Let's stop trying to rank 60 years of popular music.

Hi Apple. How you doing? Your list sucks, by the way.

It is weird, haphazard, and all over the place. It is full of strange match-ups, bizarre misnomers, and crazed pairings. It could be an erratic list compiled by Google’s new AI Overview helper, judging by how the past week has gone.

Take, for example, Nine Inch Nails’ nihilistic gut howl The Downward Spiral. It sits at No. 74, ahead of Missy Elliott’s funked-up, Timbaland-introducing breakthrough Supa Dupa Fly, at No. 75, and Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell, at No. 79.

Beyoncé released her self-titled album in 2013 by surprise, and that, at No. 36, is ahead of Wu-Tang Clan’s classic New York head-snapper Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) at No. 37, which is itself ahead of Nas’ absolutely undeniable Illmatic at No. 39.

There are examples like that everywhere. It all feels so laughable.

Then you get to this: Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is at No. 26, Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) is at No. 18, and Jay-Z’s The Blueprint is at No. 13, but these aren’t the best albums any of these artists have made – by a long shot.

When Apple unveiled its 100 Best Albums list, spending much of last week teasing it out through blanket social media coverage, it clearly wanted attention.

I’m not sure it wanted quite as much attention as it received. The backlash has been brutal and it is still raging today.

Apple tried to manage those critiques, to prove its cold, algorithmically-driven heart was in the right place. Judges included respectable names, people like Pharrell, Maggie Rogers, Charli XCX and Nile Rodgers, alongside Apple’s own DJs Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden.

Their comments about how the list was made, and what those album mean to them, are thoughtful and considered. “This record feels like smoke rising, it is so delicate and so unpredictable and so precise,” says Maggie Rogers about Frank Ocean’s Blonde, which was ranked at No. 5.

Which brings us to No. 1. Lists like these are topped by the usual suspects: The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Joni Mitchell or Nirvana. Last year, Rolling Stone gave its top spot to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On.

Apple went in a different direction. Giving that award (spoilers follow) to Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is fine. It’s on brand. It’s exactly the kind of album that can and should top a list like this.

It’s provocative and new without being too far outside the box. I dig it.

Big Stepper: Lauryn Hill with the new iPod. Maybe. (Photo: Apple)

That’s not my problem.

My problem is this.

Stop It.

Stop it, immediately.

These lists are staggeringly stupid.

Anyone attempting to rank the last 60 years of popular music is choosing an impossible mission. Millions of albums have been released over that time. The number of those that could be called classics is easily in the thousands, possibly in the tens of thousands.

You could never get this right because no one could ever get it right.

To me, this list is notable not for what and where it has chosen to place its 100 albums, but for the ones that it hasn’t found any room for at all.

Travis Scott’s ASTROWORLD makes the list, but Fiona Apple’s Beautiful Machine does not.

Oasis’ What’s the Story (Morning Glory) makes the list, but Weezer’s Blue Album and Green Day’s American Idiot do not.

Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti makes the list, but M.I.A’s Arula does not.

There is no room for Beck, or Johnny Cash, or Tool, or Whitney Houston, or Pearl Jam, or The Chemical Brothers, or The Smashing Pumpkins, or Mariah Carey or … hell, go browse the full, insane list of artists who didn’t make the cut for yourself.

To me, this is Apple’s version of clickbait, an editorial decision to fill the gap that’s been left by the music journalists who used to do these kinds of stories, to drive engagement and, ultimately, to get people to use Apple Music, which is easily losing the streaming battle to Spotify in almost every territory they compete in.

When you look at the amount of debate it has generated, job done, I guess. We’re probably going to get more of these lists, very soon. They may get stupider, if Apple decides the backlash is a good thing.

I showed that list to my dad over the weekend and he asked me which albums by The Beatles and Bob Dylan had made the cut. I told him they chose Revolver (No. 21), Highway 61 Revisited (No. 14), and Abbey Road (No. 3), and he turned to his vinyl collection and immediately pulled out those records from his collection.

He doesn’t use Apple Music or Spotify. He doesn’t stream any music at all, instead preferring to choose albums from his vinyl and CD collection.

He also doesn’t use Netflix or Facebook or Twitter or Disney+ or Spotify.

His modem is turned off far more than it’s turned on.

A company that is doing its best to cheapen the album experience, to push people towards its own playlists and DJs, to force people to engage with its algorithmically-driven music choices, had made a top 100 albums list.

But my dad didn’t care in the slightest.

I’m starting to think he might be onto something.

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