How so? Enormous popularity, but his influence and musical impact aren't top twenty worthy.

I think both can be part of the top 10 because they are giants in some criteria when compared with other elite artists.

I think he's top 20 in popularity and Cultural Impact. Maybe top 25 in musical impact.

Yeah, Elton's influence and musical impact are alarmingly low for someone that popular. Usually the elite level artist has roughly similar placements in three of the four areas. Like with aforementioned Beach Boys and Stevie Wonder, everything is pretty much on par with everything else. But while Elton easily matches their popularity his influence and musical impact, though decent, is so far behind theirs that it sticks out. You rarely see that big a disparity, so even with his popularity he can't make up for it to reach their level, since they not only do nearly as well in his strongest area, they kill him in the others.

I'll give you the answer you'll hate, because it's not a direct answer at all. I don't know. That's what the criteria is for. I can say in broad terms they have no weak area which is generally a sign of the immortal type artists who make up the upper echelon of rankings, but how many others are in that category, how much greater or lesser their achievements are in relation to others in each area, I have no idea. To do it right, not just Michael and Aretha should be studied intently, but another couple hundred artists need to be scrutinized in the same way, and until then you just don't know, it's only an educated guess, which often times is the worst kind, because it goes on what you think SHOULD happen without doing the requisite work for it. Once those preconceptions become accepted then it becomes really hard to break them, even with ample evidence to the contrary appearing throughout the criteria, which is why you can't start making guesses about placements, educated or not.

That's why when I said the list should be scrapped and started over, it wasn't a knock at all against Brian, who does a great job, or anyone else, but my problem is when you start with a list already in place, the analysis centers around the rough groupings of artists already ranked and trying to simply move them up or down a few spots based on that original placement, and that's just the wrong way to do it, because now we're saying something like "we're looking at 7-9 and here are the candidates" when in reality EVERY artist should be looked at equally, there should be no preconceptions about who is being considered for what area of the rankings. The 1-6 might be wrong but if they've already been established we kind of move on and then start looking at others and it won't work that way, no matter who's doing it. The best lists, I think, have a totally blank canvas and you just start with each of the criteria individually and try and figure out who does best in each, then move to the next criteria and the next, and the big picture starts to become clearer gradually. That's when candidates rise and fall in ways you never expected because you're not beholden to some preconceived notion of "who's great" and who seems to belong where and then trying to squeeze them in somehow, even if the criteria doesn't back it up.

I know doing it so methodically is not as much fun as arguing over things and trying to rank artists as you go along and come to some sort of conclusion before the work has been done, but if you want to actually get it right then doing it one criteria at a time then slowly pulling it all together only after all of the time and work has been put in is the only logical and defensible way to do it.

That's why I hate answering the questions like this - Do MJ and Aretha belong in the Top Ten? My answer would be perception based, the very thing I'm railing against, even though I've done a lot of work on the criteria for all artists for the decades lists and know it pretty well. But the only way to know for sure is to do a thorough job on every artist's entire career in the manner I described. It's long, tedious work and it becomes so much harder when people start arguing for their favorites, which clearly is the very thing that winds up killing so many lists of this type - taste based subjectivity. But nobody ever said doing it objectively was easy and unfortunately people always like things to be easy.

Working on an artist lists (or any list for that matter) is quite a task. People have different ways of constructing lists that make it easier for them. Brian has his own way, Brett Alan has his way, I have my way, you have your way. There really isn't a one-way ticket here. As long as the goal is to be objective as possible and to have at least studied the targeted area thoroughly and look at other variables, that's what really matters.

The very criteria implemented here are broad, which we're all guilty of. For example, are all criteria weighted equally? What's the breakdown for each item being analyzed? What actually constitutes "popularity" through the editor's eyes? An editor uses "musical impact" to mean something else, while the casual visitor would have a different definition, like meaning some type of impact on the music world.

The casual person looking at our lists aren't even given a breakdown of the rankings (although that would be more work on ours and Lew's part). Even a simple "Aretha wins here, James Brown wins here" would at least get the ball rolling and not leave visitors completely in the dark.

There's always improvements to be made, and we're still learning new things. And we're all guilty of preconceived notions, whether that's having a rock-centric mentality or how much of a critical thinker we are.



That's what Brian will eventually do. It takes time and effort. He's not going to focus on the Top 30 rock artists and then just play musical chairs for the rest of the artists. Instead of telling him to completely scrap the project and start over, how about congratulating him that he's improving the old list and to encourage him and give helpful suggestions when analyzing the subjects at hand?

