"The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" was the cover story of a special issue of Rolling Stone, issue number 963, published in December 2004, a year after the magazine published its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
In May 2010, Rolling Stone compiled an update, published in a special issue and in digital form for the iPod and iPad. The list differs from the 2004 version, with 26 songs added, all of which are songs from the 2000s except "Juicy" by The Notorious B.I.G., released in 1994. The top 25 remained unchanged, but many songs further down the list were given different rankings as a result of the inclusion of new songs, causing consecutive shifts among the songs listed in 2004. The highest-ranked new entry was Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" (number 100).
The number of songs from each decade in the updated version is as follows:
Two songs by U2 and two by Jay-Z were added to the list. Jay-Z is also featured in two other new songs on the list, "Crazy in Love", by Beyoncé, and "Umbrella", by Rihanna.
The only artist to have two songs dropped from the list is the Crystals; their "Da Doo Ron Ron" (previously number 114) was the highest-ranked song to have been dropped.
With the development of the Rolling Stone website as a digital source of information, users can cross-reference lists electronically. For example, one group that is listed on both Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is Toots and the Maytals.