With the news of MJ's death, I have taken a re-interest in MJ and his music. It's interesting the psychology of why someone's work of art becomes popular again when that person dies, supported by recent stats showing that MJ's music is topping charts worldwide again.
As I downloaded some of his most famous and influential songs from Itunes recently and listened carefully, I could not help draw up some comparisons between his music and ARR's. Here are some parallels that I thought of: 1) MJ and ARR are both perfectionists. There is a quality to both their bodies of work that define high achievement and perfectionism, a certain drive and ambition and motivation to be the best they can possibly be, often working ridiculous hours to achieve this. 2) Tightness and crispness of arrangements. Both MJ and ARR boast of extremely high quality arrangements in their music and a very tight and planned set of arrangements that are line with their perfectionistic work ethics. 3) Both masters of rhythm: ARR and MJ both boast of extremely high quality rhythmic concepts and super-intelligent rhythmic patterns in their songs. Again, consistent with tightness. 4) Both are trend setters: MJ and ARR were both trend setters in their own ways. Both revolutionized music in their own respective spheres and had a huge following among artists of their kind. 5) Both are passionate about unity, diversity, and charity: MJ and ARR share a very similar type of compassion towards the world, towards the less fortunate, and both believe in transcending artificial boundaries to help unify cultures and races and highlight bonds that tie us all together, irrespective race, culture, etc. Through their music, they were able to transcend and go beyond hard set boundaries that were not able to be transcended before (ARR with regional and international reaches and MJ with racial and ethnic reaches).
