Elvis's posthumous popularity is plummeting

[Goat Boy]

Elvis suffers, like other artists of his period because they are singles artists essentially and their back catalogue is messy as hell

[naughty boy]

Yes that's true

[Darkness_Fish]

Elvis suffers because the iconography that really took hold was his embarrassing Vegas jumpsuit years. Johnny Cash looked cool, faded away from public view (comparatively), got old, and covered some tracks with a bit of credibility. While he wasn't popular, he didn't have a memorable look.

The moral to the tale is, if you're really famous, when you go shit, don't go shit and look memorably crass.

[Your Friendly Neighbourhood Postman]

Elvis suffers, like other artists of his period because they are singles artists essentially and their back catalogue is messy as hell

I see that.

But does he speak to today's young?

Would the kids feel: hey, energetic, wonderful, sets me on fire, I want that?

Often I have a sense that younger music fans of today are too 'liberated' (in all senses) to get an inkling of what Presley meant to his first fans.

Are today's youngsters at the same time quite idealistic, hopeful, but also too world-weary, and lacking sense of purpose for 'becoming' (i.e. finding a fulfilling job with true meaning, starting a close family (a life commitment), and also getting acquainted with their own mortality, finality in this world)?

Sorry, I am rambling, because I try to make sense of our own times, and I don't succeed in this very well.

[Tactful Cactus]

Elvis suffers because the iconography that really took hold was his embarrassing Vegas jumpsuit years. Johnny Cash looked cool, faded away from public view (comparatively), got old, and covered some tracks with a bit of credibility. While he wasn't popular, he didn't have a memorable look.

The moral to the tale is, if you're really famous, when you go shit, don't go shit and look memorably crass.

Cash got pretty damn corny in the 80's. I've seen clips of him singing really naff ballads with Irish country posers. Who knows with Elvis, he could have had a credible bounce in the 90's like Cash, Solomon Burke - albums produced by Jack White or DapTone. Or he'd be doing endless cash-in arena tours and being a reality TV joke like Ozzy Osbourne.

[Darkness_Fish]

Elvis suffers because the iconography that really took hold was his embarrassing Vegas jumpsuit years. Johnny Cash looked cool, faded away from public view (comparatively), got old, and covered some tracks with a bit of credibility. While he wasn't popular, he didn't have a memorable look.

The moral to the tale is, if you're really famous, when you go shit, don't go shit and look memorably crass.

Cash got pretty damn corny in the 80's. I've seen clips of him singing really naff ballads with Irish country posers. Who knows with Elvis, he could have had a credible bounce in the 90's like Cash, Solomon Burke - albums produced by Jack White or DapTone. Or he'd be doing endless cash-in arena tours and being a reality TV joke like Ozzy Osbourne.

Yeah, I did mean to add that detail in, the whole Highwayman/outlaws thing was pretty crappy stadium country, too. My point was more that he just looked average, while he was lame, he didn't have a strikingly crap image to go with it.