Amid all the Prince/Madonna/MJ posts that we have been getting and participating in, this post stands out as being incredibly respectful, intelligent, and insightful. I'd like to give props to Yeshua4all for writing it, so I pulled it out of it's original thread because I thought it was well written enough that everyone should take a look at it.



"Here’s how I see things. If you are measuring greatness as I do, giving consideration to musicality, performance, commercial success, and perhaps most importantly influence/passed on musical legacy, then Prince stands alone at the top. Let’s look at each one though.

Michael has certainly been a force to reckon with in the first three categories. He has some all time jams under his belt. His commercial success is undeniable. One has to take into account all of the years prior to his solo career as the frontman for the J5 and then the Jacksons. Those years both prepared and primed the launch of his solo artist success. He was already cemented within the American musical conscience and had the advantage of doors opened to him that neither Prince nor Madonna could boast when their careers were getting started. By the time Thriller was released, he was also the beneficiary of a few media and cultural phenomena that along with a very slickly produced record were able to put Michael in a place of pop music preeminence for years to come despite the infrequency of new album releases. In as far as performance, Michael is perhaps without peer at what he does. I have often heard or read the term, “great song and dance man” ascribed to Prince. I always take issue with it because it’s simply too narrow and paltry a description of what Prince is all about as a performer and artist. It does however fit Michael like a glove if you will. Also, where is the continuation of Michael’s musical legacy? Does he really have one? I know that we have the Ushers and Justine Timberlakes of the world but their homage to Mike is on the performance side. Who can we say is out there carrying forth his sound or at least some credible offspring of it? Lastly, we have to consider how he has performed as the primary custodian of his own image over the years, and to this present day. Believe me when I tell you that it’s going to be critical in shaping the way history will remember him and he just hasn’t done himself any favors in this regard.

Madonna is an interesting one because I argue that she is the only one of the three whose success and celebrity is not rooted primarily in her music but in controversy and her uncanny adeptness at image and media manipulation. Don’t get me wrong. She certainly has had chart success. She has some jams but we invariably have more to say about Madonna herself than her music. Madonna is a gifted and dedicated performer with a penchant for the theatrical and has been a masterful purveyor of “shock value” which of course is not an unknown area for Prince. The difference is that while shock value has always been a kind of condiment for the delicious musical meat that Prince has always served up, one gets the sense that it often passed as meat on Madonna’s musical menu. She works her butt off onstage but as High Priestess of the Cult of Personality, a great deal more of her work has been offstage, and I don’t mean in the studio. Again as in the case of Michael, where is her musical legacy? Is Britney Spears the sum total of her progeny? That’s hardly an immaculate conception if you ask me. Madonna has however tended the garden of her image and celebrity far better Prince or Michael. It’s been her #1 commodity over the years and she has managed to escaped fatal overexposure.

Prince is the greatest because to an almost equal measure, he has all of the attributes that make the other two successful, and all of the things that they lack. He has had and still enjoys real commercial success. His level of musicality is matchless. He is the Motzart of his generation. Onstage, with all else being the norm, he is the anomaly, an absolutely wonderful freak of nature. “Song and Dance Man” doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of all that Prince is. His influence didn’t wait for this current cadre of artists because a number of his own contemporaries were coping his sound to get hit records. The number of artists around today who name Prince as a significant influence on their writing, playing, producing and so forth is too long to even get into. His image has taken some hits due to his own fault for the most part, but even during the worst of all that, his work and the depth of it commanded respect. You simply can’t get around, over or under it, and it is his work and talent alone that has kept him from being written off during the worst of times. Not media hype, not shock and awe tactics or anything else. Not only is he the greatest of the big three but as of today he is also the one best poised to have continued impacting success in the years to come.

Just one man’s opinion. Peace. peace"
[Edited 9/8/05 14:05pm]

1st

I agree with everything in that post.