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Drakon-Deus
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Qapla'
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posted September 27, 2019 04:16 AM |
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I had a debate with an online friend over Prince and MJ. He tried to use MJ's album sales as an argument for his superiority, and he specifically mentioned "Bad". Then I said, "Did you know MJ asked Prince to sing 'Bad' with him, and Prince declined?"
Checkmate. 
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friendofgunnar
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able to speed up time
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posted September 27, 2019 01:51 PM |
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Prince is the most overrated musician of the 80s, easily. His songs are thinly orchestrated, repetitive, and they use cheap, dated synthesizor sounds. MJ was an extraordinary performer but his actual songs were blandly unexceptional, with just one song "Billie Jean" being above average.
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Drakon-Deus
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posted September 27, 2019 01:57 PM |
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friendofgunnar said:
Prince is the most overrated musician of the 80s, easily. His songs are thinly orchestrated, repetitive, and they use cheap, dated synthesizor sounds. MJ was an extraordinary performer but his actual songs were blandly unexceptional, with just one song "Billie Jean" being above average.
MJ was strictly a performer, Prince was a real artist. Not for everyone. And personally I'd say MJ was overrated.
You expressed your opinion and I expressed mine. That is all.
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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JollyJoker
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posted September 27, 2019 05:36 PM |
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Performers are artists as well.
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted September 27, 2019 05:48 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Performers are artists as well.
Yes, of course. But if you compare the two...
Instruments: Obviously there’s no comparison here. Prince was a musical polymath who could play almost anything.
Songwriting: Both wrote a number of classic pop songs, but Prince was far more prolific, writing almost all his own material from the beginning as well as numerous hits for other artist such as Chaka Khan, The Bangles, and Sinead O’Connor.
Voice: MJ had a great voice and I can certainly understand if some people prefer it, though Prince had the greater vocal range.
Dancing: Elaborate choreographed dance numbers were a big part of MJ’s concerts and music videos and he clearly put in the work, but Prince could get down with anyone. The man could break dance in high heels.
So, to me, Prince is the better artist in almost every way.
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JollyJoker
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posted September 28, 2019 12:03 AM |
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Why would you even want to put one over the other?
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted September 28, 2019 05:13 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
Why would you even want to put one over the other?
My reason for comparing them is that when I mentioned Prince to the online acquaintance, his first reaction was to compare him to Michael Jackson and say the latter was better. To be fair MJ was far more well known in Romania. So I had to make a case for why I prefer Prince over MJ.
And I don't know how it really was back then, but regarding their rivalry, I read that they even disliked each other personally.
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JollyJoker
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posted September 28, 2019 11:42 AM |
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MJ started his solo career in 1972 with 13 and released 10 studio albums, 5 of them in the 70s until he was just 20, peaking after that in the 80s with just two mega.successful albums and then spent the rest of his life trying to come up with an equally good album.
Prince was born in the same year than MJ, and was active basically the same time span than MJ, he just started 6 years later (and died later as well). He released 39 studio albums, just going on and on and on and on, no matter the success.
You can't even compare them - while MJ has of course been an artist, I'd consider him a PRODUCT. Thriller is at least as much Quincy Jones' record as it is MJs. But is Prince really BETTER because of that? There are those who prefer one and those who prefer the other, that's it. For me, at least.
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted September 28, 2019 11:45 AM |
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Well, when someone says MJ was "better" because of his sales, I do have to respond, don't you think?
Obviously I prefer Prince. That's it.
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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Salamandre
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posted September 28, 2019 12:43 PM |
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You know you have a crush on some artist when you give him a place in your Heroes maps
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JollyJoker
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posted September 28, 2019 02:34 PM |
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Drakon-Deus said:
Well, when someone says MJ was "better" because of his sales, I do have to respond, don't you think?
Obviously I prefer Prince. That's it.
You might have answered that Rihanna has sold more (certified) records in the 14 years she is active now than MJ in nearly 50, so that would mean Rihanna is better than MJ.
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Drakon-Deus
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posted September 28, 2019 03:08 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Drakon-Deus said:
Well, when someone says MJ was "better" because of his sales, I do have to respond, don't you think?
Obviously I prefer Prince. That's it.
You might have answered that Rihanna has sold more (certified) records in the 14 years she is active now than MJ in nearly 50, so that would mean Rihanna is better than MJ.
That's a good reply. I'll remember it for the next time I meet an MJ fan.
@Sal: Cool.
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artu
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posted September 28, 2019 07:18 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Drakon-Deus said:
Well, when someone says MJ was "better" because of his sales, I do have to respond, don't you think?
Obviously I prefer Prince. That's it.
You might have answered that Rihanna has sold more (certified) records in the 14 years she is active now than MJ in nearly 50, so that would mean Rihanna is better than MJ.
Well, you also have to keep in mind that the custumor base is always expanding, both globally and locally. Selling a million records in 1955, 1975 and 2015 are totally different things. So even if you attribute any value to a musician purely on a sales base (or object to such a thing playing their game), you have to compare the ratio rather than strict numbers.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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JollyJoker
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posted September 28, 2019 07:31 PM |
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I suppose that would make the Beatles by far the best ever.
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artu
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posted September 28, 2019 11:50 PM |
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Yep, Beatles sold more even if you dont consider the period: Wiki
But if you take that as the only criteria, Backstreet Boys is more important than Dylan. I think far more important criteria (as in something a little more objective than your own taste) is, cultural impact and influence on future musicians, how much innovation you brought in lasted among how many genres. If we go by that, in popular music, I’d say Beatles and Dylan are still by far the most influential, followed by musicians whose influence is more genre based like Elvis, Zeppelin, Ray Charles, Prince, Sinatra. I agree that Jackson is more of a product. I must also add that I dont mostly listen to stuff recorded after mid 2000’s, I mean, there are albums I like of course but I no longer follow genres, so say, if Metallica has been very influential to young musicians of today, I would be unaware.
