Will society ever go hysterical over a celebrity again?

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Eminem? Teens loved him, parents hated him. Only about 5 years ago.

[/ QUOTE ]

Small fry.

[globalboy]

[ QUOTE ]
people went nuts over Michael Jordan, and they still do over Tiger Woods, (maybe not quite as much?)

[/ QUOTE ]

Buying lots of Gatorade and McDonald's for your 100 lb. 4 year old son = going nuts.

[gusmahler]

[ QUOTE ]
The Beatles did stop touring because of their fans and the noise they created, but this was related to the poor quality of speakers at the time, as the speakers were drowned out by crowd noise, which could never happen today. I believe they later toured again when speakers had improved, although I am unsure about this or whether they stopped touring once again.


[/ QUOTE ]The Beatles stopped touring in 1966. There were a couple of reasons for this. One, as you mentioned, the speakers were not capable of overpowering the crowd. Thus, nobody, not even the Beatles on stage, could hear them. They often played out of tune or off key simply because they couldn't hear the rest of the band.

And two, there music was getting more and more complicated and couldn't be replicated on stage. From August 1966 until January 29, 1969, they never performed in public. On January 30, they performed on the rooftop of Apple Studios during lunch time. They never bothered getting a permit for this, so the police forced them to stop.

[gusmahler]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
i think eminem was close to NKTOB level. maybe just a step below.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only a very small segment of people. NKOTB wasn't even close to the Beatles in the general public consciousness.

[/ QUOTE ]Yep. This thread sucks. No one is even close to Elvis/Beatles level of popularity. And no one ever will be. Too many entertainment choices now.

[Blarg]

People forget how much the explosion of Elvis and the Beatles was because of the very straight-laced, repressed society they came from, too, and how much energy that gave to something defiantly new. People were burning their records and they were the subjects of church sermons. Having long hair was somewhere between horrible and shocking when they first came out, and "long" meant touching your collar. There were no birth control pills, and sex before marriage was still taboo. Elvis and the Beatles were part of a cultural explosion and in many ways the icons of it.

Without someone coming out who represents totally turning society around, you can't have anyone with the impact of Elvis or the Beatles. Maybe Hugo Chavez or something, if he could also sing and play guitar.

[marchron]

[ QUOTE ]
Whenever I watch old clips of Elvis and the Beatles, it amazes me how nuts everyone was over them. You mostly remember the clips of girls screaming and crying with excitement, but it definitely encompassed all young people of both genders. When I try to think of examples of artists that come close to that level of popularity in the past 20 years, I think of N'SYNC/Backstreet Boys, Nirvana/Green Day, and Michael Jackson, but I don't feel like any of them come close to what Elvis and the Beatles did (I think MJ probably comes closest).

So, have I missed anyone? Do you think something like the popularity of the Beatles/Elvis could happen again?

[/ QUOTE ]
Not in that way. Now we just gush over episodes of "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider" and go to TMZ.com and hang our heads in shame as entire hours of "Hannity & Colmes" are devoted to Anna Nicole Smith.

[MikeyPatriot]

Blarg,

I wasn't feeling well when I wrote the OP, but the repressed society angle was something that I had meant to bring up.

[ QUOTE ]
And two, there music was getting more and more complicated and couldn't be replicated on stage.

[/ QUOTE ]

They did this intentionally because they didn't want to tour and creating extremely complicated studio albums gave them a good excuse.

[Kimbell175113]

I'm too young to know, but how big was Madonna back in the day?

[MicroBob]

Madonna was pretty f'ing big.

[guids]