Elvis...or Michael?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by mousepod

Examples?

Just off the top of my head:
*Thriller (writing credit for most of the album and of course the video, in which he was a major creative component).
*The commercial aspect of his work: from pure money-making ventures like the Pepsi deal, to his ownership of music catalogs (not that he invented it, but he certainly upped the ante and turned into the mega-scale business it is today), to the creation of the musical-charity business with Quincy Jones (not that music-as-charity didn't exist, but We Are The World was on a whole new scale compared to, say, Band Aid)
*The dominance since his career of acts like Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Madonna, etc. They all draw from his style and music, in which he was a major creative component.


I don't dispute that his influence on the industry was more about increment and scale than innovation, but he did so as an active participant in a way that hadn't really been done since, well, the Beatles.