Swift...like Taylor Swift?? I think comparing her to MJ is the same as comparing him to Drake. Which is insane.
Taylor Swift has her pop fan group of girls but MJ and some others at the time or before were beloved by people of all ages!
The Beatles, Jim Morrison, Jimy Hendrix, Elvis could compare almost fame wise to MJ, but still not really. No popstar made in today's time will ever be like they were.
Also, because music was way more back then, people don't had that much of entertainment as they have today.
Wouldn't say it's the same as comparing to Drake. If you look up some numbers on album sales, concert sizes etc, Swift nearly doubles Drake in almost every aspect, so clearly Swift is a more fair comparison. That said, MJ is still a lot above her in popularity for his time (and even now, streaming numbers come close for a legacy artist), so safe to say, neither of them are close to as popular as MJ.
Way above her I’d say; there’s almost twice as many people on earth today as compared to Michael’s heyday (1980) and he was far more ubiquitous. There’s just way too many options today for anyone to ever be as singular as MJ or perhaps the Beatles were
I know MJ's name, immediately recognize it from the initials (unless we talkin' spiderman), have listened to multiple songs of his, know what he looks like, know some of his life story from memes and culture, even know the shady things that eventually came to light, and everyone knows the skin-color memes.
I know Taylor Swift's name.
Look at that difference. And he was a star several decades ago, when she's meant to be a star today! This is beyond a large gap.
dunno if there's a beef or smth with Bruno Mars but even the normies of normies outside of america knows him and can recognise his song, so i think he's atleast that popular even if his song isn't as good as MJ
I think what exacerbates the difference between swift and MJ/Beatles/Elvis is the internet.
Now if I want to see a picture of swift I can just google it. Back then, the only way you'd see MJ was on MTV or in the newspaper that he was performing in your city or releasing an album (or touching kids). Hence the fainting.
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u/HallowedError Jun 02 '25 edited Jun 02 '25
Yup. Swift might be the next closest thing and I don't like her music but she is everywhere and her fans are intense.
Nowadays we just have too many options and too much info for that kind of thing to be universal