With time, tastes change. What is considered canon shifts with the generations. Great albums slip from memory. Newer records take their place.
A recent example of this was Apple Music releasing their list of the Top 100 best albums of all time. 
Lists like this are markers of the current “consensus” on taste. They also start conversations and arguments about inclusion and exclusion, who is ranked where and why.
This is all interesting in of itself but what was most interesting to me was what the changes meant and what they may tell us about where popular music (and music criticism) may be headed.
For a comparison, I will use the Top 100 Albums on Rolling Stone’s list of The Top 500 Albums they compiled in 2003. Why this list? Rolling Stone is considered, by most, to be the journal of mainstream music criticism in the United States. Using the list from 2003 (and not the 2009 or 2020 update) will give us a generational comparison when comparing the Rolling Stone list to the Apple Music list. 
I’m also going to take a look at the number one ranked record, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by (you guessed it) Lauryn Hill, give my opinion on the music, and then look at why this record may have been chosen as the number one record of all time by Apple Music.
A note: I’m not a musician, music journalist, or critic. I’m not a writer by trade. I consider myself a music fan but probably not to the same extent I once was. These are just my, admittedly, amateur opinions.
With that out of the way, what jumps out to me when comparing these two lists?
If you look at the Top 100 as a whole, there is not as much “churn” as you may have thought. About a 1/3rd of the Apple Top 100 picks are on both lists. Given the fact that Apple believes that 25% of the best music of all time was released on or after 2003 (when the Rolling Stone list was released), this is pretty impressive. 
The biggest takeaway is probably in genre.  By my count, there are 12 Hip-hop records on the Apple list that were released between 1988 and 1998 that are not on the Rolling Stone list. We also see a total of ten records by contemporary pop stars (records made after 2003). This doesn’t count albums by Jay-Z, Eminem, Kanye West, Travis Scott, or Tyler the Creator.
Who filled these slots on the RS list? Mostly British Invasions bands, their earlier American influences (Elvis, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, etc), and Bob Dylan. All told they took, by my count, roughly 34% of that list. 
If you take the average year released for both lists, there is less than a 20 year difference, with the average year of the 2003 list being 1973 and the Apple list being 1991. It is important to note that this is not completely true, however. We have to remember that some of the Rolling Stones albums are compilations of an artist’s body of work that is sometimes decades older than the release. For instance, Muddy Waters – The Anthology contains some songs that were recorded fifty years before the 2001 release of that album.
The Apple list gets a lot younger when looking at the Top 10.
The average year released for the Top 10 for the Apple Music list is 1995, while the average year released from Rolling Stone is 1968, a 27 year gap.
Most of this is due to the concentration of Beatles records, a band that broke up more than 50 years ago – 4 of their albums are in the Top 10, with 3 being in the Top 5. 
As I mentioned earlier, the Top 100 of the Rolling Stone list is part of a larger 500 albums list. I believe this gave them the opportunity to acknowledge records that may have less broader appeal but still have very high quality. Because the Apple is only 100 albums, I believe there was more of a pressure to (for the most part) give out awards to major artists or albums representative of genre in a more or less egalitarian fashion, which made the range much broader in terms of when these records were released. If, for instance, Apple had decided that Beyonce was the most important musician and the Top 10 of their list looked like:
1. Lemonade – Beyonce (2016)
2. Miseducation of Lauryn Hill – Lauryn Hill (1998)
3. 4 – Beyonce (2011)
4. Thriller – Michael Jackson (1982)
5. I am Sasha Fierce – Beyonce (2008)
6. Abbey Road – Beatles (1969)
7. Purple Rain – Prince (1984)
8. Blonde – Frank Ocean (2016)
9. Songs in the Key of Life – Stevie Wonder (1976)
10. Renaissance – Beyonce (2022)
The average year of a release for the top ten would be 1998.
Before we move on a word from our sponsor.
