NorthC said:

NorthC said:

purple05 said:

NorthC said:

^All those things are equally true of Prince. Well, except the videos, but Prince had a sexual side to him that Jackson didn't have, Prince was a little too much of a "Controversy" for a lot of folks. Jackson was more of boy next door. He certainly was not "Dangerous", (Until the scandals started, but that's a different story.) I think that's a better explanation of his popularity. [Edited 11/17/17 3:49am]

I disagree. Prince while charismatic, didn't have MJs charisma. Prince was attractive but at that time, he wasn't conventionally attractive as MJ was(women do not like short men). Also Prince didn't have the sense of melody and rhythm MJ had. Even if Prince did make safer music, he still wasn't going to be as popular as MJ. Also add the fact that MJ was hugely popular as a child and had a successful teen career. The rest was the icing on the cake. [Edited 11/17/17 9:12am] [Edited 11/17/17 9:14am]

I'm sorry but this is totally not true Prince will always outdo MJ as a pure musician. Here we are agin with MJ Fans that won't give Prince more credit when it's necessary just to make MJ bigger than he was.

purple05 said:

Even if Prince did make safer music, he still wasn't going to be as popular as MJ.

Like I've mentioned before, there were other acts in the 1980s who outsold Prince at the time like Def Leppard, Van Halen, Whitney Houston, Bon Jovi, Madonna, etc. Prince & Bruce Springsteen only really had 1 huge album. Def Leppard had several. Van Halen had 2 diamond albums with David Lee Roth and the ones with Sammy Hagar had big sales too. Prince & Bruce had other ones that sold well, but not with blockbuster sales like Purple Rain & Born In The USA. There were ones that didn't do much business in the US like Lovesexy. The album cover didn't help because some stores wouldn't stock it or had it behind the counter and some people didn't want to be seen buying it. There were other factors too, like the rise of hip hop, which began the phase out of the androgynous image of the early & mid 1980s, especially on R&B radio. Some early rap groups like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five & Soulsonic Force had a more wild look, but Run-DMC mostly put an end to that. Even Dr. Dre wore glitter suits and makeup in the World Class Wreckin' Cru.

EmmaMcG said:

FullLipsDotNose said:

He didn't make as many tracks as Prince, he hardly ever wrote music (as opposed to Prince) and he could only sing and play the guitar (again, Prince beat him easily at this).

I'm not saying Elvis wasn't above average though.

Talent is not how success is measured unfortunately. Sales mean more than artistry. And Elvis, as a brand, is a sales machine. The reason for this is that when he was alive, Elvis, the man, was a cultural phenomenon the type of which the world had never seen and is only matched, popularity-wise, by Michael Jackson and the Beatles. Prince has never, and will never, come close to that level of popularity.

Cultural phenonmenon, What after he went stoled from Black Folks and try to make it his on! Ever heard the story of Elvis going to Black Churches and picking up on Black Folks rhtyhms. It has been depicted in a movie. Chuck Berry 'nem were already doing the stuff Elvis was doing but since a White man was doing it now it was a Big Deal!!!

And as far as the bolded part, Anybody on that List of Highest Paid Dead Celebrities, I would consider bad ass, Notice Prince above John Lennon and Albert Einstein!!!!

[Edited 11/17/17 12:08pm]

NorthC said:

^Have you ever even listened to a Prince record? Jackson having more sense of rhythm or melody? Susan Rogers once said that Prince could make her want to dance with just a drum beat- it was funkier than most people's finished songs.
And as for charisma, like I said on the other thread, Prince could do a show with nothing but a piano and a microphone. That's charisma for ya.
[Edited 11/17/17 9:58am]
[Edited 11/17/17 9:59am]
[Edited 11/17/17 10:06am]

Astasheiks said:

Chuck Berry 'nem were already doing the stuff Elvis was doing but since a White man was doing it now it was a Big Deal!!!

