Here is what I’m gonna say about setlists… Taste is personal, and I don’t think Billboard is a great indicator of quality anyway. What objectively jumps out for me is how Rock Band 4 songs are spread over the decades: more than half is comprised of songs that have 10 years or less ca., compared to a 1/3 ratio of basically all the previous chapters.

For me Rock Band has always been about playing a song I love and know by heart, songs that for years, or heck decades, I fantasized of playing in front of audiences, etc. By definition, that can’t be accomplished by songs I just heard on the radio. Even a song I don’t know, if it has a history, if it stood the test of time, I can definitely feel it playing it (because I can hear the influence on the songs that came after that, etc.) But songs that we don’t know if we are even gonna remember in a couple of years don’t do it for me *when it comes to judging the appeal of a setlist*.

I definitely have loved playing more than a few songs I didn’t know and ended up not like playing songs I love to listen to, but if we measure the quality of a setlist by objective parameters, I think a setlist, or a catalogue, with songs that captured the imagination of generations is better than a setlist or a catalogue of songs that are currently dominating the Top 40 radio stations’ playtime.