That’s not the list that we got, however. I wanted to understand why The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill took the top spot on the Apple list. First, obviously, I had to listen to it.
As a general rule, I don’t criticize anything without experiencing it, so, for the first time, I listened to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Now, I’m 40 years old and my hearing is not what it once was, so you should probably take any criticism I have with a grain of salt (though you should do this with every criticism – are you a sheep?). I also probably haven’t really gotten into a record for five or so years – maybe this is because I’ve reached the end of the period where I can add new things to the list of things that I like or maybe I just haven’t been exposed to anything that I find is truly new or exciting or different. I think it becomes harder to find the time to search for new things when it seems like new things were always there when I was younger – It’s a lot easier to go fishing when the fish just leap into your boat.
While I probably have a few hundred CDs, a hundred or so records plus maybe a couple dozen of iTUNES albums, I am certainly past the point in my life where music is a primary focus of my identity and is not nearly the same focal point for me that it once was.  
I wanted to listen to the whole record to make up my own fair opinion of it. I heard the lead single, Doo-Wop (That Thing) a ton when it first came out and always liked it. I’ve heard snippets of Everything is Everything and knew that it came from this album but had never listened to the record all the way through, so my knowledge of the album was relatively minimal.
Also, it should be noted the following review is based on me listening to the whole record exactly once – on YouTube – through headphones connected to my laptop speakers, so if you’ve an audiophile who has loved this record for 25 years, don’t Taken me.
So with all that being said…do I think the record should have the number one spot on this list? In short, no but I also believe, having listened to the record, that I’m closer to understanding why it was chosen as #1.
First, the good. There are a handful of standout tracks – Doo-Wop (That Thing), Final Hour, & the D’Angelo-assisted Nothing Even Matters (where the vocal interplay and chemistry between the two gets you 90% of the way to something memorable) are, in my opinion, head and shoulders above the rest of the album. It’s impossible to talk about the record without talking about Lauryn Hill herself. To state the obvious: Lauryn Hill can sing. I don’t think she’s quite Whitney or Mariah but she’s certainly at least on the level of Adele, who through sheer will, some talent, and a lot of “mum makeover energy” has willed her way into (apparently) a spot on lists like this for 21 moving forward, but I digress. Some of the melodies from Miseducation stick in your head – I’m reminded of the chorus that Lauryn sings at the end of Lost Ones as a good example of this. I like that there are different moods on Miseducation, though I think, listening to the record in 2024, to call it “adventurous” is a Mr. Fantastic-level stretch. There are bits of rock guitar here and there, some reggae (and bad accents), hip-hop sprinkles, doo-wop and soul elements (mostly in the call and response backing vocals) and some Stevie Wonder-esque funk but most of the record would not have seemed out of place if Sheryl Crow or Alanis Morisette had sung over the music beds in the mid 90s. 
Before I go into the parts that didn’t work for me, let’s talk about the backstory of this record.
This record was lauded when it came out in ways that went beyond the actual quality of the music. One reason was the story behind it. Lauryn Hill had gone solo after being a member of the Fugees, which had released The Score just two years prior. This was a hugely successful record (which Hill references on her song The Final Hour).
The album was also promoted as being a singular creation of Hill and there is a long contentious history about who did what on this record – From a 1998 article in the Los Angeles Times entitled “The Legal Tangle of ‘Miseducation’, Geoff Boucher writes, “on the eve of the Grammy season in which it is a sure contender, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” is being portrayed in a lawsuit filed by a group of musicians as something far different--a group project and a lesson in the unfairness of the music business.
The musicians, known collectively as New Ark, are suing Hill and her label in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., claiming they deserve a share of songwriting or production credit on 13 of the album’s 14 songs--and, of course, a sizable chunk of the profits generated by the album, which has sold 2.4 million copies to date [Editor’s Note – Per Complex, that # is closer to 30 million copies worldwide as of, 2023] …The album credits say the album is “produced, written and arranged” by Hill, and she is also listed as executive producer on all the tracks. The New Ark members--Vada Nobles, Rasheem “Kilo” Pugh and twin brothers Johari and Tejumold Newton--are acknowledged several times for “additional production,” “additional musical contribution” and “additional lyrical contribution” on some songs.
