I know it’s an an old poll, by the way, but as it relates to music from an entire century, 1900 - 1999, it serves as an example of people’s opinions; we’re not talking about artists from 2000 onwards.
This has been discussed here several times before. In those earlier threads, after numerous cites, opinions, and statistical reports, Elvis Presley was declared the hands-down number one.
Also, Life Magazine’s publication “Rock And Roll at 50” lists their top 100.
The top five according to Life:
Elvis Presley
Beatles
Bob Dylan
James Brown
Rolling Stones
From this we conclude that there was no music before 1955, except for Sinatra.
It’s a pretty silly poll, if you think about it. Those polled are neither music experts nor a hundred years old, so asking them about an entire century’s worth of music is pointless.
Well, polls like this tend to be pretty meaningless. It is very hard to define the question and, in the end, it comes down to personal taste.
Also, the thread title “Greatest music artist of the 20th century” and the poll in the OP “Greatest music star of the 20th century” deal with two different things. There are a whole lot of musical STARS that are really poor musicians.
Having said that I’ll give you my list of the ‘Greatests’
Greatest influence: Robert Johnson. He influenced just about every early R’N’R band, including Elvis. On top of that he made a deal with the Devil.
Greatest Star: Elvis.
Greatest Musician: Frank Zappa. Zappa did everything and also, as far as I can tell, hired and mentored more great musicians than anyone else. The list of people Zappa hired is endless.
Why of course, I know I can’t envision a list of the greatest musical artist of the 20th century with Liam and Noel Gallagher firmly in the top 10! Both!
