Madonna vs. Elvis: Most important pop star?
April 29th, 2008 by Wade Tatangelo in News
The Material Girl recently surpassed The King of Rock ’n’ Roll on the list of most Top 10 singles with her ditty “4 Minutes,” reports Billboard.com, giving Madonna 37 to Elvis Presley’s 36. Justin Timberlake is featured on the Madge number and Timbaland co-wrote it, which means the track could have been a smash for just about anybody — even Elvis , whose resurrected vocal worked nicely for the hit 2002 Junkie XL remix of his song “A Little Less Conversation.” But I digress. The point of this blog post is to see if anyone would pick Madonna over Elvis on a list of most important pop stars of all time. Consider:
- Cultural impact: Elvis came first, started rock ‘n’ roll (if you believe the simpletons writing such nonsense), influenced everyone from Dylan to The Beatles, altered history, etc. But it took the Material Girl to destroy the double standard applied to women, who were allowed mostly to only be girl-in-a-cage sexy before the whip-wielding Madonna came along.
- Sex symbol: Both were the most sexually brazen artists of their era. Both were hot. Seriously. Young Elvis might have been the sexiest man to ever walk the earth other than maybe a young Marlon Brando. Madonna wasn’t born with his natural beauty, but she’s known how to work it, and keep her body immaculate, since the get-go, making many adolescent boys like me stay up late into the morning in the 1980s hoping to catch her latest video on MTV.
Vocal talent: Elvis is about 100 times better than Madonna as a singer. There’s no debate on this one. If you think Madonna can hold her own with Elvis in the vocal department it might best serve you to jam pencils in both ears.
- Songwriting: Despite what the crooked, Colonel Parker-dictated songwriting credits might read, Elvis, by most reports, never wrote a verse. Madonna, on the other hand, has played a significant role in the songwriting and production of her entire output. For instance, she wrote or co-wrote every track but one on her 1983 self-titled debut album. Yeah, her new disc, Hard Candy, relies on more outsourcing than perhaps any release in her career, but at age 49 she’s allowed to let some young bucks lend a hand. (Presley was dead at age 42).
Madonna vs. Elvis: Most important pop star?
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April 29th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
elvis wins, hands down. though both were very manufactured pop stars (elvis to a lesser extent than madonna)… chuck berry kicks them both in the teeth. no chuck = no elvis = no madonna. hell, no chuck = crappy music for the rest of time; so no chuck = madonna… hmmm… i guess we’d be stuck with here either way…
the more pressing issue here is that wade seems to have a thing for both young elvis and young brando (funny how both turned into bloated caricatures of themselves…).
April 29th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Elvis Presley is the most important figure in modern popular music. There is only a a handful of musicians, singers, that history will treat with the same reverence, and that includes Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan and the Beatles.
Madonna, like Michael Jackson, and a few others, also deserve a place in the pantheon, but I am sure that they will be treated in a slightly less reverential manner.
April 29th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I’m a huge fan of Madonna, but ELVIS wins. ELVIS is ELVIS… Madonna is a great artist but Elvis is a legend.
Madonna should be compared with Michael Jackson or Beatles or something like that.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Gabe, your statement about Berry is understandable, but I’m afraid it is also factually incorrect. Elvis fused the two most important musical idioms in America, namely R&B and C&W on July 5, 1954, a full year before Berry did the same with “Maybelline”.
Theirs were, at the outset, parallel careers, never influencing each other until Presley heard “Maybelline”, by which time he had released three history-making singles at the SUN label.
I repeat, not one, not two, but three historic singles, namely his take on R&B’s Arthur Crudop’s “Thats’ all right”, Wyonne Harris” “Good Rocking Tonight” and Kakomo Aenold’s “Milcow Blues”, each backed with also history-making takes on C&W Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, “Your’re a heartbreaker” and Tony and Dean Martin’s “I don’t care if the sun don’t shine”. Inmediatley after hearing “maybelline”, he not only loved the song, but started including it in his live act. However, the two singles that Elvis did at SUN records, after hering Berry, are as distant to Berry’s sound, as those he recorded before hearing him. There’s nothing remotely sounding like Chuck Berry in “Baby, let’s play house”, nor in “Mystery Train”, his last two singles at SUN, before he moved to RCA.
And there’s nothing remotely sounding like Berry’s sound, in the 23 sides he cut in 1956, at RCA. No matter how much Elvis loved Berry’s music (on December 4th, 1956, at the so-called impromptu Million Dollar jam session, at the SUN studio, in Memphis, he keeps insisting with “Brown Eyed handsome man”, making Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins follow him, on at least 4 separate tales, that’s how much he loved Berry’s sound).
But, even then, it is obvious that his musical palette, what he had on his hardrive, was much more ecclectic than any musician of his generation, starting the session with Agustin Lara’s “Solamente una vez”.
In reality, his was a totally different sound, from the start, influenced by so many musicians that books have been written about it.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I think Madonna was always marketed brilliantly and while I admire her staying power and her contributions to pop culture & fashion ( I wore my share of fingerless lace gloves) she’s about as relevant as Max Headroom in comparison to Elvis.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Well-spoken, Jim. In the music history reading department I recommend anything by Peter Guralnick. But must warn: the author’s second book on The King, the one that details his fall, had me wiping manly tears from my eyes.
Kellie: Kudos for the Max Headroom reference!