They claim, however, to be the primary songwriters on two tracks, “Nothing Really Matters” and “Everything Is Everything,” and major contributors on six others. Full or partial production credit is also due to the team on five tracks, the suit claims. The musicians also claim to have made sizable, uncredited production contributions to “A Rose Is Still a Rose,” a song Hill produced for Aretha Franklin’s last album.”
They eventually settled this lawsuit and, per Wikipedia, there are 3 songs where Hill split song writing and 2 songs with co-producers listed.
Why does this matter?
Psychology Today defines parasocial relationships as, “one-sided relationships in which a person develops a strong sense of connection, intimacy, or familiarity with someone they don’t know, most often celebrities or media personalities.” In a similar vein to Adele’s stories of pain a decade or so later, people, I believe, latched on to this record, in part, because of the voyeuristic aspect of someone dealing with heartbreak and betrayal in the public eye - some of the songs on Miseducation are believed to be about Wyclef Jean, her former bandmate, and the dissolution of their romantic relationship. This is probably most direct on the first track, Lost Ones. I think women (especially) flock to stories of women done wrong or those who have been stepped on by the music industry due to sexism. 
Part of that story was reinforced when there was a push to make the story of the record as a creation of Hill and Hill alone. The music industry has a long and shameful history – even putting aside cultural appropriation of (mostly) black artists by white artists and record labels – of stealing credit and assigning it to others for commercial purposes. Milli Vanilli, C & C Music Factory, and scores of others have miscredited creators in order to uphold the image of a singular genius using their heightened emotions, usually pain and suffering, to create beautiful art they couldn’t have otherwise made.
Was this true of Hill? I wasn’t there so I have no real idea of what Hill did or didn’t do. We live in an extremely litigious society, where lawsuits are often-times the first source of remedy (instead of being the last) to any disagreement. This is also the music business where the definition of “written” and “copyrighted” are mostly left up to lawyers to hash out, after the project has proved successful enough for those involved to hire them. 
So…what on this record did Hill do? I’ll get more into my uninformed opinions about how much she did a little later. 
The album went on to win 5 Grammys, which was a record for both hip hop and women in a single night. It’s only real competition for Album of the Year was Ray of Light by Madonna and Come on Over by Shania Twain (though Miseducation was much well received by critics at the time).
I went over the parts of the record I liked. Here’s what I thought could have been done better. 
The album is long, like later-period Martin Scorsese long. Some of this is due to interstitial skits (?) in which a teacher asks a roomful of middle or high school aged kids their feelings on love but also because the songs, on average, go on for probably 10-20% longer than they should. 
It contains some of the worst indulgences of 1990s pop music – skits, album bloat (the album is nearly 80 minutes long with a ton of filler tracks), using the same generic record scratch sound on multiple songs, interpolating other (better) music instead of coming up with new, original ideas, Carlos Santana, the list could go on. The music itself on the record leaves a lot to be desired. How to describe this? Generic, bland, humorless? Yes. 
Lauryn Hill has a beautiful singing voice but she’s not a particularly inspiring lyricist and even the songs where she is at her most personal (Every Ghetto, Every City, Lost Ones) don’t bring anything new or interesting to childhood reminiscing or heartbreak, respectively. The trite lyrics are throughout and didn’t connect with me emotionally. There is also a reliance on biblical and historical allusions that wore on me pretty quickly – your mileage may vary.
When she’s rapping, she sometimes digs deeper – Final Hour was the most pleasant surprise on this album- It’s a dope hip-hop track, the beat is nice, and Lauryn’s most inspired, wittiest lyrics are found here. 
