a frontman? I think they were both better described as solo artists at their peak. obviously prince led the revolution and new power generation so you could loosely call him their frontman. style, like michael jackson had a cheesier maximalist 80s pop spectacle style. prince was innovative, blurred genres and holds up better over time
Date: September 2nd, 2026 8:57 AM Author: contagious talking hominid
Prince wasn't really known as a guitar virtuoso until his 2004 Rock and Roll HOF performance. By that time he'd already released close to 30 albums (about 2/3 of the total during his lifetime). Granted, some of this is semantic, and those who knew knew well before 2004 but to say he was "above all" guitar virtuoso is a pretty narrow assessment. He was also 5'2" with a comically enormous dick.
Date: September 2nd, 2026 1:22 PM Author: Aqua becky trailer park
i guess, this comment kind of sums up the disconnect. itt and with cultural threads on xo in general.
your poa and "wasn't really known" in particular is from a mainstream perspective. that's never been the perspective i come from.
so, i should stop participating in xo cultural threads because we're always talking about how something or one is perceived by the mainstream, which is gay.
also, Prince dick pics or your poa, this tread, and my life in general is worthless
Date: September 2nd, 2026 10:55 AM Author: Hairraiser massive wagecucks center
less of a guitar virtuoso, more of an all around musician who played all of his instruments, sang well, wrote songs well, and maintained a mysterious cool image for decades.
Date: September 2nd, 2026 8:56 AM Author: brilliant offensive box office
i don't think those rules apply to pop stars; it's expected that they just parrot other people's songs. so i don't think that should disqualify him or ding him at all.
now, drake deserves a hit to his rep as a rapper/lyricist because it's now known that he's had lyrics written for him. same would be true of any musician (such as prince). not fair, but them's the rules.
Date: September 2nd, 2026 11:04 AM Author: poppy cracking kitchen
He has sole credits on many big hits including Billie Jean. Q would assemble the best session players in the world and Michael would tell them what to play. Billie Jean started as a demo Michael made by himself at home. He had the whole song. He just brought the demo to Q. 3 billion streams on Spotify. No army of songwriters.
Date: September 2nd, 2026 2:45 PM Author: Hairraiser massive wagecucks center
I listened to the Alex Van Halen audiobook recently on spotify (my first audiobook) - Eddie did that solo in one take, as a solo to MJ, and apparently David Lee Roth got ir8 over him doing projects away from Van Halen band (Dave also didn't go to Eddie's wedding to Valerie Bertenelli because she was more famous at the time than the band, overshadowed the band and its music).
I would argue that the Beat It solo is the most famous and recognized solo in history - and its perfect, tells a story despite a very short length for a pop song, crescendos just perfectly, and its attached to an all time great song - everything about it is perfect.
Date: September 1st, 2026 8:01 PM Author: poppy cracking kitchen
Michael was better than Prince. Prince wrote a lot of stuff that wasn't good that no one has ever listened to and never will. He also only has 1-2 songs that are as good as MJ's best songs and MJ has a dozen. He also doesn't have that many crappy records. Prince has a TON. Even Prince's best albums have a lot of filler.
Prince was really good at guitar but he wasn't very good at writing songs. In fact some of his most iconic riffs were by his bandmates, such as the intro to Purple Rain or the keyboard riff on When You Were Mine. He was actually seemingly pretty terrible at writing music for someone so obviously talented. Conversely Michael wrote way more of his own stuff than most people are aware. He was essential to the creative process. Worked closely with Quincy Jones. He had an incredible vision for most of his records. Compared to modern pop stars Michael was a hundred times more involved. Prince sat there in his studio making mostly garbage and needed his buddies to kind of bail him out.
Also if not for Purple Rain Prince would be a footnote. You take one song off the board and his entire career is SPS. There is no MJ song that if he didn't make it he wouldn't still be MJ.
Also in a weird twist of irony Prince was extremely obsessed with the choreography of the live performance, which no one actually cared about because the music wasn't very good and no one really gave a shit about hum dancing around in platform shoes. The irony is Michael cared way more about putting out good music AND he was like a thousand times better at dancing than Prince. LOL.
MJ was the master of gigantic, polished, iconic pop. Prince was more idiosyncratic—funk, rock, new wave, psychedelia, R&B, androgyny, glam, weird synth experimentation. MJ is more for low iq mainstream pop fans, where prince is a master of style for people who are capable of understanding good art.
Date: September 1st, 2026 8:09 PM Author: poppy cracking kitchen
Prince really isn't that good though and MJs stuff is just awesome and it's not even that dumb. Thriller makes "1989" look like AI slop. Some of the greatest musicians of the 80s performed on Thriller including Eddie van Halen. It's actually not stupid. Meanwhile yes Prince blended complex styles, but not well! He has very few hits. Most of it doesn't land. And even when it does it's just kind of okay. And then you realize a lot of it is actually just shite really.
Thriller was a legitimately sophisticated pop record with quincy jones and eddy van halen playing the beat it solo etc. I agree prince sometimes valued experimentation more than editing. Someone can hear Sign of the Times and think, understand what he's doing but rather listen to billy jean. Not true he had very few hits though prince had probably like 20 billboard hits. And Prince's genre blending landed for plenty of serious listeners not just prince obsessives. Critics generally rate him higher than mj. He didn't have as good quality control as mj, i'll give you that.