Who's Our MJ???

All the weirdness aside, all the alleged child molestation aside, all the naming his kid Blanket aside - Michael Jackson was an incredible artist. Incredible songs, incredible talent. There's a reason they call him the King of Pop. And while I can't say he's my favorite artist of all time, there's no denying that some of his stuff - especially Beat It, the guitar riff is one of my favorites - is well, incredible. There won't be another like him for a long, long time...if at all.

It got me thinking, as I sat on the couch watching the coverage of his death - "this is what it must have been like when Elvis died." My grandparents' generation's seminal entertainer was Elvis, my parents' was Jackson (the Beatles being the age group in between). And I suddenly had a startling thought - who is ours? And, more interestingly - do we even have one?

I have to add a disclaimer before going down Memory Lane - I wasn't raised on the pop music of the day in the 90s. I was busy listening to Oldies 99 and then country with my grandparents, hurling "N'Stink" insults at all those I thought silly enough to listen to boy bands. So I cannot be as certain about pop icons as those who actually were caught up in them, back when we were running around the sandboxes of our youth.

That aside, I honestly cannot think of any one person who defines our generation as an entertainer. We go through artists so fast these days that we hardly have time to get to know them. And now, with the proliferation of MySpace and other websites where artists can get themselves recognized, we have an unbelievable amount of different acts bombarding the radio. The Jonas Brothers may be all the rage now...at least among a small subset of the population...but will we look back in 20 years if one of them tragically dies and think "Wow, there goes the seminal entertainer of our generation"? I think not.

The closest people I can imagine to being an Elvis or Jackson for us would be either Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears - both of whom have enjoyed considerable and continued success musically, as well as a steady level of notoriety (in Britney's case) and popularity (in Justin's case). Frankly, they are not the two I would pick as my favorite artists of my childhood and adolescence (not even close), but they are surely among the most influential of that period.

If it were up to just me to decide, however...I think I'd go with Kanye West. Come to think of it, I think Kanye would go with Kanye too, seeing as how he's already called himself "the voice of this generation".

However, I think the seminal entertainer that we will all remember from growing up will not be an entertainer at all. Call me crazy, but I think athletes, in some cases (i.e. Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali) become more transcendental than their contemporary entertainers. I would bet that for us, our Elvis and our Michael Jackson will be an athlete. That athlete, if I had to bet money on it, is going to be another MJ - His Airness, Michael Jordan. Him or Tiger.

*And yes, CEVR Part II is coming shortly*