Since we’re just being silly now:
- The Tubes
- The SubDudes
- Dixie Dregs
Foo fighters!!!
The Tubes and the SubDudes were great!
Nobody has talked metal yet. I’d nominate Metallica, though they built on things that came before. But they are old too!
I agree with JHS Jeff Tweedy/Wilco probably will be remembered as part of the alt-country/alt rock movement. I know who I listen to, but I’m not convinced they are legendary. Drive-By Truckers. The Lumineers. Nah.
with over 3,000 copyrighted songs, many of them already classics:
Dolly Parton
What kind of legend are we talking about here?
Unless I missed it, nobody has mentioned Cher. (She’s obviously over 50.) I think Taylor Swift has the potential to be a Cher-like performer. She might even pivot back to country music as she gets older. Country performers can have really long careers.
I think a lot of the people mentioned are big stars, but are unlikely to be long-term legends. I think this is particularly true of bands, which (in my opinion) need to have a number of iconic hit songs in order to become legends. I would say, for example, that U2 will be legends, but that Red Hot Chili Peppers won’t be. And probably not Coldplay, either. A lot of bands, even great ones, are “just a band.” (See Dan LeSac vs. Scroobius Pip’s video for “Thou Shalt Always Kill” for the reference.)
I think there are some low-key “legends” who will be around for a long time and who will probably always be cool. Examples of this are Elvis Costello, Lyle Lovett, Laurie Anderson, Beck, and Sufjan Stevens. I think I’d put David Byrne in this category as well.
Celine Dion and Mariah are to me perfect examples of artists that have been wildly successful but will not be considered legends. I think they are more niche artists. Neither ever acquired the global following that Whitney did.
Legendary is a funny thing, because there are multiple levels of it. There are the artists who are legendary among other artists, whom very few people if you asked would know it, people who weren’t household names but are legends among musicians. Then there are the people critics love, which often are groups that sold maybe 10 albums.
There are those who are legendary because of the infamy of the group, exploding and leaving a bit of green on their drumstick, for example, in the middle of a show.
There are popular groups who are not legendary, who have huge fan bases, but whom especially the rock and roll hall of fame voters snub, groups like Chicago (which just got in), the Moody Blues, the progressive rock bands and so forth, they are legends among their fans, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into the style setters (there was a wonderful book written more than a few years ago called “Confessions of a rock snob” that kind of talked to this).
Legends also come about when someone is a game changer. Iggy Pop and the Stooges were not that commercially successful, yet critics and other musicians regard them as probably one of the biggest influences on changing music, both punk and grunge took a lot for them (funny story, I heard a piece on NPR the other day, about the guy who was the guitarist for the Stooges who left and became a successful tech guy in silicon valley. When his kids were growing up, one time he heard them listening to Nirvana, and he said “that sounds great, he did that almost as good as I did” and the kid didn’t believe him, didn’t really know about that lol). The british invasion bands like the Rolling Stones brought blues influenced music into the mainstream, the Beatles brought something else, their initial hits were still not all that much different than 1950’s rock, but they evolved musically, and a lot of their stuff was pretty complex.
The other legends know one knows their names are the really great songwriters. Bon Jovi might be a hair band, but Jon Bon Jovi’s craft as a songwriter is some of the best out there. One of the greatest I can think of is the team of Holland/Holland and Dozier, who were the geniuses behind many of the Motown hits that are now legendary.
In terms who will pass the test of time, I think that is going to boil down to talent and listenability, something go grab future generations. The Beatles will last, because their music for the most part is solid and has things that can intrigue people, they had great songwriting and fantastic production with George Martin. The Rolling Stones might be a legend for a lot of things, but they also put out incredible music and they were talented in their own right, same with Bruce and others people have mentioned. On the other hand, remember all those 80’s synthesizer bands like Soft Cell and the like that were supposed to ‘take over music’? I doubt anyone under my age has heard of them.
One of the issues I think is that so much of music since the 1980’s has become a giant music video, where the concerts (that once again appear to becoming the biggest aspect of music), are these multimedia circuses with dancers and such. I think that someone like Madonna is more about the genius of doing that, it is more marketing genius than musical, I don’t think Madonnas music was particularly earthshattering or original, it was dance music, designed to be that, which is great, but I don’t think it will pass the test of time and musically she herself was not particularly talented, her recordings are definitely the work of studio producers.If the image of the music is more than the substance, I doubt it will have staying power.
Adele is an interesting one, I think she will have staying power, because her music, which may not have reached maturity, is backed by a lot of talent, she has an incredible voice and is not the product of post production and auto tune, I have heard her raw recordings, and that is genuine talent. What makes me thing she will last is that there are a lot of people my age and even older that love her, and that says something, because she also is attracting 20 somethings and 30’s somethings and so forth. You see her concerts and they are simple setups, simply her and the musicians, and it is still an electric concert. One thing that history has shown with music is that gimmicks and other things don’t last, that in the end the music will tell. In Classical music critics used to rip Stowkowski as a conductor, saying he was a showman and that he was all flash, yet in that world he is legendary (and not just because they made fun of him on Bugs Bunny), his recordings with the philadelphia orchestra in classical are still highly sought, whereas conductors who were truly showmen faded into obscurity. At the time Beethoven was composing, there was a violinist and composer by the name of Clement (who premiered Beethoven’s violin concerto), who was popular with critics and also was known for things like playing the violin upside down on one string, made him an audience pleaser (reputedly when premiering the Beethoven concerto in the middle of it he did some of his trick playing, because the orchestra parts were still not done for the remaining movements). He was on the bill when Beethoven’s Eroica symphony premiered, and critics loved him a lot more…yet even non music people know of Beethoven. Wagner’s operas are over the top and were audience favorites because of that theatricality, yet it withstood the test of time because the music was also fantastic (if the composer was not as a person).