If that's all it was, then how come Jerry Lee Lewis, Pat Boone, Carl Perkins, Everly Brothers, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, etc. didn't get the same level of popularity as Elvis? Back then black church people complained about R&B singers like Ray Charles taking the gospel sound and putting secular words over it. They also did not like that gospel singers such as Sam Cooke & Aretha Franklin abandoned it for the "devil's music". In their cases, it was worse since both Aretha & Sam had preacher fathers. Some would consider Sam's death as punishment for leaving the church. Elvis has always given credit and never said he invented anything, and it was not R&B/gospel only. There was some country and a little opera. Everybody was influenced by something. Eddie Levert has said he was influenced by opera singer Mario Lanza. Does that mean he stole "white music"? Some Latino music like salsa was influenced from music from Africa. The banjo originated from Africa too. Both country & blues had elements from Hawaiian music. That's where the slide & pedal steel guitar sound came from.

[Edited 11/17/17 13:10pm]

ThatWhiteDude said:

MickyDolenz said:

MickyDolenz said:

purple05 said:

A big part of Elvis' stature is because he was white. Yes he had talent and was charismatic but there were many black men who were just as good if not better and they never got half of the praise Elvis gets.

Obviously someone who is more famous is going to get more press than someone less popular. Like Muhammad Ali is written about more than other boxers. It's not Elvis fault he got more airplay than Jackie Wilson or B.B. King. That was still the Jim Crow era, where they would edit black people out of movies shown in the south and Hazel Scott & Nat King Cole couldn't get sponsors for their TV shows. I see Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie mentioned more today than the 'King Of Swing' Benny Goodman. Elvis was not just accepted. Maybe he was by teenagers of the 1950s, but many white adults trashed him, called him a n-lover & a hillbilly and that rock n roll music was corrupting the youth and turning them into juvenile delinquents. The same thing they did with jazz & ragtime before it and the flapper era that popularized jazz. Johnny Cash in an interview said he saw a country singer (he wouldn't name) at the Grand Ole Opry telling Elvis backstage that he was that guy who sang n-music dismissively and afterward Elvis started crying. They complained about his dancing, so they started to show him waist up on TV. They were glad that Elvis was drafted because they thought his popularity would be gone by the time he got out. The payola hearings of the late 1950s & early 1960s was basically an attempt by the government to kill rock. Payola had existed long before rock music, but it was not a problem with the crooner era singers.

purple05 said:

NorthC said:

^Have you ever even listened to a Prince record? Jackson having more sense of rhythm or melody? Susan Rogers once said that Prince could make her want to dance with just a drum beat- it was funkier than most people's finished songs.
And as for charisma, like I said on the other thread, Prince could do a show with nothing but a piano and a microphone. That's charisma for ya.
[Edited 11/17/17 9:58am]
[Edited 11/17/17 9:59am]
[Edited 11/17/17 10:06am]

Yes I have and I'm not saying Prince was bad in that department but MJ had him beat. So MJs songs didn't do the same. Rhythmically not many people were fucking with MJ. That area was one of his strong suits.
I replied to you in the other thread as well. Go take a look because I don't want to derail this one.

Man my Grandma told me that her grandma said she'd better "turn that N-music off" I was shocked. Music came from the black.........

MickyDolenz said:

purple05 said:

A big part of Elvis' stature is because he was white. Yes he had talent and was charismatic but there were many black men who were just as good if not better and they never got half of the praise Elvis gets.

Obviously someone who is more famous is going to get more press than someone less popular. Like Muhammad Ali is written about more than other boxers. It's not Elvis fault he got more airplay than Jackie Wilson or B.B. King. That was still the Jim Crow era, where they would edit black people out of movies shown in the south and Hazel Scott & Nat King Cole couldn't get sponsors for their TV shows. I see Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie mentioned more today than the 'King Of Swing' Benny Goodman. Elvis was not just accepted. Maybe he was by teenagers of the 1950s, but many white adults trashed him, called him a n-lover & a hillbilly and that rock n roll music was corrupting the youth and turning them into juvenile delinquents. The same thing they did with jazz & ragtime before it and the flapper era that popularized jazz. Johnny Cash in an interview said he saw a country singer (he wouldn't name) at the Grand Ole Opry telling Elvis backstage that he was that guy who sang n-music dismissively and afterward Elvis started crying. They complained about his dancing, so they started to show him waist up on TV. They were glad that Elvis was drafted because they thought his popularity would be gone by the time he got out. The payola hearings of the late 1950s & early 1960s was basically an attempt by the government to kill rock. Payola had existed long before rock music, but it was not a problem with the crooner era singers.