While we’re on the subject…there have been two Album of the Year Grammy winners that have been hip-hop artists: Lauryn Hill and Outkast. That’s it. Here’s the thing…this record really is not a hip-hop record. If you get into technicalities, you could make the argument, I guess, but it’s a bit like making the argument that an oreo is a sandwhich – you may be technically right but most people would reject that label (because there’s a more accurate description of the thing). 
Now, in an alternate universe where there were 10 tracks as good as Final Hour, Lauryn Hill would be MF Doom / Nas level-great but that’s not this record. 
The record we did get has compositions that are sparser than I thought they would be given the amount of press at the time regarding the genre-hopping / genre - mixing. There isn’t a level of lushness to most of the tracks to compare it say Tidal by Fiona Apple, which had come out a few years earlier. That record was both angrier and less spiritual than Miseducation, so that may have been part of the dissonance there. 
So…what do I think Lauryn Hill did on this record? Part of what makes this record interesting is its genre. Usually, in hip-hop, there is a clear distinction between a producer (who writes and creates the music) and an artist (typically a rapper) who job is to A). write lyrics and B). rap them. I believe David Byrne writes about this in the liner notes of the reissue of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in a really clear way.
Given that Miseducation is not purely a hip hop record and that this doesn’t hold – for example, I have not found anyone credited as a producer for Final Hour other than Lauryn Hill so, presumably, she produced the beat and rapped over it – it makes terms like producer and writer more nebulous.
As I mentioned earlier, where music intersects with copyright law is notoriously messy.  From a Vice article from 2018 entitled, “The Music Industry’s ‘Miseducation’ about Black Women’s Creative Ownership”, Hill is quoted, "I hire master builders and masterful artisans and technicians who play beautifully, lend their technical expertise, and who translate the language that I provide into beautifully realized music…These are my songs, musicians are brought in because of the masterful way that they play their instruments… No matter how incredible the musicians who play with me are, MY name is on the marquee. The expectation to make it all come together is on me. The risk and the financial losses are on me. Hence, MY VIBE, though not the only consideration, is the priority. Few people actually know what this road is like, but many want to judge and comment, having never done it. Try doing what I’ve done yourself. If nothing else, you will gain some insight into and respect for my process."
That being said, the lawsuit was settled, per Wikipedia, for about $5 million dollars with New Ark and the production and writing credits were amended in a few songs on the album to recognize their collaborative nature. 
I tend to think, not being privy to the hard evidence on either side, that the record is mostly Hill’s with a few instances where she should have been more generous with credit. I think, had there been a heavy-handed record producer telling her what to do, the first thing they would have done would have been to cut down some of the length, including axing most, if not all, of the skits. 
Why is this record number one on the list?
A few reasons. One – It has both antecedents and descendants. Look in the top 10 for clues.
Amy Winehouse is ranked #8 on the list and there is a direct line between this record and Winehouse’s Magnum Opus (and much better, IMO) Back to Black. The title track, when it hurts so bad, and I used to love him all sound like antecedents to Winehouse’s sound and it’s not surprising to me, after hearing this record, to learn that Winehouse used to mash up Hill’s Doo-Wop with her own songs. Ditto Stevie Wonder – if you’ve familiar with Stevie Wonder to any degree, you almost certainly thought of him while listening to Every Ghetto, Every City. 
If you have a record that can both look backwards to records you love and forwards to records you love, it places these things in a continuum that makes it easy to say – “it takes things I like and builds on them and influenced future musicians”. Critics love being able to say that. Lineage is important to musicians too.
Two – I talked about it before. I think people love a story. The story of Hill going on her own and making a record BY HERSELF that spoke to many people was catnip to the Grammys and others. I also think she got nominated in a relatively weak year and the ability for the academy to award her as a hip-hop record let them off the hook for previous (and future) snubs in this genre.  
Three – Bono said something once that was, while being douchey, also true: I’m paraphrasing but it was something to the effect of “we (U2) mix religion and spirituality in our music in a way that is rare in western pop music”. 
