The canon shifts each year to accommodate the latest changes in contemporary culture. When the Beatles best set the paradigm for pop music, Rolling Stone named their landmark 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as the greatest of all time. But in 2020 Rolling Stone revised its Top 500 Albums list to better recognize the musical contributions of artists beyond the white male rock oeuvre. The new list dropped Sgt. Pepper to number 24 and put Marvin Gaye’s seminal soul record What’s Going On—arguably a more influential work on the direction of contemporary music—in the top spot.
