I still believe that incorporating other media into the music is doing exactly that. While MJ didn’t invent the music video, he definitely made it bigger than it was. You see that differently, I don’t think we come together on this one.
As I said, I may be familiar with his work without realising that it was he who did it.
So, what point are you actually defending? That modern day artists use that knowledge to invent catchy tunes, or that the classics did it better?
While both artists were very good at what they were doing, and were probably enjoying it too, the sole fact that they put out their music for others to enjoy proves that they didn’t do it just for themselves (the word ‘just’ maybe the missing keyword from my earlier statement). Beethoven took commissions from Prince Nikolai, Mozart for Joseph II and MJ wrote for E.T. The classics needed commissioned work to be able to live, probably even more so than pop artists from today.
Incorporating other media is multimedia, it’s not an advancement of music. That’s part of why I started this thread, because people really don’t even know how to distinguish music from the spectacle surrounding it anymore. So he pioneered the music VIDEO, but not music.
Well he’s one of the most famous composers for film scores.
I am talking about one’s advancement of music. Pop music does not advance music, it advances marketing, it advanced video, but it did’t advance music.
Yes, they took commissions but that doesn’t mean they didn’t write for themselves or their own purposes.
Sorry, I should have quoted Really Not All That Bright with regards to the Vocoder, I was replying to him. Anyway, I realize that you are dismissing pop music in general, not just Michael Jackson, so I’m not going to argue that he was a great pop singer anymore. I can see where you are coming from when you say that pop music isn’t as complex or intelligent as classical music. But I still think that both genres can be appreciated equally for different reasons. There are aspects of pop music that can never be expressed in classical music, and vice versa. I don’t see why one has to be considered "better’ than the other.
It is not possible to be born with, or without, ‘popular taste’. This assertion is nonsensical. It is tantamount to asserting a genetic basis for ‘popular taste’ or ‘alignment with popular taste’. If you think this is a credible claim, I’d love to see you try and back it up with some facts, reasoning or evidence. You can’t. It’s impossible.
Even if we grant the first part of your argument, you are confusing potential with achievement. Your argument is akin to saying we shouldn’t hold sporting superstars in high regard, because they just happen to be born with the sort of genes that make it possible to do well in sports. However, genes only give you the potential; you still have to put in the hard work and the effort. Even if one is ‘born with popular taste’, you still have to actually write a song, write a book or paint a picture. This takes effort, time, application, striving and usually a lot of hard work. If you doubt this is true, try it. Get back to us when a song you’ve written and recorded is getting national airplay and is sitting high in the charts. Then, and not before, you can say it’s a trivial accomplishment.
Being born with eleven fingers does not require that person to make any effort or achievement. Writing and recording a song does. If you are going to invoke comparisons, try comparing like with like. It helps.
Fine. If you believe that music is nothing more than the notes coming out of the instrument, then yes, you are correct. However, I believe, and I think that you do too, that music is much more than that. It is the entire experience. Just as sound was an evolution in movies, the music video was that for music. Again, you may not care for it, but the music video made music (in particular pop music, but not only that) into something else. Classical music benefits from the music video too. A quick search on Google show that classical music is also sold on DVD. Images can make the music that much more powerful. A fact that Mozart would be the first to embrace were it possible in his time.
I don’t think he was a musician. He was a performer with a decent voice. Here’s a quote from the Thriller wiki:
It say’s he “wrote” 4 songs on the album by humming into a tape recorder, which I’m sure Quincy Jones, Paul McCartney and Rod Templeton took and made a songs of. To me that’s not a musician, IMHO…
No the music video was an advancement of video, not an advancement of music. I’m not really saying something controversial here. Music doesn’t have an audio component. Many people as has been pointed out by others see the addition of video as a devolution of music because it puts the music as background to the visual component and has lead to a reduction in attentive listening.
I guess you just don’t understand what I mean when I talk about the advancement of music.
Or musical theatre. We can make cracks about the legitimacy of that all we like, but I don’t think the idea of pairing music with visuals is all that new. Dancing and singing and theatrics have always gone together. A good music video doesn’t make a terrible song better, but if the song and video are good and go together well, why not appreciate them?
Except that no one claims that the things people are doing on stage are music. They claim that they dance, they claim that the makeup is makeup, but they don’t claim those things advance the music. Opera lovers understand the difference between music and the rest of the spectacle involved. No Opera lover would disagree with what I am saying or even misunderstand what I am saying.
What’s so unfortunate about Pop Music is the inability of people to distinguish between the video/marketing and the music.
In an Opera the music is entirely the sound that is being made, the rest of it is the stage performance.
Well, we’re certainly narrowing things down nicely! So now singers aren’t musicians. They’re just “performers with decent voices.” Sounds familiar – I recall that refrain from many music school instrumentalists sniffing down at the voice majors.
MJ had way better than a ‘decent voice’. Listen to “Thriller” and “I’ll Be There” and “Ben.”
I don’t think the “H” in your IMHO applies, as I don’t think it’s very humble to deride songwriting ability. Most people don’t manage to compose such songs, much less perform them so adeptly. .
Michael Jackson was a great singer, a great dancer and a decent songwriter. I don’t think that can be disputed. I just dispute the idea that he really ‘advanced music’ significantly.
You do know he almost single-handedly broke MTV’s color barrier, right? I suppose you could argue that he didn’t have anything to do with advancing music itself directly but without Michael Jackson there might have been no Eminem, Alicia Keys, Dr. Dre, Boyz II Men, or a thousand other artists that owe some of their visibility to him.
Ok, maybe I was too harsh in saying he wasn’t a musician. I guess, technically, he was one and played an instrument, his voice. But I’m willing to bet he could never explain the difference between a major or minor scale or what a counter-point melody was.
At any rate, he had a “decent” voice when compared to other famous pop singers, again, in my opinion. I think that while his voice was much better as a child, his singing style evolved in his adult years into something of a parody of itself, with a certain artificiality to it and little emotion. It’s not all about just hitting the notes you know.
And you’re right that most people can’t write such songs. People like Quincy Jones, McCartney, and Templeton are great songwriters. They can take a snippet of a melodic idea and write great pop songs, which is what they did. I was never deriding their songwriting ability. I just have never seen any proof of MJ doing as such…
I was going to say this. I actually did not know this until yesterday, and I think this, too, is a pretty huge thing.
Plus, there’s the fact that his songs really are just that good. Okay, maybe he didn’t write all of them himself, but he had a huge part in them, and in making them sound great. They’re not just cute pop songs. Songs like Smooth Criminal, Beat it, or Billie Jean are great to dance to or sing along with, but they also have kind of a dark edginess infused in them. They feel just as fresh as they did back when they were released, and that’s not something you can say for most pop songs.
This whole thread reminds me of a discussion I had a few years back.
One roommate had memorized the full lineup of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
My other roommate had memorized the list of presidents.
Both had a list of names, numbers, and a handful of achievements. The former also knew histories, relations to the rest of the NFL, and a ridiculous amount of trivia. The latter, after you got past the list & the facts, couldn’t tell you what any of it meant, or any opinions on the matter.
Yet, consistently, people considered the latter man’s rote memorization, which he would never use as a Chem major, “more important” than the former’s genuine interest, which he applied every year as a football fan.
It boggles my mind that choosing to pick one set of useless facts over another makes you smart and important. Or, in this case, being one era’s giant of popular music over another.
Ah, but you DID just choose to put one guy’s achievement over another, using a set of defensible but subjective criteria (namely, how much related data you know, and how much you use it.) Music critics, on either side of this “debate,” are doing the same; there are not that many serious relativists in this thread.