Quote:
Originally Posted by chipper
i think it is unfair to compare the two with each other. they came from two different generations and that in itself sets the demarcation line. both are great artists and both contributed to greatly to music.
The Beatles [and Elvis] certainly contributed to the acceptance of artists writing their own material to the mainstream. Before them, singers were manufactured by labels. They were fed the music they were going to sing and the image they were going to portray. The Beatles [and Elvis] broke that boundary. They were highly experimental in their music and introduced a lot of the styles that became the basis of the many progression in music today.
Michael Jackson is one of the performers who reaped from that but he definitely progressed it. In fact, he is the most successful in progressin his music. He was a multi genre artist, something that was uncommon in his era. He popularized the use of naratives in songs. He put MTV in mainstream. He bridged disco and hiphop. The list could go on.
You just can't compare.
I'd say Michael Jackson is up there with The Beatles and Elvis on my Level 1 Greatest Artist list.
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Elvis didn't write his own material (and Michael Jackson only wrote some of his) and was very much a manufactured image I think. The Beatles probably started off as a manufactured image (as did Michael Jackson) but ended up remaking themselves in many different ways. Not sure Elvis did that much, apart from becoming the oversized Las Vegas crooner at the end of his life. Michael Jackson will have remade himself but he was hardly the first to do it, others certainly did it for example Dexy's Midnight Runners had 3 completely different looks across 3 albums with different music styles during the 80s. So I am not sure he was as different in doing that in his time as you think. The 80s was about image as well as some good pop-dance. In America Madonna has changed her style many times across 3 decades. The most successful at changing their style and
keeping the quality up seems to have been The Beatles though.
As for blending hip hop and disco you may wish to look at this effort from Blondie back in 1979, way before Michael Jackson did it. Don't know if you or The Virgin know or a few others in this thread recently know about this.
Also there was plenty of music video invention before Michael Jackson did his Thriller video. Music video telling a story, how about Pink Floyd's video Another Brick in the Wall (1980)?
Dailymotion - Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall - een Music video
Don't know if you or The Virgin or some others here know about that. The problem is I think people often make huge claims for originality now without actually knowing the full details of the eras they might be talking about, or even earlier eras as well.