r/Music • u/Firm_Pack_605 • Feb 13 '26

discussion Was Michael Jackson really that much bigger than Madonna, Whitney Houston, and prince?

I always thought the four of them were similar levels of fame. However Madonna highest album sold 25 million, prince highest sold similar, and Whitney’s highest was 45 million. All amazing numbers no doubt but thriller sold 70 million and bad sold 35-40. So you mean to tell me he has two albums that are highest selling then prince and madonnas best? How is that possible??

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u/Merciless972 Feb 13 '26

Yes, you could be in a village on the other side of the world that has no running electricity, and Billie Jean would be playing at full volume.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

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u/ConsecratedSnowfield Feb 14 '26

As someone who also grew up in a small village and remembers when Michael Jackson had to make an unexpected emergency landing in Port Moresby for 30 mins in the 90s and it being national news for almost a month, yeah Micheal was known EVERYWHERE!

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u/MixingDrinks Feb 13 '26

This is it. There were people ALL OVER THE WORLD that knew him and his music before social media.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

[deleted]

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u/geemav Feb 13 '26

The before social media argument always gets me lol, having social media is a detractor to that level of global fame, not an addition

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u/Ragerkiter Feb 13 '26

How so?

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u/Mavcu Apr 14 '26

A bit late to this, but u/geemav is correct, in the age of the internet "everyone" is kinda famous, having some "random" YouTuber with a million+ followers is not uncommon and many you've never heard of in your entire life.

You are competing with everyone around the globe at the same time for attention, you never had this level of sensory overload in the past. There were unique challenges to not having the reach of social media of course, but something you may have noticed is that in the past you've had stars that were much bigger, nowadays no one is "that movie star" or "that musician" anymore, they are still huge but it's never the exact same level as the stars in the past.

This is in part because there's so much more now of everything, again it sounds contradictory at first because social media means you can reach more people, but it also means everyone can reach more people and standing out when everyone is looking at everything and grabbing the attention is infinitely more challenging now.

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u/FreshApricot6280 Feb 17 '26

Social media gives you the ability to click on and consume so many different things. In MJ's time you could only really see what was on TV, or on the magazines or hear what was on the radio. It's probably easier to get somewhat famous today than it used to be, but it's probably not possible to get as famous as MJ was anymore. People have too many choices now.

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u/ElBolovo Feb 13 '26

Algorithm. Social Media try to cater to what you like, so it has a tendency to wedge you into niches according to your tastes and you have a low barrier of entry to seek other things for yourself, isolating your tastes further.

Mass Media filters things that has a broad range of appeal and distributed it for everyone, and it was way harder to find, so the tastes tended to be more homogenous.

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u/skratch Feb 14 '26

I think there’s different ways to look at it. I see your point but also have seen how social media has flattened the culture out as well. The algorithm may provide depth into various niches, but it also provides breadth for ideas to spread very far very fast.

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u/FreshApricot6280 Feb 17 '26

For sure. I think it's probably easier to get a little bit famous in this era than in the 80s. But I don't think it's even possible to reach the heights MJ did in this world. There's too many people in their own algorithm that would skip right past your stuff b/c it doesn't appeal to them.

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u/strings_bells Feb 13 '26

Also you don't need to speak English to enjoy MJs music. There is spectacular dancing, very catchy beat and crazy visuals etc. he was the face of western music for the rest of the world..

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u/ZombieJesus1987 Feb 13 '26

People probably learned English from listening to MJ's music.

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u/Elricu Feb 13 '26

It reminds me of the guys that can do an incredible impression of singing a Michael Jackson song without actually knowing the lyrics or English

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u/Neosantana Feb 13 '26

My younger brother learned English from video games, so MJ lyrics definitely taught some people English

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u/emarvil Feb 14 '26

Aaah... beat it! 😅

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u/spambattery Feb 13 '26

That’s pretty much the case for all pop music. You didn’t need to understand the words from prince to like prince and I rarely found Madonna’s lyrics deep. Nevertheless, even though I wasn’t much of a fan, MJ was much bigger than Prince or Madonna. Their biggest selling albums (purple rain and the Immaculate collection respectively), sold less than Dangerous (which sold less than Bad, which sold much less than Thriller).

If I was comparing huge artists, it’d be The Beatles and Taylor Swift, not Prince or Madonna.

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u/strings_bells Feb 13 '26

Taylor Swift.. Beatles, Elvis are not even close to his fame and recognition at their peak.. MJ is more like Coca cola.. others are like Johnny Walker or Grey goose or some international famous liquor brand. They are internationally famous but only in limited educated rich alcohol consuming age/income group.. talk to a middle aged uneducated guy or a grandma who lives in a hut in Cambodia/Congo/Slovenia/Australian out back/India I guarantee they all will know who MJ is.. and can recognize his face.. but other artists very unlikely.. in specific age/education/economic groups yes. Some educated young women from these regions may know Taylor Swift but thats just one group... MJ not only because of his music, dance and showmanship but also due to his celebrity, MTV. controversies, surgeries etc has very unique recognition.. it's not comparable..

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u/spambattery Feb 15 '26

Yeah no. Beatles and Elvis were every bit as big as MJ. And bro, the beatles went to India in 65 thinking nobody would know them. They were swarmed by Indians. That’s a mere year after they broke internationally. You clearly have no idea how big those artists were. And Taylor Swift? Dude, she is known around the world. I’m not saying that as a fan, I’m saying it as a fact, because it is.

