Has respect slipped for Bob as he rolls off 17-year top spot?

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Finally, after 17 years, Bob Dylan’s coruscating and ultimately hip Like a Rolling Stone has lost its crown as the world’s greatest song.

In the first update of Rolling Stone magazine’s  500 Greatest Songs of All Time since 2004 Bob’s work of sheer genius has rolled off the top spot and landed at No 4.

Otis Redding’s anthem Respect has shimmied into the No 1 spot, a lot to do with Aretha Franklin’s re-working of it in to a soulfully magical song of empowerment for the women of the world.

In the last list Respect was at No 5, behind Like a Rolling Stone, John Lennon’s Imagine, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and The Rolling Stones’ Can’t Get No Satisfaction.

That’s no longer in the top 10 and the highest rated Rolling Stones song is Gimme Shelter at 13.

Rounding out the top five today is Nirvana’s classic grunge track Smells Like Teen Spirit.

To make up the new list Rolling Stone asked more than 250 artists and musicians, critics and music industry figures for their views.

Aretha’s version of Respect is about a young, confident, independent woman telling her man that she doesn’t see any why he disrespects her and it became one of the most famous female empowerment anthems of all time.

In its original cantation Otis’s version was a sweaty wild sexy romp! Brilliant!

The Queen of Soul’s version was just as brilliant but perhaps more meaningful, a battle cry of the civil rights movement in the United States.

On the other hand Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone is a song of social conscience too, an analysis of society’s have-and-have-nots.

It’s vitriolic, youthfully angry, finger pointing with Beat poet images and Spector-like noise smashing through walls like an out-of-control diplomat’s car. It even attacks the decadence of Andy Warhol’s mangled tin can art movement.

It also comes at a time that Bob is facing what we all hope are scurrilous accusations about his early life and fame.

And, of course, if Rolling Stone couldn’t be bothered to update their ‘greatest’ list for 17 years then things will have changed.

But I say here and now that Bob’s song is still the greatest one ever written, in my mind anyway.

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