For someone who asked about the Grateful Dead, they were a different type of legend. They didn’t like to record and only did so because they had to, given their record deals, and their music was meant to be heard live, and that is where they were legends (I think they had only one number 1 hit, “Touch of Gray”, in the 80’s, and the legend is they deliberately for the first and only time decided to write a hit record, to see if they could), they also were all fantastic musicians, they really weren’t meant for top 100 for certain.
It is hard to tell who is going to last in the current generation of music, because in any generation only time can tell that, the novelty and the trivia fall to the wayside and what is left are the legends, and that number is relatively small, for every Beatles there probably were 10,000 groups with record deals that died in obscurity (or Rolling Stones, Zeppelin, etc, etc).Hard for me to comment on Today’s music, but I suspect some will last past the lives of their fans. I think Adele will be out there, Gaga might because she has a lot of musical talent, I think that people like Jay Z and Kanye West will be remembered (I am not that into rap/hip hop, judging that by how other people see them). As others have pointed out, it is also a lot harder to be a legend today, because it is so more diverse and narrow a music world then it once was, others are correct that back in the day the Record companies helped create legends, if you watch the series “Vinyl”, for all its fictions, there is a lot of truth to the way record labels operated, and in such a broad pool as today it is a lot harder to become that kind of legend…and I think because of that, the hype that often helped create legends not being there as much, that it may be a smaller group that passes down through time, and it is going to be based on the talent of the musicians/singers and the music itself, because listening to Taylor Swift today with all the hype around her, with all the mentions in the papers, people saying she is a genius and so forth, is very different 20 years from now listening to her music when she may be on oldiest tours (and I am not saying she won’t be a legend, I am using her as a hypothetical).
Since this is a college site, it seems proper to mention that one of the Stanford band’s classic songs is The Tubes ‘White Punks On Dope’.
Hunt - I mentioned Cher along with Bette Midler upthread.
I think there’s a cute little poser subset of “look how obscure of a band I can mention and how cool it makes me” - sort of CC hipster. For the most part, my tastes are pretty mainstream and informed by top 40 pop/rock/alternative, with occasional forays into other genres but please, easy on the rap and hip hop. I’m ok with that and feel no need to apologize.
Re: 111
My initial post on this thread (mentioning Bruno Mars) was made under the assumption that this was going to be about today’s stars… not yesterday’s favorites.
That’s why I mentioned all those current stars in the post. I think personally that most of the stuff on the radio today lacks a good melody (like the song by Sheeran that won the Grammy. I just don’t hear a hook or anything particularly melodic about that song. “17” or whatever it’s called.) and the chord progressions are pretty blah. I’m a sucker for a catchy melody. And when a catchy melody and strong lyrics are both there, those are the songs I come back to, or skip ahead to.
To me, some of Mars’s music stands out as catchy. I liked the ET song by Katy Perry and Bad Romance by Gaga. Umbrella by Rihanna will be on infomercial CDs for decades to come also. Maroon 5 has some decent music for the genre.
But I love the music and the stars of my youth – 80s mostly, but some 90s stuff too. There are a lot of legends from time past. How many listed already? We must collectively be up in the triple-digits by now. Maybe we should put in minimum requirements, like 25,000,000 records sold, 15 top-40 songs (alternative and metal groups exempted of course), or substitute awards for sales and airplay if applicable.
But… nah. There are icons who had just a handful of hits. Maybe we’d use the numbers to confer the achievements upon a legend: the 100 Million Record Club, the Thirty Hits Club, etc.
Fee Waybill is a living legend.
Oh yeah. And I forgot to mention my daughter.
Fee Waybill? Huh? Yes, we are all sooooo impressed by your obscure picks.
The problem with the sales requirements is that it puts Justin Bieber and Ozzy Osbourne and other complete crud up with timeless musical geniuses.
Do legends have to have specific identifiable, iconic songs that are timeless? Or conversely, evoke a particular moment in time with complete clarity? Is being covered by someone else indication of “worthiness”?
We could define legend as someone who could be the over-the-hill halftime show at the Super Bowl in 20 years.
Baek Yerin from South Korea
I think the point is that a lot of these sixty and seventy something rockers AREN’T over the hill if they can still pack bigger stadiums than some of today’s acts.
^^^ This made me chuckle.
To add a dimension to this thread (I can “add a dimension”, since I’m the OP…haha) - ask your young adults - your kids their answer - what musical artists of today are likely to be legends? That is what started this discussion for me - my 27 year old daughter being upset by Prince and having a moment where she realized - “who will be my generation’s Prince/MJ/Bowie”???