This day and age? Dave Grohl across Nirvana, Foo Fighters, side bands, his documentaries Sound City and Sonic Highways, etc.
Respected, liked, popular.
I’ve always said you had good taste, and that’s why!!
I hadn’t thought of Stevie Wonder. Does anyone really badmouth his music (I Just Called To Say I Love You notwithstanding)?
Actually, as lame a song as that is, it still has Stevie’s distinct and awesome vocals.
mmm
ETA: I know plenty of Springsteen haters.
Adele
Beyonce
Handel.
Beyonce now. The Beatles then.
Do a minority of people love to hate the Beatles (I mean for real reasons besides the usual contrarian bullshit)? You could at least frame an argument that the Rolling Stones, say, are massively overrated. It would likely be bullshit too, but it would be an argument. The Beatles though? I ain’t heard of that.
There’s always going to be an outlier - I for instance cannot bear to hear anything by Pink Floyd or The Doors, so… but on the subject of haters, I was on the Guardian website and in the comments on Aretha retiring, there were Aretha-haters! I mean, who could hate Aretha Franklin! It beggars belief. I could only comprehend it as trolling.
As for the OP how about Bob Marley? Popular, talented and anecdotally, is the most likely to appeal across disparate people from several countries in my experience.
MiM
You should have gone with your first thought - the Beatles. More popular than Jesus, nobody questioned their talent, and it took two full generations before it became cool to hate them.
My first thought was Beethoven, but I can’t see much to argue with for Johnny Cash, either. The only quibble I would have with him is that I think his fame was mostly just in the US, while Beethoven is worldwide.
I’d stick with the Beatles, too. Whatever points they lose in category 3, they make up for in categories 1 and 2.
Johnny Cash is a pretty good call, too. I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t like him. Even the contrarian hipsters who claim to hate the Beatles seem to like him. The thing is, the Beatles score higher on the two other scales so that, in my scoring system, they’d surpass Cash.
More random thoughts…
(all, obviously, IMHO)
Beyonce, gawd no. The only catergory in which she has any traction is popularity.
Tom Petty is a fine song craftsman and an above-average musician, but falls far short of the elite in all three criteria.
The classical composers are difficult to wedge in to the discussion for various reasons. Maybe we should exclude them? I dunno, I’m just asking.
Bob Marley is a fine nomination. I’m not sure he is in the upper echelon of popularity, though. Is he considered a gifted musician? Songwriter, yes, I think.
I should have included, as part of the musical ability criterion, influence on other musicians. Maybe should have included staying power within the popularity tract.
Does anyone have any thoughts on bringing ****Simon & Garfunkel ****and/or Paul Simon to the discussion? I just thought of them and I am bringing them (both incarnations) right to the head of my class.
mmm
First one in my head is Steely Dan. Not sure I could crunch the numbers, but we’re talking expertly crafted pop expertly crafted to be expertly crafted pop, amirite? And, somewhat along the same lines, Chicago.
Chicago utterly destroy their legacy with their later work
I wish, my friend. But I think Steely Dan is hated by more people who don’t understand them than anyone in rock. People are lazy and need tags and pigeon holes to organize their opinions.
Nobody hates Chuck Berry though.
I’d love to say Mozart or Beethoven… or even Tchaikowsky. But realistically, way too many people would turn the radio dial. So I’d have to go with the Beatles, on the grounds that most people are familiar with them, while not that many people actually hate them.
Frank Sinatra is a good nomination but, if we are going retro, I am going to have to throw out Louis Armstrong for the win.
Most of the other nominations are just performers. Louis Armstrong helped invent jazz (which eventually spawned all the rest) AND he has a major international airport named after him. His music, especially “What a Wonderful World”, is still widely played today (it was my wedding song) 115 years after his birth. I have never heard of anyone that didn’t like some of his music.
In short, I don’t think that anyone has presented a nomination that invented whole music genres and has massive amounts of infrastructure named after them except for me. I think he scores an unbeatable perfect 30.
Not Paul Simon solo, but I strongly considered mentioning Simon and Garfunkel.
I guess we’d be stuck with pleasant acts, rather than great ones. Preferably acts that straddle genres.
The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, maybe
Plenty of people hate them both, especially the Eagles. (At least that’s the impression I’ve always gotten. Or maybe I just naturally hang out with people who are none too fond of the Eagles.)
Chuck Berry is another good nomination. Never heard anyone say a bad thing about him. He’s one of the few (maybe along with Johnny Cash and Aretha Franklin) that I’ve never heard anyone talk smack about.
I’m surprised by the R.E.M. nomination. I like them a lot, but they were very polarizing in my circles. Unless you ran in that alternative/college rock crowd, they were kind of seen as music for weirdos. With Berry, Cash, and Franklin, I think pretty much everyone from the classical kids to the metal heads to the house/techno kids to the hip hop – they all could respect them.
Carole King.
from wikipedia:
Popularity: How do you even judge this? Decades of achievement in songwriting and performance.
Musicality: Gotta be close to 10.
Haters: If you hate Carole King, you hate life.