Who is the greatest artist musical talent of all time

zoe 3619 wrote: »

David bowie spanned many years with different styles of music.

Mostly because of his very canny choice of producers who stamped their style on top of his.

zoe 3619 wrote: »

On reflection,I'll go with this.
Brilliant singers/songwriters.They were huge for a reason,and absolutely ground breaking.

Aye. While genius is an all too often used term, they most certainly were. Even George started to knock out the quality stuff towards the end. Regardless of musical tastes, I think it's hard to fathom for most of us these days just how incredible a mark they left and how quickly too. If we put it in today's context of 2019, they would have made their first album back in 2013, recorded in a day, their last would be this summer where they took months to record and then they were gone.

Through that short period of time they released twelve albums and twenty plus singles(many of which weren't on the albums, contractual stuff and which was normal for the time so they had to come up with singles on top), while in between studio time they played endless gigs all over the world and to huge audiences never seen before, until it was just too much. Oh and made a few films too and music videos and wrote stuff for others and starred in films as "proper" actors and rattled off a couple of books and other side projects. Imagine your fave artist of today or of the last couple of decades. Imagine them having a career of nine years, releasing albums nearly twice a year and every one of them was different and changing and improving. These days they'd be a marketing nightmare.

That would be impressive enough a career, but on top of that they changed music completely, and more, they inspired others, some real giants themselves, to do so. When they hit their stride in the studio, they made songs and sounds you simply wouldn't have heard before at the time. Even in album design it was all new. They came out with the first gatefold, the first to feature lyrics on the back cover, the first to list studio technicians, etc etc. And while everyone and his dog was trying to copy Sgt Pepper, they come out next with a completely blank white cover. For the lulz like. Oh and contrary to some popular belief they were also bloody good musicians(and singers). McCartney is one of the finest bass players of his generation and extremely innovative with it, Lennon was one helluva rhythm guitarist and Harrison, while not flashy knew how to fill a middle eight(and guys like Hendrix, Clapton(even though Eric rode his wife, and they still stayed pals ). And no Ringo was not crap. Not by any means and a load of bloody well regarded drummers from Bonham, Copeland, to Grohl gave him the nod. And he did it with just four drums.

It's again easy to forget these days that they were right on the cutting edge, "avant garde", even really bloody weird, but still stayed hugely popular. Vanishingly few can do that in any medium and even fewer in their lifetime. Recently their record company released a new mix of Here Comes the Sun and it seems like a simple melody and song, but it isn't and it's also chock full of synthesizers, which most people thinking of the song would rarely remember.

I come and go as far as listening to them. I can go for years TBH, but when I do go back it regularly staggers me at the raw unencumbered talent involved.

anewme wrote: »

George Michael is very underrated in terms of how good he was as a singer and also as a songwriter. The sad thing for George is that he never realised just how talented he was.

+1000. Fantastic voice and bloody good songwriter too and one who evolved. Few do.