purple05 said:

ThatWhiteDude said:

I'm sorry but this is totally not true Prince will always outdo MJ as a pure musician. Here we are agin with MJ Fans that won't give Prince more credit when it's necessary just to make MJ bigger than he was.

Of course Prince is possibly the most varied talent in music theory in modern music. Taste aside, MJ could write a song just as good as any of Princes best songs. MJs songs didn't always go as deep lyrically though. Now I'm not saying MJ is the best, but his melodies/harmonies and his rhythmic approach to song are pretty dope.

Then why didn't he just write a Song that was as good as any of Prince's best songs?

ThatWhiteDude said:

Man my Grandma told me that her grandma said she'd better "turn that N-music off" I was shocked. Music came from the black.........

This attitude was the one of the reasons record labels often put white models on the album covers of non-white artists. So white people who dug the music could buy the records and the racist ones would see it in somebody's house and would think it was a white group or singer. Music by blacks were called "race music" at first and country was called "hillbilly". Some record labels in the beginning like RCA had different color labels like red which was the "high class" music like classical & opera, black was the "low class" popular music like race, jazz, crooner pop, & hillbilly. The red seal label records were even sold at a higher price. This was in the 78s era before the 33 speed album was invented.

I would've protestet instead of tricking them, "you like that song? then you buy it, no matter what skin color the singer is." I'm sorry but things like that make me fucking mad. I just can't get in my head, what the fuck is the problem??

MickyDolenz said:

ThatWhiteDude said:

Man my Grandma told me that her grandma said she'd better "turn that N-music off" I was shocked. Music came from the black.........

This attitude was the one of the reasons record labels often put white models on the album covers of non-white artists. So white people who dug the music could buy the records and the racist ones would see it in somebody's house and would think it was a white group or singer. Music by blacks were called "race music" at first and country was called "hillbilly". Some record labels in the beginning like RCA had different color labels like red which was the "high class" music like classical & opera, black was the "low class" popular music like race, jazz, crooner pop, & hillbilly. The red seal label records were even sold at a higher price. This was in the 78s era before the 33 speed album was invented.

Please don't turn this into yet another Michael Jackson vs Prince. By the way how do you know whether a song is complex or not?

ThatWhiteDude said:

I would've protestet instead of tricking them, "you like that song? then you buy it, no matter what skin color the singer is." I'm sorry but things like that make me fucking mad. I just can't get in my head, what the fuck is the problem??

This was era when white actors would change their names if they were too ethnic or rural sounding. So it's not that simple. People did start protesting, not about record artwork, but about civil rights in general. Miles Davis did get Columbia to change one of his album covers that had white people on it. The popularity of rock n roll was part of the influence of the younger generation to change. When black artists were mostly popular with the black audience and played chitlin' circuit places, it was undergorund to the mainstream. That's why it's odd that young white performers from Europe like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, etc had to sell American music to white Americans and have the veteran singers open up for them or talk about them to the US media for them to start getting noticed. Ironically, many of those acts had been abandoned by a lot of the black audience because blues was seen as backwards & country to the newer middle & upper class black people of the time. This is when soul music started to become popular with the black audiences and blues singers were beginning to get less airplay on R&B radio.

After the British Invasion acts blew up, rock n roll started to be considered to be music for white people and still is to this day. Jimi Hendrix was way more popular with whites than blacks. The rock press like Rolling Stone & Creem were started by white hippy era baby boomers, and they primarily wrote about rock acts and black performers who crossed over. The rock press were the ones who promoted the idea of singers/groups who wrote their own material important. Pre-Beatles it was uncommon for popular acts to self-write. There were professional non-performing songwriters for that. The audience didn't care if Perry Como & Dean Martin wrote songs. I think that's why pop music and R&B wasn't seen as relevant as rock because those genres were still like the boomers parents music in that they were still producer and/or writer for hire driven.