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JollyJoker
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posted September 29, 2019 10:22 AM |
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You are barking at the wrong tree here. I just gave him a point how to counter the sales argument, but if you followed the thread, I didn't agree with comparing popular artists qualitatively (or quantitatively) at all.
There is a lengthy Rick Beato vid in which he and his two mates explain, why they think the Yardbirds are the most influential guitar band of all time: because they included Clapton, Beck and Page at various points and because of what they in turn spawned and influenced.
While the influence stuff can be interesting from a merely historical point of view and in order to put things into a context, I'm no particular friend of that. Everyone, everywhere is and have been influenced by something, but it's not the influence that makes things what they are, but the artists who put things into aa new context and/or merge their influences. It's like making a family tree.
Bob Dylan, for example, started, where Woody Guthrie left - an easily discernible influence. It starts getting interesting at the point when he plugged in in the mid-60s, incorporating other, more contemporary influences, quite probably not as a specific artistic influence, but more as a general sign of the times. However - he might have just listened to an slbum of the Byrds and decided that he liked the sound of that. A member of the Byrds was David Crosby, who left the Byrds to found Crosby, Stills (who left Buffalo Springfield) & Nash ( who left the Hollies). They are later joined by Neil Young, who, as a kid, listened to Rock'n'Roll, but as a teen was heavily influenced by Bob Dylan and founded Buffalo Springfield with Stills. Lastly, the Hollies started out as a British duo (Nash being one of them) in the skiffle period in the end of the 50s and were also influenced by the Everly Brothers, so when they started the Hollies at the end of 1962 by joining 3 members of a band who had just lost two musicians, and in their case another influence is already given by the name.
So this is a very complex web of things, but "influence" is something very fuzzy. For example, I'd say that Chuck Berry has been quite the influence - but what does that actually mean more than a lot of people listening to his stuff, asking themselves what he was doing exactly and found something in it to work with themselves.
It would seem that the Velvet Underground and the Stooges have been quite influential as well, but you can be influential without many noticing, obviously.
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artu
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posted September 29, 2019 11:31 AM |
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Well, when I say influence, I’m not talking about something like Mick Jagger listening to some Eastern song and getting the idea for Paint It Black, I’m talking about something more concrete and lasting. That’s why I mentioned genres, if you abstract the Beatles from popular music history, a lot would be very different regarding rock, pop, psychedelia, experimental music, songwriting, protest music, popular culture etc.
When it comes to Dylan, putting aside how he completely redefined the importance and content of lyrics, he can also still manage to topple lots of actual singers in Rolling Stone magazine’s best singers of all time, becoming number 7, even though he doesnt have a typically beautiful voice and he’s off key many many times. And the reasoning behind it is extremely solid: Since Dylan, it is not about how pretty the voice is but about how much it makes you believe, it is telling the truth.
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JollyJoker
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posted September 29, 2019 12:16 PM |
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Rolling Stones Magazine's list of 100 best singers of all time is, frankly, ridiculous, for a number of reasons, and lists like that are a reason why I dislike these comparisons.
What I wanted to show is, that in contemporary music "influence" is an ongoing thing. All the US artists named in my posts, were not influenced in any way by the Beatles, at least not before 1964 or 65, and that is obviously true for the Hollies as well, who are British. They were influenced by American musicians - just as the Beatles, which in turn started to influence US musicians. Artists tend to influence each other, especially when contemporaries. They LEARN from each other. Take Keith Richards' Open-G tuning he uses for many of the great Stones song. It's actually, how a Banjo is tuned, and it's not clear exactly who it was who game him the idea, whether it was Bert Jansch, or Ry Cooder or Joni Mitchell or Bobby Goldsboro or all of them together, but in the end it was Keith piecing things together to sound the way the Stones sound at their best, and if you can believe Keith, it was him Ike Turner learned that tuning from, when they were on tour together in the US.
Artists are never finished picking things up and using them for their own purposes, that's the nature of art.
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artu
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posted September 29, 2019 02:24 PM |
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The list itself is pretty subjective indeed, I quoted it because Dylan is not a a “good singer” and despite that he is there for a reason which is summed up well. Sam Cooke for instance, is a good singer in the traditional sense and him explaining to Bobby Womack what changed is a nice pick, (assuming you’ve read the thing since you think it’s ridiculous.)
Other then that, yes huhum, but I dont see how all this contradicts with saying the range and magnitude of some artists’ influence surpass others and how that is a more important criteria than sales. There was a time when everybody who took a sax in their hands wanted to be like Charlie Parker, even Coltrane started out imitating him although he ended up sounding nothing like him. (I was also very surprised to learn Van Halen’s biggest influence was Clapton.) Now, if you look at record sales, Parker is not huge, neither is any jazz record, yet, subtract him from history and sax is a different instrument all together. You can, of course, find some sax players who are not influenced by him or ones that are influenced by him yet who kept on getting influenced by many other things as well including the pictures of Monet or whale sounds. That has nothing to do with what I say.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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JollyJoker
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posted September 29, 2019 08:38 PM |
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Influence is utterly subjective, sales are not. As criteria for whatever you want to "rate", they play in different leagues. I'm not entirely sure how you'd want to quantify the influence of MJ and that of Prince and do a comparison, so I have no idea what your point is here.
Side note; if you watched this (which I'd recommend), you'll come to the conclusion that the influence Eric Clapton had on EvH as an artist is pretty low, simply because there are other way more important factors making him what he is.
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This thread is pages long: 
