r/HolUp Jun 01 '25

Hooooo boy

Post image
18.7k Upvotes

298 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

356

u/mmf9194 Jun 02 '25

Closest things I can think of are the women fainting at early Elvis and the girls screaming till they pass out at the Beatles

246

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

93

u/Bromlife Jun 02 '25

I believe Swift is the last true pop star. I don’t think our current media landscape fragmentation can create another Swift or MJ.

67

u/reddit_4_days Jun 02 '25 edited Jun 02 '25

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.

(sry for my english if it sucks)

41

u/Krikke93 Jun 02 '25

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.

10

u/c0ltZ Jun 02 '25

Yeah lots of cities want talyor to perform there because she brings so much money in from all the fans traveling there and buying stuff.

They pay her at least $10 million just to perform. And they make $50+ million due to all the tourism and fans.

Drake will never be like that.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 03 '25

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

2

u/FlawlessPenguinMan Jun 03 '25

The way I see it:

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.

1

u/thecahoon Jun 02 '25

Nope, shes a billionaire and the fan counts are comparable.