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Comment Archives: stories: Movies & TV: Digital Attraction

Re: “Privilege: The link between Elvis and Britney”

Lance, sorry to spoil your fun, but to place Paul Anka and Elvis in the same sentence as Menudo, and then add the matter of Britney and Hanna Montana, is way too much.

To begin with, Elvis Presley was America's, and then the world's first really young superstar in the field of music, so he's definitively in a class of his own. With 200 shows in 1954, 256 in 1955 (when no one knew who he was, outside of the South...), with close to 190 performances in 1956 and, take this, with 12 television appearances in that same year whose cumulative viewership was 230 million, as well as drawing in excess of 500,000 teenagers to arenas and stadiums, and all of this before he ever appeared in his first movie, there was nothing "manufactured' about his initial huge success.

He'd changed the music world, upside down, before he appeared in 1,230 theatres in his film debut, "Love me tender", in November of 1956, having fused, I repeat, having fused, the two most important music idioms then existent in America, namely C&W and R&B, exacttly 30 months earlier, I repeat, 30 months earlier at the SUN studious in Memphis, on July 5, 1954, to be precise. In other words, had Presley died in, say, November of 1956, and not in August of 1977, we'd still be talking about him.

Now, neither Menudo, nor Britney, let alone Hanna Montana, were, are, or will ever be global superstars. And there's a reason for it. In this connexion, I challenge you to name one single global superstar, in the history of the music business, who was "manufactured.' It is simply not possible, if you're global, like Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elton John, Queen, Michael Jackson, and a few others were, to be manufactured. The words "global" and "manufactured", at least in the music world, are not complementary. This is not the world of Coca Cola. Tastes, in music, are much more varied, and it would clearly be impossible to "manufacture" such a global entertainer. Oh, yes, people and managers, have tried, but, in fact, global superstardom happens, but only when huge talent is a common variable.

Which brings me to Paul Anka. A genius who could write wonderfully catchy, and beautiful songs before he turned 16, there was nothing "manufactured" about his success, coming in the heels of a one-of-a-kind voice, superb writing skills as a songwriter, and a pretty decent stage act.

Finally, there's no missing link between Elvis and any of the global superstars that followed him, either. There are all linked, in many ways. Presley, like those few that came before, or just like the many that came after him, was not "manufactured'. Otherwise, he, and the others, would have not been able, to go global, for the reasons I cited.

And that is a fact.

Posted by Guillermo Perez Arguello on 07/30/2008 at 6:27 PM

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