NorthC said:

MickyDolenz said:

ThatWhiteDude said:

214 said:

purple05 said:

NorthC said:

I looked and I didn't see any proof of Jackson doing a two hour show behind the piano. I've also never heard a Jackson song that funked harder than Head or DMSR or Let's Work or Housequake or Days of Wild. Prince lived and breathed and ooooozed the funk. Just like George Clinton and Bootsy Collins (talk about charisma!!) Mr. Jackson had great success because of his talent, his family and Motown that backed him and some good marketing behind him, but Prince had him beat in every other way. Prince was funkier, sexier, more creative, more productive, more adventurous, toured more and all of those things are exactly why I find him much, much, much more interesting. Jackson was more famous. Allright. Great. Good for him. And where did it get him?
[Edited 11/17/17 14:10pm]

MJ didnt have to do it behind a piano. He just needed a microphone. It's okay to prefer Prince but we don't have to be delusional. So we will agree to disagree

purple05 said:

Elvis was more famous because he was white. They couldn't push a black artist the way they pushed Elvis. You acknowledged the Jim Crow era, so how would a black artist reach that stature with that mindset?

There were black singers who were more popular with whites than the black audience during that time like Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., & Johnny Mathis. The popularity of Nat King Cole is why he got a TV show in the first palce, although some TV stations in the south wouldn't broadcast it. Jazz & classical pianist Hazel Scott had a short run TV program and she was in a few Hollywood movies. There was also a piano player named Korla Pandit who had a TV show. He was a black guy who claimed to be Indian (from India, not Native American) and performed a music genre called "exotica", which was popular in the 1950s & 1960s. As an actor Sidney Poitier had been accepted by the white audience too without having a Stepin Fetchit image. The popularity of Fetchit (he became a millionaire) paved the way though and so did the Amos & Andy TV show. People today put down Amos & Andy, but there's nothing really wrong with the show. But they all had a more adult audience. Elvis being white helped, but the beginning of teenagers having money helped him too. Elvis had pretty boy looks unlike Bill Haley who looked liked someones dad and Buddy Holly, who was kinda nerdy looking. So movie studios are not going to try to push Bill Haley as an actor. It's like Sam Cooke had more appeal in this way more than Fats Domino, although their music was both really popular with young white rock fans. In the case of Little Richard, he quit secular music at the height of his popularity to become a preacher and to make gospel records. The early singles of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and even future country singer Conway Twitty had became hits on the R&B charts. They were not only popular with whites at first. It was the same way later acts like Hall & Oates, Doobie Brothers/Michael McDonald, & George Michael were popular with the black audience.

purple05 said:

214 said:

Please don't turn this into yet another Michael Jackson vs Prince. By the way how do you know whether a song is complex or not?

Musically, lyrically. Very objective

What? did not get it.

purple05 said:

The one thing that saved MJ in the late/80s early 90s was his rhythmic talent. With BAD he started some of the staccato rhythmically he would be known for later. Then NSJ fit his voice and writing style like a glove. Hip hop/rap changed everything. R&B is a dying genre

R&B as in "rhythm & blues" hasn't really been popular since the 1950s. In the 1960s "soul" came into popularity and soul music dropped most of the blues part. In the 1980s the R&B charts in Billboard was called "Black Singles" and "Black Albums. Also in the 1980s, the Stray Cats music had more in common with early R&B than Freddie Jackson and Rene & Angela did. Today in the same way Big Bad Voodoo Daddy & Cherry Poppin' Daddies sounds more like Louis Jordan than Chris Brown & Rihanna does. Jet Magazine called their charts the "Soul Brothers Top 20". Today in Billboard it's called "Hip Hop/R&B". There's a sub chart called "Adult R&B", which used to be called "Urban Contemporary". Today R&B is just code for music made by black people, doesn't really mean anything as far as a sound goes.