[Current & Culture] Elvis Is Not the King of Rock and Roll

We are curious about the all-time best in various fields. Who is the greatest baseball player of all time? The greatest soccer player? The greatest movie actor? The greatest scientist? There are some fields where the answer is largely undisputed. For example, the greatest basketball player of all time would likely be Michael Jordan, and among writers, it’s hard to think of anyone who surpasses Shakespeare. So then, who is the greatest singer of all time? This question came to mind while watching the movie "Elvis."

Discussions like this always require adjustment for the era. This is because the value of money and social foundations differ depending on the time period. An appropriate measure to evaluate the commercial success of pop singers would be the Billboard charts. The history of the magazine Billboard dates back as far as 1894, the same year as the Gabo Reform. It boasts a long tradition, having published pop music charts in a form similar to today’s for nearly 100 years. Fortunately, to find out who the greatest singer of all time is, there’s no need to sift through all those years of charts. Billboard has already ranked them precisely. This is called the Billboard All-Time Artists list. It is a ranking based on a balanced evaluation of single (song) and album sales, radio airplay, and more recently, streaming counts. Keep in mind that this is a quantitative evaluation based solely on commercial success in the U.S. market, excluding musicality or experimental aspects.

Madonna ranks 5th, Mariah Carey 4th, Elton John 3rd, The Rolling Stones 2nd, and The Beatles 1st. How does that compare to your personal rankings? For reference, Michael Jackson is 7th, and among currently active artists, Taylor Swift and Drake are in the top ranks. For the reasons mentioned above, you have to scroll quite far down to find names like Queen or Kanye West, and BTS is not even in the top 100. Pink ranks higher than Pink Floyd.

The name of Elvis Presley, known as the King of Rock and Roll, is placed 13th. Honestly, if I were to rank based on my personal preference, Elvis might barely make it into the top 100. I haven’t really listened to his music out of liking but rather studied it for professional reasons. I thought maybe it was because I was young, but even now that I’m older, I don’t find it very appealing. Is it because he’s an old singer? On the other hand, I love The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, who belong to generations well before me, to the extent that I own all their albums and even memorize the track order. So it’s not a matter of era but of taste. Nevertheless, I evaluate Elvis like this: he is not merely the 'King of Rock and Roll' but the 'Prometheus of Pop Music.'

Throughout the long history of slavery and ongoing racial discrimination, Black people have condensed tremendous musical energy. They expressed a variety of emotions?sorrow, anger, joy?sometimes through exciting rhythms, sometimes through soulful melodies. Despite being rejected because they were considered inferior, Elvis Presley was the singer who transformed Black music into songs everyone could enjoy and gifted them to us. The roots of rock music, the concept of idols, resistance music including punk and hip-hop?if slightly exaggerated, the history of popular music begins with Elvis.

The movie "Elvis" disappeared from theaters with rather poor box office results. For those who haven’t seen it, I recommend watching it when it appears on OTT services later. It is glamorous, lively, and poignant.

Lee Jae-ik, Novelist

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.