Throughout the past few weeks, we’ve embarked on probably one of the most ambitious blog series yet. The past 3 years, we’ve delved into and explored the music of influential artists and artists who are on the cusp of being influential. But these 50 artists Jon and I are going to write about… are in a whole new different category. Much more clear-cut with little to no room for disagreement about the artists; the category of Identity-Building and Iconic artists; reminds us that some artists are timeless, and some artists will just be legendary even 50 years from now. We’ve written about Celine Dion, Lionel Richie, ABBA, Bon Jovi, and Keith Green; and these 5 artists thus far, are some of the most powerful, confronting, and thought-provoking artists ever to have lived. And we will continue to write about iconic heavyweights of the music industry for the many months to come. Iconic artists, to me, differ to influential artists in the sense that these artists are iconic just because. You don’t need to justify the reasons why you believe they are iconic, and you don’t have to write an essay length piece… because all of the readers virtually will agree with you anyway. And as such, the past few installments have been different from how Jon and I have been blogging in the past. Simply because we do not write about every single hit song from every single album. It’s pointless, when these musicians and singers have etched their way into legendary status and folklore long before I even thought about writing about them; and so, perhaps the way forward for my structure of these blogs could be similar to how we’ve blogged in the past about Michael W. Smith, U2 and Bryan Adams? Anyway, I’ve decided to tackle someone completely unexpected this week (and probably not ordinarily in my preferences of musical genre); and after listening and ruminating on a number of songs in their discography over the past couple of weeks- can I say that pop band The Beach Boys is one of the most successful U.S. bands of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and deserves their place in this blog series, even though they’re still not my musical preference?
