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I may be drunk but goddammit Michael Jackson was a musical genius.


Travis

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Sitting at my island drinking a  shit ton and we’re listening to MJ and Prince 

 

these MF’ers are legit musical geniuses and I would kill to have their talent...

enough said...

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Right, anytime I listen to them I think of their genious.

And they had excellent musicians bringing their music to life.

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                                     Not a huge Jackson fan but no denying he certainly had tons of talent. Prince I saw him many years ago at what was then "THE DEPOT" in Minneapolis and he was "Special"  then.................. you knew he was going to be huge,he had it all. Both were geniuses whether you liked their music or not.

 

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MJ was part of my MTV DNA growing up, but funny enough I didn't want anything to do with Prince. His primadonna antics were a huge turn off at the time. Now later in life I view them in completely ways. MJ's personal life has tainted and overshadowed his catalogue, while Prince has seeped into the blues, rock and roots music and the music stands on its own. 

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Jackson was surrounded by talented writers, producers and choreographers. There is no way for us to know what percentage was his own ideas versus purchased product.   In the end, the only two things that mattered were, he was a fantastic performer, and a pedophile.  

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Prince was a brilliant and remarkably talented musician who worked his ass off and never sat still.

According to Prince's first sound studio person, his original vault was already jam packed with recordings when she left in 1987.  This newer, larger vault at Paisley Park reportedly holds at least 50 fully produced, yet unreleased, full length music videos and enough original music to make and release another 100 full albums.

I'll call this one right here, right now:  With his existing hit ratio, once all these songs/videos are released, he will be the Elvis of our generation, only bigger - with way more hits.

Just my opinion.

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"Batter UP!"

 

HamerbooksigningRocketeria9713PrinceBatterupKiz.jpg

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I think MJ was a great performer of music and dance. But musical genius? I don't think his best work was written or produced by himself. Prince, on the other hand, wrote, played instruments, produced, as well as performed. He wasn't the performer that MJ was, but he was far more talented by way of actually creating music, or so it seems. MJ did have some of the Best 80s music videos, what with having the budget and clout to make videos which were more like mini-films. I remember when Thriller debuted. We all sat around with popcorn just to watch the debut of that music video as if we were watching a new Steven Spielberg movie. 

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Just to add a true anecdote about the fleeting nature of fame (and a reminder as to how old the rest of us are):

My sister is a university professor. When Prince died, she asked her students what they thought about it. Without exception, not a single student in her class knew who Prince was... Just let that one sink in.  

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4 hours ago, FGJ said:

I think MJ was a great performer of music and dance. But musical genius? I don't think his best work was written or produced by himself. Prince, on the other hand, wrote, played instruments, produced, as well as performed. He wasn't the performer that MJ was, but he was far more talented by way of actually creating music, or so it seems. MJ did have some of the Best 80s music videos, what with having the budget and clout to make videos which were more like mini-films. I remember when Thriller debuted. We all sat around with popcorn just to watch the debut of that music video as if we were watching a new Steven Spielberg movie. 

You lost me at "He wasn't the performer that MJ was...."

He was one of the best, most versatile performers any of us will ever witness. I'll put Prince's virtuosity and James Brown-style dance moves against Jackson's stupid fucking crotch grab/Moon walk combo any day.  

And you can credit John Landis and Michael Peters with however great you think the Thriller video was.  

There simply is no comparing the two aa performers.  

if you want to talk #1 records, that's a different story.  

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4 hours ago, FGJ said:

Just to add a true anecdote about the fleeting nature of fame (and a reminder as to how old the rest of us are):

My sister is a university professor. When Prince died, she asked her students what they thought about it. Without exception, not a single student in her class knew who Prince was... Just let that one sink in.  

                                            Yeah I think that applies to many [Most every one really] of the performers from my generation.............. late 50s and 60s. I had a friend in a band here tell me this would be  his last year playing live music  as nobody in the bars and or clubs  knew any of the songs that they performed. Forgotten songs by forgotten artists from long ago to which they had no connection.

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8 hours ago, ARM OF HAMER said:

                                            Yeah I think that applies to many [Most every one really] of the performers from my generation.............. late 50s and 60s. I had a friend in a band here tell me this would be  his last year playing live music  as nobody in the bars and or clubs  knew any of the songs that they performed. Forgotten songs by forgotten artists from long ago to which they had no connection.

What material was your friend trotting out? "Let's Dance" by Chris Montez? He's lucky he made it out of any of the venues he played alive. Mercifully Covid-19 ended his gigging days before he decided to, which he should have done two decades ago, if not three.

Similarly astonishing is this nearly 300-reply thread on the Gear Page expressing confusion as to why more people don't talk about the fucking Beano album anymore:

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/dont-people-know-the-beano-album-anymore.2142366/

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13 hours ago, FGJ said:

My sister is a university professor. When Prince died, she asked her students what they thought about it. Without exception, not a single student in her class knew who Prince was... Just let that one sink in.

I consider myself a casual Prince fan but other than the expected bump in popularity in 1999, I wasn't aware of anything he was doing the last twenty years of life.  It seems reasonable that anyone who was five in 1999 would not be aware.

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Both MJ and Prince were great at what they did, and both had pretty sad ends to their career's lives. 