Gabe: So what if Brando and Presley got bloated in their later years? Still highly handsome young men and I actually dig Elvis’ operatic performances of the late 1970s — even if on half the numbers he forgot the lyrics.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Thanks Wade. I decided not to read Guralnick’s second installment, but have read excerpts of it, whenever I have the time. And the reason for it was that his first did not have me locked in my chair. I know it has been described as the best biography of Elvis, but I was not transported to the first half, then the second half of the twent
ieth century, like it was the case for the majority of those who read it. For me, there are passages in other biographies that do that, better. But that is, of course, only in my humble opinion.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
MADONNA is a living Goddess. Elvis and Marilyn belongs to the past.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Didier: If he belongs to “the past”, in the way you mean it, then why the recurrent need, across the board, and across the globe, from fans, non-fans, and specially from detractors alike, to keep using him as reference?
A person “from the past”, in the entertainment world, does not respond with more than 60 million hits to a search query, in any given search engine, and that is whether the person is dead or alive.
A person “from the past”, in the sense that you imply, does not have his home visited by 16 million paying customers, and counting at the rate of 700,000 every year, especially when the visiting starts only five years after he/she passed away. That is not a person “from the past”, not in the sense you wish it to be….
A person “from the past” does not sell 17 million albums, worldwide, making BMG a profit of 200 million euros in the process, in the last 6 years, again, twenty four to thirty years after he last visited a recording studio.
A person “from the past”, in the entertainment business, I repeat, in the entertainment business, does not have 18 statues of him spread in all the five continents, as well as in excess of 16 streets, avenues, lanes, parks, courts, named after him, in every continent of the world.
Finally, a person in the entertainment world is never “in the past”, unless another one takes his/her place, by obliterating every record, achievement, and the memory of that person’s career, and reducing it to nothing.
Since Madonna is in the recording business, she would start making Elvis a thing of the past when she sells an additonal 40 million albums, in the US alone (and that is assuming Elvis does not sell one more album from here to eternity), as well as, and thois equally important, sell some additional 500 million units, of both singles and albums, elsewhere.
She will make him a thing “of the past”, in the sense you wish it was the case, when an additional 1,000 biographies are in print, of her, and when these are made a part the Library of Congress catalog, as well as when she is the subject of 4 separate exhibits in as many Presidential Libraries.
Finally, she as an american will advance a little more in her quest for greatness, when, say, the President of a foreign country, addressing the joint session of the US Congress, mentions her as being a universal icon, as President Saekozy, of France, just did in Elvis’ case.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:22 am
To compare the two, the question has to be will Madonna be as big as Elvis is today 30 years after her death? Hard to imagine.
April 30th, 2008 at 8:57 am
wade, i was just bustin’ yr chops about young elvis and young brando. you know i got mad platonic love for ya!
April 30th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
No artist can compare with Elvis Presley. Madonna might just consider that had it not been for Elvis Presley then she would not have been a pop star.He could also sing in any musical genre he cared to try and had hit records with not just pop tracks but gospel, religious, country, R & B, calypso, rock and roll and light operatic.
Elvis was unique. He had it all, the voice, the looks, the stage presence and the charisma. He was the one who broke down social and cultural barriers in 1950’s U.S.A. enabling all who followed him an easy ride.
He is more of an iconic figure now than he was when he was alive and his image and voice are literally everywhere - from Hollywood films to soap operas, from books to CD’s, from adverts to DVD’s. The list goes on as does the legacy of THE KING. There will never be another like him. Totally sui generis.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
elvis is better. madonna stole everything:
http://aishamusic.com/lawsuit_many_artists_madonna_stole_from.htm
April 30th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I agree Elvis is a much more important figure, and have never agreed with how Madonna’s career has been handled, ethics-wise, but I would not adhere that she stole everything, either.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Elvis Presley is the best and the most important. God bless Elvis Presley. ciccione and pariah are trash with trash music. For to get a poor fool money both live on Elvis Presley. For this reason Elvis Presley is the most important. One planet,one Elvis heart can not be wrong
May 1st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Elvis #1 In Belgian ‘Fab 50′ List
The Belgian station ‘Radio 1’ broadcasted on may 1st the ‘Fab 50’, a list of the 50 best voices from the last 50 years. The listeners could send in their favorites and Elvis Presley made it to the #1 spot. The top 50 ended with a compilation of the following hits: Heartbreak Hotel / In The Ghetto / Suspicious Minds / Jailhouse Rock / Blue Suede Shoes / Baby Let’s Play House / Hound Dog.
The complete list:
01 - Elvis Presley
02 - Freddie Mercury
03 - Tom Waits
04 - Jacques Brel
05 - Amy Whinehouse
06 - Aretha Franklin
07 - Arno
08 - Bruce Spingsteen
09 - Johny Cash
10 - Leonard Cohen
11 - Bob Dylan
12 - Edith Piaf
13 - Jeff Buckley
14 - Kate Bush
15 - Janis Joplin
16 - Bono (U2)
17 - Anouk
18 - Roy Orbison
19 - David Bowie
20 - Billie Holiday
21 - Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons)
22 - Annie Lennox (Eurythmics)
23 - Eva De Roovere
24 - Barry White
25 - Nick Cave
26 - Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
27 - Bjork
28 - Tina Turner
29 - Dani Klein (Vaya con Dios)
30 - Sinead O’Connor
31 - Norah Jones
32 - Nina Simone
33 - Ella Fitzgerald
34 - Van Morrison
35 - Frank Sinatra
36 - Jim Morrison (The Doors)
37 - Louis Neefs
38 - Joni Mitchell
39 - Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)
40 - Herman van Veen
41 - Neil Young
42 - Emmylou Harris
43 - Barbra Streisand
44 - Luke Walter Jr. (Blue Blot)
45 - Sarah Bettens (K’s Choice)
46 - Art Garfunkel
47 - Ian Gillan (Deep Purple)
48 - Elvis Costello
49 - Patti Smith
50 - Chris Martin (Coldplay)