Inspired by a post that popped on lemmy world today about Weird Al it got me thinking. I listed out a bunch of names but the one that I think fits the most would probably be Surfan Stevens. Who do you all think?
ITT: people who have severely underestimated Mozart’s musical capacities and contributions.
Mozart is a musician that is studied by nearly any professional musician. There are historians, musical scholars, and museums dedicated to him. He’s a household name across the world. He established a period of music. As a teenager, he deciphered a 12 min choral piece with multiple groups and solos after hearing it once and by memory wrote it down later that night (he heard it a 2nd time a few days later for minor corrections). When he presented the score to the clergy, they said he got one note wrong. After investigation, Mozart heard it right. The musician’s score was off by a note. Could any popular musician mentioned here decipher just a 6 min song of 4 instrument band after hearing it once with pen and paper ready? Imagine telling any music legend now, “Hey, you’re off by a half a step on the 3rd note of bar 28 of your own song.”
Comparing an awesome popular singer, guitarist, or band to him is like comparing your friend that got a job at NASA to Einstein. There is no modern Mozart. There have been greats since Mozart, but there haven’t been any Mozarts since Mozart. I say this as a Beethoven fan. Mozart was the only Mozart. He was so good, that his name became a title for great musician: Mozart. No one listed in this thread is anywhere near being a Mozart.
Likely the closest I could picture in a modern sense is Jacob Collier, who can indeed perform these types of musical feats. But the crux of the issue is that while Collier is much loved, he isn’t a dominant force of popular music like Mozart was.
Yeah, that’s exactly my first thought while reading this. If I rewrote the list of achievements above to sound like I was claiming they all happened to me, and then posted it to twitter, it would be indistinguishable from most other “🙄 that happened” posts.
People will be saying similar stuff about Taylor Swift in 100 years; by definition being legendary means being unreal.
When you put it that way, the list of candidates thins out and the one figure I see still standing is John Coltrane, who in his day was running circles around fellow jazz musicians, they couldn’t wrap their heads around how Coltrane’s chord progressions and jumping between keys from note to note made any sense… yet it did, and beautifully.
Tanking Janet Jackson’s career and slut-shaming Britney. Both were accepted behaviors at the time, but IMO that just makes it worse, he never even had to really account for it.
I love Sufjan Stevens, but I don’t see the comparison. While I really love his lyrics (one of the few I actually like them, I usually find most artist lyrics to be plain and way too cheesy), his music is very simple compared to a behemoth like Mozart.
Mozart was able to write highly complex music very fast, that went from deep themes to silly ones, and enjoyed popularity from both critics and public, which is something quite rare.
I don’t which one would be the closest today. Maybe something like Williams or Ennio Morricone.
I wouldn’t say that controversial. Muse are pretty varied in their output, The Exogenesis Symphony is fantastic, and then they also have stuff like Plug In Baby, which is amazing. Matthew Bellamy is very talented.
Yeah the entirety of revolution manages to traverse several sounds and styles while maintaining a cohesive mood and feel. It and the second law were just amazing albums
Well, Mozart was a composer, so I don’t know what parallels you’re drawing from to compare hin to Weird Al or Surfan [sic] Stevens. If we’re talking strictly in terms of best living musicians, Joanna Newsom is probably the best songwriter of the past fifty years, and in my opinion, the second place isn’t even close.
Dude can definitely shred and definitely plays some complex licks. Dimebag and Randy Rhodes are definitely up there too, but then again, so are many heavy metal guitarists.
I’m a shitty guitarist and whenever I just sit back and listen to the guitar tracks on most heavy metal albums I’m always amazed by the complexity, speed, precision and just overall sound of the tracks, especially when it comes to the solos.
He has a huge discography, is a talented multi instrumentalist, and is very experimental with genre and song writing in general while still effectively connecting with a growing audience. I used to know only a handful of his songs and thought, good but meh. Out of curiosity about his broad appeal between people I wouldn’t expect much over lap from, I dove into his discography and it’s something really special.
I think it might’ve been this one but it was a while back so I’ll keep looking and edit if I find something that looks more familiar. Greetings from Michigan got it’s antlers in me, after that I burned through the rest of the list pretty quickly and then it became a blur of shuffle for a few weeks.
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