Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is now on the newsstands. But if you miss this year's rendition, no worries: The top 21 albums on the list are the same as on Rolling Stone's list from 2003. To call it predictable or a cliché is to let it off easy.

The magazine doesn't publish the criteria for judging what makes an album great, nor does it explain why it chooses 500 instead of 50, or 50,000, but the usual suspects fill out the top 10 slots: four albums by the Beatles,...