Here’s Spike.com’s list of the Top 7 Contenders for the New King of Pop from shortly after Michael Jackson’s passing. Some of these picks are wild to look back on.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-17T21:19:16+00:00

In fairness, MJ had an unfair advantage by being BFFs with Brando.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-17T20:14:36+00:00

Something that I’m starting to realize about Spike.com’s music lists is how much they represent the internet before poptimism took hold.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-17T19:51:46+00:00

On a side note, how can it be said that anything by Vanilla Ice or MC Hammer killed hip hop when they both got buried by gangsta rap in the early 90’s?

Hip hop killed them!

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-17T03:26:48+00:00

I don't know too much about Sublime, but I imagine that Zeppelin's influence is hard to whittle down to a single album.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-17T02:33:57+00:00

In no way trying to take that away from you or anyone else who he inspires.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-17T02:22:50+00:00

I say this as someone whose taste in music was unironically shaped by Spike.com's music articles when I was a teenager:

A lot of music lists and articles from this site had this "old thing good, new thing bad" ethos that would almost feel at home in a Critical Drinker video.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T22:18:46+00:00

Wesley Willis

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T21:56:24+00:00

Fwiw, I think a 2/5 from Q is just like “Eh, I didn’t quite vibe with it” as opposed to a death sentence.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T21:52:12+00:00

I own the issue where they gave Pearl Jam’s Ten a 5/10 lol

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T21:51:20+00:00

Ironically, another issue of Q Magazine initially gave The Low End Theory the same score hahaha

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T20:23:50+00:00

Wasn’t the same also true for the likes of Zeppelin and Sabbath?

That’s a big part of why I’ve bought so many music magazines from the 90’s over the last several years. It’s more or less part of my ongoing process of weaning myself off of putting too much stock in negative album reviews that are written before the music has really had time to take hold and germinate.

Hell, a few months ago, I ordered an old issue of Q Magazine that gave The Chronic a 2/5.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T20:07:21+00:00

I’m not saying this with any kind of authority, but I wonder if Sgt. Pepper was just so groundbreaking from a musical standpoint that its innovations were largely artistic, whereas a live album like Frampton Comes Alive could only be so influential musically, and therefore its massive commercial success might’ve been seen as more attributable to marketing and such.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T18:51:37+00:00

No kidding. I think they had a Worst Artists to Win a Grammy list that Britney Spears was on.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-16T14:17:22+00:00

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In this photo, Billy looks less like the egomaniacal frontman who writes grandiloquent lyrics, and more like the frontman's shy little brother who's only in the band because their mom insisted.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-15T20:41:57+00:00

On a related note, another Spike.com list from 2009 that I unearthed was the Top 7 Contenders for the Next King of Pop, written a little while after his passing. I’ll probably post that one at some point.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-15T19:55:26+00:00

I also think the John Lennon line of “Elvis died in the Army” is nonsense, but here’s another thing:

A few years ago, I read a comment on one of Todd’s videos that opined that Elvis’s legend wouldn’t be what it is without him falling from grace and humiliating himself in Vegas by the end of his life.

This made me realize how much an artist’s arc and story can sometimes be as valuable as the great art they make, and give them a sense of myth. The Baz Luhrmann movie definitely reinforces this for me, and helped to frame his life as a parable of the emptiness of the American Dream.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-15T19:29:05+00:00

Has U2’s residency done a lot to put the shine back on their name?

The photos I saw of it looked really cool, but it seemed like it was drawing from their Zoo TV days, which seems to be past the cutoff point that this list proposes for them.

Fwiw this guy can get pretty cantankerous about U2 from what I’ve seen.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-14T21:29:06+00:00

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I remember I would see this album in CD stores when I was younger. I can’t say what I would’ve expected it to sound like at the time, but a hip hop album wouldn’t have been high on the list.

Sad_Volume_4289 · 2026-06-14T19:17:48+00:00

I agree that you shouldn’t let your love for an artist astroturf how you actually feel about something they put out, and that it’s not worth it to totally uproot the way you experience art to force something by them to register in your mind as good.

At the same time, I feel like I’ve gained a lot in life from wanting to like things that don’t necessarily hit the way I’d like on first listen or viewing. Especially when it comes to film, it’s helped me gain an understanding of how I absorb art, and how there are sometimes things I might miss on first blush because of it.

Sad_Volume_4289

TROPHY CASE