-hit wonders here as well — after all, there’s something to be said for perfecting your musical vision in three minutes, remaking the world, and getting out of the way to let future generations make sense of the mess you’ve created."​
​
As to the part I bolded: possibly far more observed in the breach than otherwise but only more time passing will tell.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Scepticalscribe
She's #1 because that song is the reason she became successful. There was nothing else on that album that would have had the same effect. Plenty of artists have multiple songs on their debuts that could have easily been the first single, that's why they're further down that list or not there to begin with.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Scepticalscribe and tranceking26
Rogifan said:
Pop singers get short shrift. My goodness when when the RRHOF announced Whitney was one of their 2020 inductees social media went nuts. Even though by all metrics she deserves to be there (as does Barbra Streisand and as will Mariah Carey some day). Having the Sex Pistols in the top 10 on this list is a joke. If there ever was an overrated band it’s the Sex Pistols. The Clash were way better (and influential, imo).
Click to expand...

Agree completely about The Clash. (And The Sex Pistols).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back