Who Is a Musical Genius?
I am currently obsessed with a particular musical genius. I’ll not say who in order to save that particular discussion for another day. But I began to wonder about who is and who is not recognized as a musical genius.
I have a crude way of measuring this: input the name along with the word “genius” into google and see how many results you get. Some of these are lighthearted.
Here’s a list of several examples:
The Who: 3.2 million
Danny Elfman: 1.3 million
Wierd Al: 3.0 million (!? – seems to be influenced by the fact that one of his songs contains the word “genius” in the title)
Flava Flav: 1.2 M
Eminem: 18.4 M
Michael Jackson: 16.6 M
Bruce Springsteen: 19.9 M
Steve Evans: 22.7 M (seriously)
David Byrne: 3.3 M
Beethoven: 8.0 M
Mozart: 10.7 M
Sting: 9.9 M
Paul Simon: 2.8 M
Bob Dylan: 14.5 M
John Lennon: 14.1 M
So, what do you think of the list? Is Bruce Springsteen 37% more of a genius than either Dylan or Lennon? Is Paul Simon roughly comparable with Weird Al? Who would you add? Do your own searches and put your results in the comments.
Posted on August 17, 2011, in Music. Bookmark the permalink. 43 Comments.
It’s high time I was recognized!
My first thought beats all of yours!
PRINCE 38.2 million
Prince is a pretty generic term though. For example for The Who I put quotes around “The Who” because otherwise there were a lot of irrelevant results due to the generic nature of the words.
If you google search for the Prince symbol only there aren’t nearly as many hits as for me, Susan!
John Coltrane: 8.2 million (but it drops to 2.9 million if I add quotes)
“Charlie Parker”: 2.8 million (that’s way too low)
“Miles Davis”: 6.2 million (too low and inflated, since there’s a boxed set called “The Genius of Miles Davis”)
“Van Halen”: 2.8 million (which, funny enough, drops to 534k if you say “Eddie Van Halen”)
But Moby gets over 12 million hits. Go figure.
Mozart 10.6 million
Handel 4.2 Million
Beethoven 8.1 Million
This method is rubbish.
Sam,
“Moby Dick” Genius: 3.8 M (oddly it went up with the quotes)
Matt W.,
Why is the method rubbish? You don’t think that Paul Simon + Bruce Springsteen = Steve Evans?
The method simply tells you what people have written about on the internet.
I think the reason it’s rubbish is because Kim Kardashian beats The Who, Danny Elfman, and Beethovan: http://goo.gl/bGtk8.
I remember seeing John Cougar in an interview once and he addressed this exact question. It was his opinion that we overuse the word “genius”. As I remember it he thought the rock/pop world had only produced one true genius and that was Dylan.
Personally, I think that’s a little too restrictive, but still I agree that the list needs to be very short in order for the word to retain its meaning.
I think the term “genius” gets tossed around way too casually these days. Just being a good musician or being very prolific is not the same as genius. In the last 25 years there are only two or three people that I know of that I’d really consider to be geniuses. Maybe Frank Zappa. Pat Metheny maybe? Maybe Devin Townsend. Kevin Gilbert. Even then, that’s stretching a bit.
And for the record, I don’t listen to any of those musicians, with the exception of maybe some Kevin Gilbert and Devin Townsend. I just recognize that their brains are high-level functioning in the music department.
Oh, I think if Esperanza Spalding isn’t a genius, she’s pretty dang close.
arJ,
Ah, good point about Melville.
If I input “Neil Finn” do I have to discount every time google brings up MY blog?
“John Mellencamp”: 1.8 M
“John Cougar”: 0.7 M
“John Cougar Mellencamp”: 0.25 M
It seems that John has diluted his brand. Not that I think he’s even in Danny Elfman territory.
Gabby just made me LOL.
My list would include Van Morrison and Nick Drake.