I think one of the appeals of the record was its religious themes which are fairly rare in pop music. I think this expanded the audience and people who were maybe weary of buying a hip-hop record found that they could get down with L.Boogie’s version of it, being infused with Christian allusions, songs about love, her kids, and childhood nostalgia.  
You may be saying to yourself, “you’ve talked a lot of about non- music related things as to why people love this record. Are you saying you hate it?”
No. I’m not saying that. I think the record is solid – it has a couple of singles (one of them better than the other) and a couple of other songs I would classify as good (but not great). However, “solid” should not be confused with the greatest record of all time. I tend to be a contrarian by nature but I don’t think it takes a contrarian to question the placement here.  
Side note – I’m not going to go into how one would or should categorize greatness – I don’t have that kind of time – but I think it would be interesting to know the reasons that the judges ranked this record so highly. 
Spin Magazine placed this record at #28 for their list of 90 albums of the 1990s, which I don’t have a major problem with. Are there records that are lower on the list that I think are better? Yes but, by not having it at #1, I can chalk it all up to “opinions that are different than mine” and move on. 
Before I move on from Miseducation, I’m going to compare it to another record from the 90s that also had a ton of interpolation. Sublime’s self-titled 1996 record. The biggest hits – Santeria, What I Got, Wrong Way – will be played on rock radio, possibly forever. It also has found a new life with (literally) the lead singer’s son playing songs that his father didn’t get to tour on (having died of a heroin overdose). We also see influences in modern artists, including Lana Del Rey covering Doin’ Time. 
As rock has waned in popular culture, there will probably never be a critical consensus that this record is a top 100 record of all time because (as we’ve seen on this list) it doesn’t fit neatly into any category – is it a reggae record? Ska record? Rock record? – and, again based on this list, top album lists will increasingly be dominated by pop records of the day, pop artists of the past, and their direct antecedents. Another way of saying this, it’s quite possible that London Calling will, in the future, be seen as the PUNK RECORD (even though it’s not really a punk record) and Nevermind will be seen as the GRUNGE RECORD (though there are other records that more purely capture that sound). 
If this is true, what does that mean for a similar list for 2044 or 2045? It’s likely that the large number of hip-hop records from the late 80s to the late 90s will shrink down. More on that later.
The list in 2044 will probably reflect the pop music of the time more than anything else. If, for instance, country music continues to grow in popularity and we have a string of critically acclaimed country records over the next decade or decade and a half, it’s not inconceivable that one of them (or a record that has already been released) will move into the Top 10. If we see a number of country records weighed as heavily as we saw hip-hop in this list, it’s not out of the question that influences of these records (call them country crossovers) will make it into the Top 100. If that happens, don’t be surprised if we see Garth Brooks or Shania Twain (and possibly the record that Hill beat for Album of the Year) on this list in 20 years. 
If we see a collapse in hip-hop like we saw for the British Invasion from 2003 to 2024, which hip-hop record survives?
A lot of this will depend on what culture looks like over the next 20 years. If I had to pick just one record, however, I’d pick…It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Public Enemy. Part of this is the critical acclaim of this record – As well as being on both these lists, it’s also on Paste Magazine’s Top 300 albums list (at #11). Paste is probably somewhere between the voting blocks of both Rolling Stone and Apple in terms of age and gender tastes. It’s safe to say that this record is now part of the generally accepted canon. This is very important when looking towards the future, the past is predictive – at this point, it will take a nation of millions to kick Abbey Road or Pet Sounds out of the canon.
For a longer look at how age and gender can effect how these lists can be impacted over time, I’ll link to an article entitled, “What Makes An Album the Greatest of all Time?” By Chris Dalla Riva and Matthew Daniels. I think it’s interesting to apply some of their findings to the Apple Music list. I’ll let you do that at your own convenience.
