On the Death of Michael Jackson: A Reality Check
Jun 25 '09 (Updated Jul 18 '09)
The Bottom Line How many "greater-than-Michael Jackson" musicians can you name?
[Picture me finishing a long yawn.]
Earlier this evening one NBC Nightly News segment regarding the death and significance of Michael Jackson hyperbolically concluded with (to the best of my memory) the following words:
"He will forever be remembered as one of the greatest musicians of all time."
Now, the major TV networks' evening news programs are, collectively, a source of information and a species of entertainment; and Mark Twain's foremost "advice for good manners at a funeral" was "do not criticize the person in whose honor the entertainment is given." Hence it is with some trepidation that I'm venturing—on the very day of Michael Jackson's death—to posit that Jackson was not one of the greatest musicians "of all time." What he chiefly was was one of the greatest popular icons of the final two or three decades of the 20th century.
Admittedly, Jackson was a musician, and an amazingly, historically popular one at that; and he did greatly influence pop music videos, which, in my opinion, actually detracts from his respectability as a musician. I've long felt that—especially beginning in the early 1980s—the radically increased popularity of music videos significantly caused an insidious decline in pop music's quality. [Think "melodic complexity" or "melodic genius" here; there's been relatively less of that ever since would-be "musicians" discovered they could get filthy rich and famous by flaunting their looks and/or their antics instead of their (mostly run-of-the-mill or worse) musical skills. (Not that there wasn't already enough of that sort of thing long before the advent of music videos.)]
I submit that there can be a difference between a popular icon and a timelessly great musician. Before anyone glibly attaches not only the former but also the latter label to the late Mr. Jackson, they should calmly reconsider his worthy competition. Off the top of my head, I could name "zillions" of musicians (including not only those who primarily performed but also those who primarily composed) whose greatness (almost inarguably) surpasses that of Jackson.
One purpose of this post is to ask if you seriously believe that sensible musicologists a century hence will deem the likes of Michael Jackson even remotely as "great" as (m)any of the below names [not to mention countless others—in no particular order—that you might mentally conjure and (if you wish) share via a comment on this "review"]:
John Lennon; Paul McCartney; Bob Dylan; Paul Simon; Carole King; Keith Richards/Mick Jagger; Donovan Leitch; Jimi Hendrix; Ray Davies; Brian Wilson; Pete Townshend; Justin Hayward; Joni Mitchell; John Fogerty; Carly Simon; David Bowie; Pete Ham; Jimmy Page; Roger Waters; Billy Joel; Bruce Springsteen; Ray Charles; Louis Armstrong; Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker; Glenn Miller; George Gershwin; Scott Joplin; John Philip Sousa; Arthur Sullivan; Ludwig van Beethoven; Johann Sebastian Bach; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; George Frideric Handel; Joseph Haydn; Richard Wagner; Franz Schubert; Robert Schumann; Antonio Vivaldi; Richard Strauss; Franz Liszt; Gustav Mahler; Josef Strauss; Giacomo Puccini; Gioachino Rossini; Giuseppe Verdi; Frederic Chopin; Antonin Dvorak; Gabriel Faure; Johannes Brahms; Felix Mendelssohn; Anton Bruckner; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; Sergei Rachmaninoff; Sergei Prokofiev; Dmitri Shostakovich; Claude Debussy; Igor Stravinsky; Aaron Copland ... [I could go on "forever" before feeling compelled to include the name "Michael Jackson"!] ....
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Member: Mike
Location: Olathe, KS USA
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I expect to return to "full-time" reading/rating by January. (Currently hindered by MAJOR home-improvement project!)
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