With the radio being dead to teens and spotify/youtube/tiktok being the way they discover stuff I wonder how many “generational” acts there still are.
Through like 2010 most boys still would probably have a Metallica or Zeppelin phase, I think the hip hop takeover of culture has killed that off.
kinda fun fact, his hawaiian wedding movie made people book to get the exact same wedding for a few decades. with his music and everything else of course.
It’s odd that everyone is using The Beatles as a benchmark. By that standard basically no one is relevant. Maybe Dylan or The Stones come close, but no one is watching an 8-hour Dylan documentary in 2021.
Elvis pioneered the concept of being a mass-media rockstar/sex symbol. You don’t have to like his music to appreciate the influence he had on our culture.
elvis was a showman and thrust teens into beginnings of sexual revolution, but musically he forced white djs play the style of music created by african americans. elvis was quite clear that he didn’t invent any of it, but that’s arguably the biggest influence he had.
also dylan had a movie about him ~10 years ago. it was critically acclaimed and not a hit.
TIL that’s not a TMBG original!
You oughta know your Canadian Music Hall of Famers.
Cell carriers caved….for a couple weeks
https://twitter.com/rogerwcheng/status/1478184126922604545?s=21
Here’s the letter:
https://twitter.com/davidshepardson/status/1478385516861177869?s=21
Fucking ban
Jesus fucking Christ
Craziest thing about The Rolling Stones is their best album easily is Exile on Main Street. Yet Exile on Main Street doesn’t have a top 5 most played radio song. Tumbling Dice maybe is top 10.
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Just to take my dilettantism in a different direction, going back to before 9/11 I had nightmares about airliners falling out of the sky. But that was with mushroom clouds in the background. Outside of the dream, the scene could be explained by EMP effects on electronics but this was also about the time cell phones were becoming ubiquitous and people really were worried about in-flight interference with instrumentation. I was and remain doubtful that there is a significant safety issue but it’s difficult to reason about situations where the risk is vanishingly small but the potential consequences are catastrophic. I haven’t looked into this 5g thing much but it feels like more of the same.
Q: What’s worse than Crosby, Stills & Nash?
A: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
The Sun sessions.
This is like slating MS as the worst software company ever while disregarding SQL Server.
If we’re going to step outside pop music, Oscar Peterson deserves a mention.
Isn’t Bieber Canadian? He’s gotta be at the top of the best selling list eh?
Very few people under 21 have ever bought a CD.
Barbara Hannigan. Jon Vickers.
lol
‘I suppose you’d had to call him a lyric baritone, although with exceptional high notes and unexpectedly rich low ones. But what is more important about Elvis Presley is not his vocal range, nor how high or low it extends, but where its center of gravity is. By that measure, Elvis was all at once a tenor, a baritone and a bass, the most unusual voice I’ve ever heard’ (Gregory Sandows, Music Professor at Columbia University, published in ‘The Village Voice’).
‘I am reminded of a comment made shortly after the death of Elvis Presley by a musician he had worked with. He pointed out that despite an impressive vocal range of two and a half octaves and something approaching perfect pitch, Elvis was perfectly willing to sing off-key when he thought the song required it. Those off-key notes were art’. (Patrick H. Adkins, The Dream Vaults of Opar).
‘On his live versions of songs like ‘How Great Thou Art’ (1975), ‘Unchained Melody’ (1976) and ‘Hurt’ (1977), you will be able to hear how high he can go; but, it is essentially on ‘What Now My Love’ (sang live at his ‘Aloha from Hawaii’ global telecast, which reached 1 billion viewers when first aired in 1973), where he goes up three octaves at the end of the song, that you can really hear his true vocal power’. (Cory Cooper, vocal connaisseur, on Elvis Presley’s vocal range).
‘He got even more maturity in his voice as he got older; I was often amazed at his range, just as one singer listening to another. He could sing anything. I’ve never seen such a versatility, and in fact I don’t see it today. Usually a voice can sing one way, but he had that ability about him, and he helped me to learn the importance of communication with an audience. He had such great soul. He had the ability to make everyone in the audience think that he was singing directly to them. He just had a way with communication that was totally unique’ (Gospel tenor Shawn Nielsen, who backed Elvis’ recordings both with the ‘Imperials’ and with the group ‘Voice’, at the studio and in concert, from the late sixties until Elvis’ death in 1977).
‘He would probably be considered a baritone, but he could reach notes that most baritone singers could not. Much of his abilities emanated from a very intense desire to execute a song as he wanted to do it, which meant that he really sang higher than he would normally be able to. When the adrenalin is going, and the song is really pumping, you can get into that mode where you can actually do things, vocally, that you couldn’t normally do. So he had a tremendous range because of his desire to excel and be better, and that’s why he could do a lot of things that most people couldn’t’. (Terry Blackwood, lead singer of the Gospel group, the ‘Imperials’).
‘Along with the rest of ‘Deep Purple’, I once had the chance to meet Elvis. For a young singer like me, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It’s the same as being in school - you learn by copying the maestro. His personality was also extremely endearing, his interviews were very self-effacing (and), he came over as gentle and was generous in his praise of others. He had a natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery. Those early records at the Sun Records label are still incredible and the reason is simple: he was the greatest singer that ever lived’. (Ian Gillan, lead singer and frontman of the UK hard rock band ‘Deep Purple’, interviewed by Classic Rock magazine, explaining why Presley belongs in the list of rock icons).
‘In Elvis, you had the whole lot; it’s all there in that elastic voice and body. As he changed shape, so did the world. His last performances showcase a voice even bigger than his gut, where you cry real tears as the music messiah sings his tired heart out, turning casino into temple. I think the Vegas period is underrated. I find it the most emotional. By that point Elvis was clearly not in control of his own life, and there is this incredible pathos. The big opera voice of the later years – that’s the one that really hurts me’. (Bono, lead singer of U2, for Rollingstone Magazine, as published in their April 15, 2004 edition).
‘The young Elvis Presley, without any doubt’. Kiri Te Kanawa , top New Zealand opera star and soprano’s answer to UK show-host Michael Parkinson (who probably expected her to name Luciano Pavarotti, or Maria Callas), when asked whose was the greatest voice she had ever heard.
‘Elvis’ lowest effective note was a low-G, as heard on ‘He’ll Have To Go’ (1976); on ‘King Creole’ (1958), he growls some low-F’s; going up, his highest full-voiced notes were the high-B’s in ‘Surrender’ (1961) and ‘Merry Christmas Baby’ (1971), the high-G at the end of ‘My Way’ (1976 live version), and the high-A of ‘An American Trilogy’ (1972); using falsetto, Elvis could reach at least a high-E, e.g, as in ‘Unchained Melody’ (1977), so, it was very nearly a three-octave range, although more practically two-and-a-half’ (George Barbel, as a follow up to a question on what was Elvis’ range).
And on top of all that he fronted one of the greatest rock bands.