If, in the future, hip-hop is seen as an extension of the Black civil rights movement, a record that Spin magazine once described as, “hip-hop as fierce Afrocentric theater”, would make a lot of sense. Also, it’s my believe that sample-based production holds up better than keyboard and drum machine-based production, so it’s likely that the record will only sound better as sample-based production continues to be prohibitively expensive for many. For instance, Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown was critically lauded but did not earn its advance out, in part, due to the expense of the (relatively) few samples used.
You may be asking yourself, “what would an internet stranger do to try to synthesize these two lists and make them more acceptable?” I’m glad you asked. I think recent pop artists and 90s hip-hop are too represented on the Apple list and I think the British Invasion is probably too over-represented on the Rolling Stone list. I’d take the 30 spots between 90s hip hop and 2000s era pop and have a point system to get rid of half of them – The $100 Test would work well here. With those 15 spots, I’d give Beggar’s Banquet a spot, Graceland a spot, probably Elvis’ self-titled record, something by Elvis Costello (this year’s model maybe), and give a spot each to Chuck Berry and Jame Brown. With the rest of the spots, I’d try to round out genre misses and early 2000 albums that I feel got lost in the shuffle – Since I Left you by the Avalanches, Elephant by the White Stripes, and Merryweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective being the latter with the former being Never Mind the Bollocks, Dookie, and Damaged. They aren’t my genres but I’d probably also have a record for prog rock, alt. country, and something that came from the Big Beat of electronica (You’ve Come a Lot Way Baby or Dig Your Own Hole are two choices). I’d give Paranoid by Sabbath a spot and switch out Led Zeppelin II for IV, as well. 
A question to ask when examining lists like this one - What is one album you would add and one you would subtract from this list?
For me, the biggest snub was Paul Simon’s Graceland. it does what I think of when I think of greatest albums - it’s a (nearly) perfect record from beginning to end. It’s one of the few records I knew all the words too. It’s been critically acclaimed since it was released and is consistently on lists of best records (except this one). 
Did it have a huge musical influence that lasts to this day? Not really. I think it certainly brought attention to African musicians who before went unnoticed in most of the western world but I think the underlining idea of the record - a popular white male musician goes to Africa to create the music in various regional styles - probably would not be well received today, even if the end product was as good as this. This may be why the record didn’t make the list. Also, the record has been plagued by accusations of plagiarism- though a) it should be noted that this was largely from Los Lobos (who Simon also recorded with for the record) and B). miscrediting didn’t seem to stop the makers of the Apple list from giving Miseducation the top spot. 
Maybe it was the combination of both these things that kept the album off? I have a hunch that it’s mostly that the makers of the list don’t care very much for white singer songwriters (with the exceptions of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen). 
The album I’d remove? Kid A. This is (obviously) a personal preference but I’ve never gotten the Radiohead hype. They have two records on this list and OK Computer is on the RS list. Should Radiohead have two records when Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen don’t? No. 
Overall, the Apple Music list is probably what one would expect; when viewed through the lens of a  multinational corporation that is positioning itself as Cool but Not Cool, list makers with tastes more geared for Xers and their kids than professional music critics, this list makes a ton of sense. It’s not terrible but it does feel like a kindergarten teacher going through the motions, making up awards and giving out trophies until all her students have one (more to avoid calls from “those parents”) and less like passionate people arguing about things they love. Say what you will about RS: that they are stuck in the 60s, that Jann Wenner has terrible taste and is a bad person, that the wring of their magazine is actually quite poor, whatever. They have stuck their flag in the ground and said, “This is what is important to us. Take it or leave it.” 
I respect that, even if I don’t worship the Beatles. 
Well, that’s it. We’ve come to the end. I feel I’ve turned the horse into hamburger. I realize that music is very subjective and music fans tend to be incredibly passionate. If you disagree with my takes here, it’s simply because you’re wrong and I hate you.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Elegant Ramblings. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard, please consider liking and subscribing to the channel on iTunes or YouTube. You’ll be able to find show notes there. Hope you enjoyed. Bye for now.