Top 10 Lists In Pop Culture and Media

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5. Rolling Stone’s Best Songs and Albums of the Year

Rolling Stone’s annual publication lists the top albums and songs of the year. Rolling Stone has long been one of the foremost publications regarding music and media. Rolling Stone has undergone quite an evolution since the Hunter S. Thompson days of the 1970s when Rolling Stone was primarily a political and current events magazine. But they have never lost their touch with their fervently dedicated hippie-turned-real-estate-agent fan base. Their annual rankings of songs and albums gives an often highly controversial but definitive look at all types of music, not just mainstream sludge spewed out on lifelessly redundant pop stations. Many mainstream types have read the list and shouted “Bah! This is rubbish! Where is Rihanna!” while emphatically throwing it into a trashcan filled with Nickelback ticket stubs. No matter who Rolling Stone puts on their list, it is sure to get people talking year after year. (Note: Video is for their ‘Top 25 Albums of All Time’ list – unable to find image/video for 2009′s Best Albums of the Year.)

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4. Time Magazine’s Most Influential People

Time Magazine’s ‘Most Influential People’ are decided by none other than the general public. Anyone can cast a vote to elect who they think is changing the world with their s****, power, notoriety, or otherwise equally important adjective. The list, first published in 1999 is a fledgling among the more long standing lists in popular media but has quickly grown to be one of the most anticipated. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Steve Jobs have all been listed five times since the issue’s inception. The comprehensive list journals the shifting paradigm of a culture, one person at a time. The people listed in the pages of their annual issue often represent a radical, world changing idea. Some notable ones: the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates. All have changed the world with their ideas. The person listed the most times? Oprah Winfrey.

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3. NY Times Bestseller List

The New York Times Bestseller List is the list of the top selling books in the United States and is published weekly by the New York Times. The list has been around since 1942 and continues to be the most powerful source for categorizing and ranking book sales. Bestseller books will often bear stamps shouting that their story is indeed a New York Times bestseller. This gimmick usually attracts the attention of shoppers and can exponentially boost sales once the book makes the NYT list. The books are categorized into eight genres: Fiction, Paperback Fiction, Nonfiction, Sunday Book Review, Paperback Nonfiction, Business Best Sellers, Children’s Books and Advice. At one point in the history of the bestseller list, authors began complaining about J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series and requested it’s removal because of its unconquerable stranglehold on the top spots of the bestseller list.

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2. Forbes World’s Richest People List

This list includes the 500 wealthiest magnates and tycoons in the world, listed by continent and country, as well as lists like: ‘the world’s billionaires’, ‘comebacks,’ and ‘newcomers.’ Some names that frequent the apex of this elitist list are investor Warren Buffett, Mexican telephone tycoon Carlos Slim Helu, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. It is every aspiring business person’s dream to see his or her name gracing the pages of this issue. This issue attracts people that normally don’t subscribe to Forbes but are drawn into the freak power of seeing people that have salaries larger than the GDP of Zimbabwe. In the future, Forbes magazine might have to make the issue a few pages longer to incorporate the hundreds of zeroes it takes to describe the salaries of these rich and wealthy individuals.