Whose runaway popularity don't you get?

For me, Billy Joel, hands down.  And Bruce, but I understand his popularity, just not for me.

Thoughts?

Oh, and as long as I'm here, Sandra Bullock.

Oh, and Jimmy Kimmel.  And the cast of Big Bang Theory. 


jeffl said:
 I understand his popularity, just not for me.

 This statement confuses me. You list five wildly popular people or groups of people but you select one as being the only one whose popularity makes sense to you.

There are over 300 million people in this country man. There are lots of different tastes and interests. You can make a huge list of things that have millions of devoted followers that don't register at all with you. Dolly Parton. NASCAR. Ice hockey. Why is it hard to understand that there might be millions of people who have a very different perspective and tastes from you?


How about the flip side to the question -- who/what is obscure but should be (or have been) hugely popular?

I'll start with the 1997 indie flick "Love and Death on Long Island". 


annielou said:
The Beatles

 NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA, I can’t hear you!


I am also perplexed by the popularity of Billy Joel but not as much as by that of Mariah Carey.  

And the State of Florida.  Seriously, if I wanted to go to Hell, I would just commit a lot of sins.


mrincredible said:


jeffl said:
 I understand his popularity, just not for me.
 This statement confuses me. You list five wildly popular people or groups of people but you select one as being the only one whose popularity makes sense to you.
There are over 300 million people in this country man. There are lots of different tastes and interests. You can make a huge list of things that have millions of devoted followers that don't register at all with you. Dolly Parton. NASCAR. Ice hockey. Why is it hard to understand that there might be millions of people who have a very different perspective and tastes from you?

 I get some popularity even though I don’t like it.  Others, not so much.  I get Bruce’s appeal.  


annielou said:
The Beatles

 "But they poop ice cream..." It's time to move on from The Beatles. Pop music did not begin and end with them. 


Soul_29 said:


annielou said:
The Beatles
 "But they poop ice cream..." It's time to move on from The Beatles. Pop music did not begin and end with them. 

 Wow!   Really Soul29?   Or are you just kiddin’?  And I thought I knew you.  I’ll admit that they aren’t Richie Havens level, hit they were pretty good.  


Paul McCartney wrote stunningly beautiful melodies. Lennon was lucky to have him in order to spew his faux poetry. Aside from that, they did not sing very well and were only mediocre musicians. I agree that there were equally, and more, incredible artists before and after their very brief reign. The longevity of their appeal to my generation is puzzling.


Soul_29 said:


 "But they poop ice cream..." It's time to move on from The Beatles. Pop music did not begin and end with them. 

Let me tell you how it will be

There’s one for you, Hey Jude for me

’Cause that’s a strawman
Yeah-eah
That’s a strawman


Don’t hate on them just because they sold out Shea Stadium when no one else was.


They sold out Shea because thousands of teenaged girls were in love. It sure wasn’t their musicianship.


Kanye West, his music sucks.  


Billy Joel post-The Bridge, overrated





annielou said:
They sold out Shea because thousands of teenaged girls were in love. It sure wasn’t their musicianship.

 Smh.


Beatles post-Let it Be, overrated


Boyhood

And McCartney was lucky to have Lennon. (as you can easily tell when looking at McCartney's post-Lennon work.)

Disparaging the Beatles is like disparaging Mozart - says more about you than them.

But Boyhood sucked.


Klinker said:
I am also perplexed by the popularity of Billy Joel but not as much as by that of Mariah Carey.  
And the State of Florida.  Seriously, if I wanted to go to Hell, I would just commit a lot of sins.

 Florida --- last time I was there, was to visit my uncle who was on his way out from cancer. Anyways, he bought a house in a golf course development -- he got a house, 1/8 acre of land and rights to play golf. He liked golf.


When we got there, the roads in the development were like Millburn Avenue, between the high school and Spring Street.... or Springfield Avenue when you get off of 78.


So we get in the car so's he can show us the area. We get to the golf course but there were only three holes that were in operation. The remaining 15 were allowed to deteriorate because there was no money for maintenance. 


Then the signs...... "Beware of the rattlesnakes." "Beware of alligators."


And if that ain't enuf for ya, google, "Florida Man."


Now, I ain't sayin' we ain't got some losers in N.J., but Florida Man is in a class by himself, accompanied sometimes by Florida Woman but mostly its Florida Man.





Sorry Drummer B.: Mozart and the Beatles are not equivalent. I really have to question the reason why so many cling to some kind of GOAT status for a  short lived group of not very good musicians, absent their very fine songwriting abilities. 


Now if you want to compare Mozart to Prince, we can have s conversation.


If you look at the effect of both Mozart and the Beatles on music, they are in fact quite similar.

You don't have to like them (I can't stand listening to most Mozart these days. ) but you can't deny the obvious.



Boyhood AND Country Music?  You better stay the hell out of Austin.


I do love Mozart. He was a unique, stand alone figure among his peers. He was a tireless innovator who made full use of his prodigious gifts from a very early age. Sounds more like Prince than the Beatles. But that direct comparison is not mine. It is also that of other musicians and writers. 

I totally agree on the country music thing though. Sounds like whining set to music.


Chris Stapleton is Country.  If you think he sucks you mustn’t have ever heard him.


"I do not like so many things, and so many of them are things that a lot of people like, and Radiohead would definitely be on that list. Ella Fitzgerald is a great singer. Thom Yorke is not a great singer. This is like the old Keith Richards argument." (at :47) - Ian Barford in Linda Vista, by Tracy Letts


True. I think it’s also important to see artists live. It tells the whole story


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