I wasn't criticizing him, Brian puts in more time and effort at DDD than almost anyone and I always respect his work. Not only is he very conscientious, but he's also incredibly nice and tolerates a lot of crap that would drive most people crazy. But regardless of who is doing a list, him, me or you or anyone else, I just don't like seeing any list go up and be commented on (and potentially influenced by those comments, even subconsciously) while it is still being worked on. It's like letting people move into a house before the walls and roof are installed, you're gonna get wet when it rains. Everybody does things differently though and I've tried doing it a bunch of different ways and I've found through experience that the best way, by far (for me at least) is to just ignore the list that existed before and do everything from scratch, treating every analytical question as if it had never been asked before.

Thank you Sampson for you kind words.

There's a lot that has been posted here the past couple days that I'd like to comment on, and I'll try to comment in the days to come on what has been posted, but for now I'll address the question of how I'm using the criteria, as that applies to everything that comes up.

My basis for popularity is 80% US and 20% UK. It would be ideal to consider the whole world, but I think that's a logistical nightmare. I don't consider estimates for worldwide sales to be reliable, and without that, how would one determine worldwide popularity in a consistent way? The US and UK combined make up a pretty big chunk of the worldwide rock market anyway.

As far as albums v. singles, for each artist my primary consideration is whichever format that artist does better in. Sometimes in comparing two artists I'll just compare them in each, especially if they're about equal in one and one has a clear advantage in the other. But since albums weren't very important before 1965, for earlier artists, I base it mostly or almost entirely on singles.

I go mostly by total popularity for an artist's entire career, with peak in popularity considered, but to a much lesser extent. However, I also I don't think Whitburn's rankings are completely reliable, not because they credit artists for long careers, but because I think they excessively credit artists for long careers. According to Whitburn's Top Pop Albums book, David Bowie is a slightly bigger album artist than Michael Jackson. (Actually, the issue isn't exactly length of career but number of entries.) I think the rankings in his guides for the top 40 are more accurate than those in the books for the entire charts, because by excluding low peaking albums from consideration, the bigger albums get more proportional credit.

For cultural impact, the whole world is eligible for consideration. For musical impact, the US/UK vs. world question doesn't really arise because it's about the impact of the music on an artist's peers, and there's no need to divide up the artist's peers by nationality anyway. The same is somewhat true of influence, with one difference being that one consideration for influence is the popularity of the music that an artist influenced, so for that, one has to ask, popular where? For that too, I would say 80% US, 20% UK.

BTW, and this might not be relevant to the analogy that was made earlier, but the primary reason why DiMaggio > Kaline is that Joe was a better defensive player.

One of those guides is sitting on the shelf next to me in the library. I'm studying with my girlfriend and the only available table was stuck in this section. I have Whitburn's guide, a book about surf music, a book about soul music, etc. on my right and I have the UN Yearbook for 2005, American Foreign Policy Current Documents from 1990, and a book on the League of Nations to my left. [/random]

Stick with music, Brian.

The primary reason that DiMaggio was better than Kaline is because he was a much better offensive player.

CAREER OPS+
Dimaggio - 155
Kaline - 134

DiMaggio was 55% above average as a hitter, kaline only 34%.

Al Kaline won 10 gold gloves, including one as a CFer. According to defensive WAR Kaline was a much better fielder than DiMaggio.

CAREER DEFENSIVE WAR
Kaline - 16.3
DiMaggio - 4.7

Have to agree with Bruce here (true I'm a native Detroiter)...but Al Kaline was a multiple gold glove winner...and NOBODY in baseball had a better arm from the right field position during Al's career.

18 time All Star
10 time Gold Glove winner

Thanks for the replies, Sampson. Like the explanations of Brian and JB Trance on the work of making a list and on your criteria.

The truth is only one, we all have different thoughts about how each artist scores on certain criteria. We must learn to balance that and be as fair as possible to the historical artist.

And as Sampson said, I agree to get the list from scratch, but of course, based on the excellent work done by Brian so far.

What about Clemente?

Yes...Clemente also had a GREAT arm. Tidbit...my cousin, Sam Nover was a popular sportscaster in Pittsburg from the 70's on. He did the very last television interview with Roberto, just days before Clemente's tragic death.

That stupid fuck Cousin Brucie interviewed Roberto Clemente Jr, like 10-15 years ago, and started with, "So how's your dad?"