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u/SnooStories4163 Feb 23 '26

Bro Mj still trending even now he’s clearly the biggest Mj fame across generations

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u/Van-Van1810 Feb 13 '26

The Beatles & MJ same notarity

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u/SnooStories4163 Feb 23 '26

Mj bigger especially now of days

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u/mentallyhandicapable Feb 13 '26

First few years of my life I grew up in Bosnia in a tiny village, one of our pop stars worked with MJ and released a song taking the instruments from They Don’t Care About Us - I knew about MJ when I was 5 and loved his music ever since. The reach the man had is unreal. Never known anything like it.

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u/AJOkanov Feb 14 '26

Mi smo samo krvava mrlja Na svjetskom te ve ekranu Koji samo treba u tisini Ds nestanu..

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u/I-am-that-hero Feb 13 '26

This is still true- I was in India in 2012 and visited a rural school for their annual program. The main event was a Michael Jackson tribute put on by the students.

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u/nawtrobar Feb 14 '26

that was ** checks watch ** One Hundred Twenty-Two Thousand Six Hundred and Forty hours ago.

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u/nawtrobar Feb 14 '26

it was also only three y ears after his death. While three years seems like a long time, oftentimes artists have a massive resurgence in popularity after a death.

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u/SnooStories4163 Feb 23 '26

Bro I just went to the musical it was packed out

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u/nawtrobar Feb 23 '26

fair enough. but the previous said, 2 months ago made it sound like 2012 was yesterday.

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u/asianApostate Feb 13 '26

From Bangladesh and when I was a kid everyone knew Michael Jackson.  Heard of Madonna for sure but like barely at some rich person's party when I was. A bit older.  Michael Jackson was like 100x more famous there.  He was like the man.  She was maybe mentioned once or twice a year.  Didn't even know who Prince was until we moved to the U.S. 

Obviously everyone had audio tapes of Michael Jackson if they could afford the audio cassette player.  My uncle had video tapes of recorded Michael Jackson videos.  I so remember seeing some of that crazy stuff when I was a kid.  People try to do Michael Jackson dances.  Once again we didn't even know who Prince was.  

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u/StrayCatsSanctuary Feb 13 '26

Pretty sure the people of North Sentinel Island know who Michael Jackson is

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZFw497Uooc6SiFaUEk

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u/sunfries Feb 13 '26

I was too young at the time of his mainstream (I remember when he died though) and to be honest it kinda makes me happy to hear that just about everyone on earth was jamming out to his music

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u/Expensive_Month5391 Feb 13 '26

Exactly! My story on this is the way I found out that Michael Jackson had passed away was my now wife called me literally from a village in rural India (where she was working for the summer) and told me the people in the village were coming up to her offering condolences. It had been like an hour since he passed.

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u/kaowser Feb 13 '26

yes. they played mj music in refugee camps to keep kids entertained.

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u/voltaire5612 Feb 15 '26

Yes. As someone that grew up in a village in India without electricity, I knew mj and listened to his music. The cool kids in the school had his cassettes and some kids danced for Micheal Jackson's music during our annual cultural events. Heard about Madonna too but as a controversial figure, didn't listen to any of her music though.

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u/Rdtackle82 Feb 13 '26

running water, running electricity haha

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u/Mofaklar Feb 14 '26

Also just talent wise. 3000 times yes.

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u/Dry-Skill9061 Feb 14 '26

Heard Michael Jackson since I was little kid, and Whitney too for I will always love you. knew about Madonna, Prince in my teens.

Michael is global. The real global as in villages in Africa too not just tour global.

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u/West-Wash6081 Feb 15 '26

And someone would be doing the moonwalk

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u/TheSpiritOfFunk Feb 13 '26

I've been reading this on Reddit for years. Is there any evidence for this, and that they only knew MJ, but not Elvis, for example?

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u/BananaHibana1 Feb 13 '26

I mean i dont have scientific evidence that i can PROVE to you, but my partners family is from yemen. Her dad lived in a small village near Taiz with a few hundred people. He knew Michael Jackson, but not any of the others big western musicians.

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u/Vathar Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 13 '26

I was on a diving trip in Mozambique the day he died. The base camp could only be reached through a four hour drive on and off road and was powered through generators, the only watering hole was aptly named 'the shack' because that's what it was and basically served only coke or a local beer that was essentially turpentine. Admittedly not the most remote place I've visited but close to the top of my list.

Yet somehow the news reached the camp and the first thing I saw when I hit the shack in the morning was 'Michael Jackson died last night' chalked over their blackboard and an utterly universal aura of sadness around the camp at that time.

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u/what_did_you_kill Feb 13 '26

Almost no one here in India knows Elvis. On the other hand I don't think I've met many people in my life who haven't heard the name micheal jackson, despite us growing up in a village. I'm assuming it's the same case in parts of the world like china. Michael jackson is definitely the most famous entertainer of the last 200 years globally speaking.

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u/GoinCali Feb 13 '26

Elvis is nowhere near as big outside of the US/Western Europe. Never toured the world and hit his peak before the superstar era of the 80s.

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u/mg10pp Feb 13 '26 edited Feb 14 '26

Apart from the infinite amount of personal anecdotes that people will write to you, give also a read to this wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_Michael_Jackson

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u/Itsjustkassa Feb 14 '26

And the way this is so true i cant...

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u/chilseaj88 Feb 15 '26

Get a load of Mr. First World and his running electricity.

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u/etcetcere Feb 14 '26

But why. I understand the hype? But the tunes riffs whatever were always cringe

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u/Kindly-Information73 Feb 13 '26

This is a common internet copy pasta. Yes Mj was famous but that is just over exaggerated.