Frank Sinatra: 24.5 M
David Bowie: 25.1 M
John Lennon: 14.1 M
Paul McCartney: 10.7 M
George Harrison: 8.3 M
Ringo Starr: 8.6 M
meanwhile…
The Beatles: 17.4 M
yet:
Eric Clapton: 23.5 M
stumpnugget,
I agree that Bob Dylan is in a class by himself, and that the term is overused. But can’t there be room for more than one genius in our lifetimes? I think that Susan M has a great point about Prince. There is one person near the bottom of these rankings that I would put up there with Dylan and you’d have a hard time ever convincing me otherwise.
Jimi Hendrix: 36 M
For those of you that want something less terrible than my method, here’s a terrible list of musical geniuses.
Warren Zevon has a good song titled “Genius.”
I could only come up with Barbara Eden and Robin Williams.
It depends on how you’re defining genius. And musical. I’d include Nick Drake for his lyrics. Same with Bob Dylan–are we talking lyric-writers or musicians or music-writers/composers?
I’d include Jerry Douglas for musicians.
Vocals is a whole other thing too.
Has nobody even considered Brian Wilson?
John – totally. I don’t agree with John Cougar. I just thought his comment was interesting. If Prince isn’t a musical genius then no one is.
Glad I could help, Susan!
Tom Waits = 15.3 M
Tom Waits + genius = 3.7 M
24%
Bruce Springsteen = 33.7 M
Bruce Spingsteen genius = 7.6 M
23%
Lady Gaga = 482 M
Lady Gaga genius = 30.4 M
6%
Brian Wilson = 10.5 M
Brian Wilson genius = 3 M
29%
Thomas Parkin,
Interesting measure. How would you describe what it demonstrates? I have my own idea, but I’d like to hear yours.
Hey John,
I’d say first number indicates total amount of interest in the artist, and the second number indicates what kind of schmos are interested in the artist. ;> Very few of those interested in Gaga are also interested in her artistic credibility, while almost anyone interested in Brian Wilson is interested in him as an artist.
There must be another word you could use to break down the genius number farther, especially to decide what kind of people are likely to use the word “genius”, but couldn’t think of one …
“Is a genius” might be interesting, though. Brian Wilson yields almost a million hits with “is a genius”; almost 10% of his total. “Lady Gaga” with “is a genius” yields about 9M hits, or something like 2%.
Here is a spreadsheet with the numbers re-run with the formulas that Thomas Parkin suggested.
Anyone who thinks Ringo Starr is a bigger genius than George Harrison is a complete and utter moron. I won’t trust a method of calculating genius until George Harrison beats Ringo by at least double.
LAT,
I agree completely. Do you have a better measure?
Brian Wilson is a total genius. Fear the beard!
The system needs to adjust for the fact that using the phrase “is a genius” is unnecessary when talking about certain geniuses. I’ve never said in a conversation, “Mozart is a genius.” It’s obvious to enough people that I don’t bother.
Maybe the numbers should be adjusted for the amount of energy used to prove someone is not a genius. A percentage adjustment for “is a moron” hits.
“Stan Ridgway” 457,000
“Stan Ridgway” genius 157,000
34%
Small denominators can make for high percentages, also more occasions to explain that so-in-so is a genius when the reader has little idea who the writer is talking about.
By this measure, Val Kilmer is the greatest actor ever.
This is just silly.
Hmm…that movie is more obscure than I thought it was.
Nevermind.
You guys need to be posting your results to the google spreadsheet
Thomas Dolby: 1.2M
Bill Nelson: 0.25M
And then…
Stephen Hawking: 3.3M
Marilyn Vos Savant: 36K
Tom Tom Club = 2.7M
More or less the same as Paul Simon. Wow, who woulda thunk it?
Tom Tom Club is probably riding on Byrne’s coattails due to his name showing up. That is my guess anyhow. They’re on tour right now and play their one song and a bunch of stuff you’ve never heard and then play two TH songs as an encore. I’d go if they mostly played TH
The reason Tom Tom Club gets so many hits is because their one hit is called Genius of Love.
I’ve updated the spreadsheet from #30 with some very odd Tom Tom Club results.