You may be thinking of existentialism, but don’t worry; it’s a pretty common mistake to think the latter has to lead to the former.

Of course, I’m not 100% sure what you’re on about, having never taken a lit crit class in my life. They sound like fun.

I guess where we differ, dude, is that since we’re talking about music to my mind the only standard for greatness is taste. Which means, yes, these lists are even more silly in principle than you if you believe in some sort of objective greatness standard for music (and since everyone who tries to tell me there is one winds up going “I don’t know what it is, but it exists, really!”) – assuming you take the lists to be actual serious exercises in defining the world, rather than just big masses of Good Shit. Of course, I’m also kind of biased.

I’ve also never heard an argument for a particular piece of music that doesn’t eventually boil down to “I like it”, but them’s the perils of aesthetics.

“there are certain unqualified “rights” in music like Dylan and the Beatles”

Well, that depends what you mean. If you mean there are artists around which there is broad consensus, and for the purposes of practical discussion we can treat them as if everyone loved them – sure. If you mean (and maybe you don’t, but this is the insidious strain lurking below a lot of these discussions) that anyone who doesn’t enjoy the Beatles or Dylan is somehow “wrong” and could be made “right” somehow…. that’s where we part company.