However, Prince's Superbowl half-time show was AWESOME.  Also his stuff during the Concert for George Harrison was great.  The beginning of his career was simply incredible. The problem was maintaining that as he needed to be an "artiste" and went off the rails.  I do need to pick up his early albums one of these days.

MJ had an incredible talent and voice. But then came fame, stardom, and all that, and it ruined him. He ended up becoming a caricature of himself, which was just sad.

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10 hours ago, cynic said:

  It seems reasonable that anyone who was five in 1999 would not be aware.

I don't know about that. I was five in 1970, and I still knew who Elvis, Bing Crosby, and any number of performers who came before me were... Then again, media outlets were limited in 1970 compared to today which, with a bazillion channels, cable, streaming, and YouTube, I suppose it's easy to miss something from the past. 

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20 hours ago, kizanski said:

You lost me at "He wasn't the performer that MJ was...."

He was one of the best, most versatile performers any of us will ever witness. I'll put Prince's virtuosity and James Brown-style dance moves against Jackson's stupid fucking crotch grab/Moon walk combo any day.  

And you can credit John Landis and Michael Peters with however great you think the Thriller video was.  

There simply is no comparing the two aa performers.  

if you want to talk #1 records, that's a different story.  

I clearly wasn't suggesting MJ went into his garage with his home camera and created his own music videos. I simply said he had some of the best videos (or the most popular, at the very least), which doesn't require that he somehow direct or produce them himself. Nor were his performances in those videos  limited to moonwalking or crotch-grabbing.

As far as stage performing goes, while Prince is clearly a very good musician and singer, there wasn't much to his dancing beyond his James Brown clone moves. I mean, Zeppelin certainly put on a great live show as far as playing music, but does anyone seriously think they put on a performance like AC/DC? I mean, there's performing music (which is important obviously), and then there's performing a show. And while Prince didn't just stand around, his shows didn't approximate the scope of MJ's concerts (and I know not everyone cares to see big productions, which is fair enough. To each his own). 

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4 hours ago, FGJ said:

I clearly wasn't suggesting MJ went into his garage with his home camera and created his own music videos. I simply said he had some of the best videos (or the most popular, at the very least), which doesn't require that he somehow direct or produce them himself. Nor were his performances in those videos  limited to moonwalking or crotch-grabbing.

As far as stage performing goes, while Prince is clearly a very good musician and singer, there wasn't much to his dancing beyond his James Brown clone moves. I mean, Zeppelin certainly put on a great live show as far as playing music, but does anyone seriously think they put on a performance like AC/DC? I mean, there's performing music (which is important obviously), and then there's performing a show. And while Prince didn't just stand around, his shows didn't approximate the scope of MJ's concerts (and I know not everyone cares to see big productions, which is fair enough. To each his own). 

Not only are you over-stating Jackson's stage moves (honestly it WAS mostly moon-walking and crotch-grabbing) you're down-playing Prince's. Prince did a lot more than "clone James Brown," but even if he did, he also did it in high heel shoes (which is how he ruined his hip). Jumping off PA risers... splits... and the occasional floor humping...
Jackson couldn't walk from Point A to Point B without his hair igniting.

Let's not rewrite history here.  Jackson was immensely popular, but this is not the definition of a "musical genius."  He was far from it.
His abilities didn't even approach that of Prince's, be it vocally (Prince could range from baritone to falsetto - often in the same song), musically (could MJ even play a single instrument? vs. Prince's "One Man Virtuoso Band"?).

Look at them objectively and they don't compare. Not even close. Prince was a one man producer, performer, song writer, visionary whose genius gave birth to a dozen other groups and an entire sub genre in music (the whole Minneapolis sound), while Jackson was still trying to perform 30 year old hits from the Jackson 5.
Take away Quincy Jones, Michael Peters and John Landis and you have a 50 year old has-been trying to sing falsetto. And how many of those hits did MJ write?

As a side debate, we can pit personal life vs. personal life.
While Prince was banging Kim Bassinger, Vanity, Apollonia Kotero, Sheena Easton, etc, Jackson was having "sleepovers" with Emmanuel Lewis, Cory Feldman and Macaulay Culkin.
Totally apropos of nothing, but I would be remiss if I didn't state the obvious.

In the end they both ended up in the same place, though (although I'm quite sure Jackson is in Hell), so they definitely shared the soul-crushing existence that was born of the solitude they created - mostly because both of their fathers were genuine shits. But that's a discussion for another time.

 

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Two days of debate over MJ vs. Prince?  Really?  IMO, the original proposal of the thread, that MJ was a musical genius is open to debate.

The subsequent comparison and proposal that Prince was a superior musical talent / performer is (again, IMO) ridiculous to argue.  Seriously consider even the earliest Prince output - played every instrument; brought in to program Linn drums on basically every album of the era, changed his sound on each album as he grew bored and moved on.

And to question his performance chops?  Surely you jest!  Recycled James Brown moves?  Maybe, but JB wasn't wearing a guitar (or bass), and, as mentioned, eight-inch heels.

The Mozart of our day (again, IMO).

I grew up on MJ music and enjoyed most all of it, but there is really no comparison between the two, be it composition or performance.

And remember, the true competition was not MJ vs. Prince, it was Prince vs. Rick James.  😄

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