BREAKING NEWS: Michael Jackson rushed to hospital with a serious heart attack

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/26/the-night-i-played-piano-for-michael-jackson/

Touching...

 

This is probably more true than a lot of people realize. The MTV back then was not the same as the MTV we have now. MJ's career and popularity weren't fabricated, manufactured, and promoted solely by MTV and the media like so many singers nowadays. You had kids and parents both actively tuning in to see premieres of his videos, not sitting by passively and having MJ shoved down their throats.

 

I ran home from football practice to see the Thriller video.

 

Without a doubt? Like, no sliver? Not an ounce? No hint at all, huh?

Like I said, he brought black music to white america. And part of that was his hipshaking, it was considered taboo and risque, but he made it "cool" to white america.

Sure it helped them cause they got on the big MJ marketing machine that was growing.

 

No disrespect to Michael, rest his soul, but many of you are grossly overrating his contribution to music, culture, and society. It was big, no question, but not anywhere close to the depth or impact of Bob Dylan or the Beatles.

 

I think people greatly underestimate Elvis.

He was incredibly popular in the UK as well as the US. His death was a life changing moment for people of that generation. Those people remember where they were when Elvis died, like they remember where they were when JFK died.

Elvis has more number 1 songs than any musician in history if memory serves me correctly. His songs have spent more time at number 1 on the charts than any musicians in history. Even after his death, and it's been awhile, he's still one of the biggest revenue generating musicians in the world. He changed music in America forever.

 

Michael Jackson:

I remember watching MTV when they were doing one of their retrospectives or whatever and the video for Billie Jean was actually responsible for breaking the color barrier on that network.

Michael Jackson is probably responsible for music videos as we know them today. Others have already listed how his videos were viewed but they were also major events much like major motion picture premieres. Many consider Thriller to be the best music video of all time and Scream is still the most expensive of all time.

His work has been sampled and covered by musicians from all genres of music. There was a pic showing this a few pages back.

Many of the music stars we know today were influenced by him.

The Anti-Defamation League said "his influence and impact on young people around the world is unparalleled" in 1995.

MTV is showing a video of Jackson at the White House with the Reagans during his own press conference.

I mean do you want me to keep going...

 

I don't think he is above them but I think he is on their level.

 

No doubt and I wouldn't put Jackson above Elvis but they're on the same level, I would say.

 

I think Americans underestimate Michael Jackson.
You really think people won't remember where they were when MJ died? Similar to when Elvis died, when JFKennedy died and when Princess Di died.

 

He will be known as a cultural music icon because he is famous world wide and sold gazillion records, won a ton of grammy's, made MTV and music video as a whole really take off in the 80's....

I think some of you may be letting your own personal taste in music cloud what is basically a FACT that MJ is right up there with Elvis and the Beatles.

Like some others have said, go to some far off village in Africa and ask people if they've heard of Bob Dylan. Then ask them if they've heard of Michael Jackson.

 

I feel your passion, really I do.

 

Do you think Bob Dylan is wildly popular in some village in Africa or India? I don't think so. Literally every single news paper around the world is leading with his death. I think you grossly underrate his impact on society.

 

I don't necessarily think they underestimate Jackson, I just think a lot of his later life overshadows everything he did before and people tend to forget about the stuff he did earlier.

 

Americans really underestimate MJ. As an immigrant myself, I know that Elvis and the Beatles were never really popular in our part of the world growing up and we only knew those names because they were famous in American/British culture. Michael Jackson, on the other hand, we all grew up on his hit songs, and it doesn't matter what part of the planet you were from. I never watched MTV growing up, but it was hard not to choke up a bit watching a music video fo "We Are The World" today and remembering how we used to listen to it over and over again back when I was in high school.

Yes, on a global scale, Michael Jackson's legacy eclipses all those guys.

 

I also doubt MTV or VH1 or radio stations across the nation would divert from their normal rotation to play Dylan all day long? I also doubt CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Headline News, etc. would stray from there normal programming to focus on his death 24 hours a day.

 

I agree. While I am no big fan of Michael Jackson, I could name quite a few of his songs. I could not name a single thing from Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan must be the most overrated person in America...along with Dave Matthews band

 

http://ycorpblog.com/2009/06/26/losing-michael-jackson/

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/06/26/michael.jackson.internet/index.html

He was pretty big to cause major outages over the internet...people who say he wasn't a big deal are crazy.

 

I haven't denied the positioning of Michael Jackson.

I do think you'd be surprised how well known Elvis is around the world however.