Is Marvin's version of Grapevine one of the top 10 greatest records ever made?

Depends if you like Marvin Gaye. Define 'Greatest' - I suspect nobody could. By record sales to everyone, or in a recording forum's top 100, or the brass players top 100 ...... see the problem. If I produced my top 100, I doubt I'd have included it until you brought it to the front?
 
It's such a great song and his vocal stylings are epic.....but top 10 ever that is a totally personal and subjective judgement and conclusion. Some may agree, many will not.

Not in my play list of top 10 from my world view . So many great songs just since the 50's and so many before that...Somewhere over the rainbow. Shubert's Ave Maria, Maybe Dock of the bay by Otis, What I'd say by Ray, Purple Haze or All along the watchtower by Jimi, Echoes, or Breath and the great gig in the sky by Pink Floyd...100's / 1000's of great artist and songs and to try and take 10 songs from the 10's of thousands of songs put out there is a impossible feat. Aretha, Michael Jackson, Curt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, The Supremes, King Crimson, Beatles, Zep, Zappa, Edgar winters Tobacco road or Frankenstein, BB King, Al Jolson, Nat King Cole, just way to big of a pool of songs to pull from.

Judging from sales is easy but that doesn't make it the greatest just the best selling..and that is skewed by the star maker machinery.

If we had a world wide vote it highly unlikely it would make the top 10 but then again look at the two knuckleheads we Mericans have put in office as POTUS these last 2 elections...no we can't rely on a vote..

It'd be really hard for me to come up with a for sure, hands down this is MY top 10 favorite songs..yet alone a top 10 greatest of all time that you or anyone else would 100% agree with..

For me possibly this one would be in the top 10...what a sap......love me some Herb Alpert and Burt Bacharach

 
TAE said:
It's such a great song and his vocal stylings are epic.....but top 10 ever that is a totally personal and subjective judgement and conclusion. Some may agree, many will not.

Not in my play list of top 10 from my world view . So many great songs just since the 50's and so many before that...Somewhere over the rainbow. Shubert's Ave Maria, Maybe Dock of the bay by Otis, What I'd say by Ray, Purple Haze or All along the watchtower by Jimi, Echoes, or Breath and the great gig in the sky by Pink Floyd...100's / 1000's of great artist and songs and to try and take 10 songs from the 10's of thousands of songs put out there is a impossible feat. Aretha, Michael Jackson, Curt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, The Supremes, King Crimson, Beatles, Zep, Zappa, Edgar winters Tobacco road or Frankenstein, BB King, Al Jolson, Nat King Cole, just way to big of a pool of songs to pull from.

Judging from sales is easy but that doesn't make it the greatest just the best selling..and that is skewed by the star maker machinery.

If we had a world wide vote it highly unlikely it would make the top 10 but then again look at the two knuckleheads we Mericans have put in office as POTUS these last 2 elections...no we can't rely on a vote..

It'd be really hard for me to come up with a for sure, hands down this is MY top 10 favorite songs..yet alone a top 10 greatest of all time that you or anyone else would 100% agree with..

For me possibly this one would be in the top 10...what a sap......love me some Herb Alpert and Burt Bacharach

Click to expand...

Love it.
 
I turn the station when that song comes on, I just don't care for it. As a matter of fact I can't think of anything Marvin Gaye has done that I don't turn the station.

I will stay tuned for the next "best eva" thread. Chances are....
 
  • Incomparable
  • Matchless
  • Unequaled
  • Unparalleled
  • Unsurpassed
  • Best ever
This is why examination boards are so weird with their wordings - each one of those needs additional explanation before it could remotely be used. 'Incomparable' we sort of understand, but everything is comparable, but to compare and contrast, we need another definition to set what it actually is we are comparing. 'Matchless' assumes some kind of threshold it met that cannot be met by anything else - again, what are we actually looking at? The same applies to thge others.

Even if we start adding criteria that can be measured, it falls apart. We could look at the difficulty of the song to play - effectively setting a standard based on difficulty, but that would be wrong for a really simple but nice song wouldn't it? All art has this problem. Visual art perhaps more than aural art.
 
rob aylestone said:
  • Incomparable
  • Matchless
  • Unequaled
  • Unparalleled
  • Unsurpassed
  • Best ever
This is why examination boards are so weird with their wordings - each one of those needs additional explanation before it could remotely be used. 'Incomparable' we sort of understand, but everything is comparable, but to compare and contrast, we need another definition to set what it actually is we are comparing. 'Matchless' assumes some kind of threshold it met that cannot be met by anything else - again, what are we actually looking at? The same applies to thge others.

Even if we start adding criteria that can be measured, it falls apart. We could look at the difficulty of the song to play - effectively setting a standard based on difficulty, but that would be wrong for a really simple but nice song wouldn't it? All art has this problem. Visual art perhaps more than aural art.
Click to expand...

The points you make are absolutely spot on and have given me a deeper understanding and reason to question much of what has been written.

This must be why lawyers earn so much money! (I'm not a fan of lawyers, they've cost me the price of a modest London house over the years and I'd rather have had the house).
 
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he he! When I was a Principal Examiner - we had real trouble when writing the new specifications. One word we could not ever use was 'understand' - as in students would understand how a compressor work, or other process type things. Teachers would bang on about they need to understand this and that. The problem of course is how do you know what somebody understands? "The student must understand how to mic a drumkit" - it was so true.
 
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