This isn’t a “go back in time and assassinate” someone question. It’s just their musical career never takes off and thus any music they ever would have made is no longer in this timeline.
Ted Nugent. He is just a complete scumbag and without his shitty music career he never would have impacted so many people with his gross bullshit. The world would be better off if his music never existed.
That would likely have the benefit of saving us from Kid Rock too.
I was about to give the example of Ted Nugent in the body of the post because he’s just such a douche. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the same.
Nugent is a truly despisable creature, but his playing in Amboy Dukes’ “Journey to the Center of the Mind” album is very good.
Ted Nugent deserves to have more than just his career erased. Fucking admitted pedophile piece of shit.
Mariah Carey. I work retail. If you know, you know.
I worked retail for exactly one Christmas. The day I worked the toy department they had one album on repeat for eight hours. I hated Christmas music for years, and now it just annoys me.
I won’t say his name but I stopped someone’s musical career once. He was an up and coming young guitarist, getting performing gigs here and there, and teaching guitar students to help pay his bills while waiting for a break. I took some lessons from him and as part of general chatting it came out that I worked with computers. He thought that was interesting and asked good questions, so I brought him some programming books. He became a full time programmer a couple months later and a very good one too. I’m glad it worked out for him, but I always wonder what we lost.
My coach used to tell the story of a really promising track and field athlete who might have had a serious shot on the world scene, but quit to play in his band called The Barenaked Ladies. I never fact checked that, so I have no idea if it was true or not. But it stuck with me because it made me think of all the people who might have been incredible in one field or another who just never gave it a shot.
“Ike At The Mike” by Howard Waldrop. Award winning short story. An elderly Dwight Eisenhower is invited to the White House. Ike famously gave up his West Point cadetship to become a jazz musician. Among the attendees honoring him is the young Elvis A. Presley, Senator from Mississippi.
Did… Did you create Bill Gates and Windows??
Nah, Windows was supposedly inspired by NASCAR. Bill saw how people loved seeing constant crashes, and he got an idea…
Which books? Also, how long ago was this?
This was decades ago. I don’t remember the specific books but they were about programming in C. By now that is considered a neckbeard language. The first thing the guy did, with like zero experience, was write a video compression program in C.
Michael Jackson. Having his career fail during the childhood “Jackson 5” phase. Better for him and a lotta other people.
Last i remember he would play with kids but didn’t sexually abuse them. Was there any more infor came out?
Oh boy, yeah, a lot more came out about it. There’s actually been a lot over the years, but a few years ago a pretty serious documentary came out about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaving_Neverland
Outside the box: Robert Elliot, a charter pilot who flew and killed Jim Croce by crashing into a tree on takeoff. Pilot error was found to be the cause as the overweight 57 year old pilot was unable to drive to the airport so ran for 3 miles, from his motel to the hangar, to be on time for the flight. The run exacerbated his coronary artery disease, causing him to tunnel vision and not see the tree.
Wasn’t sure if I should believe you or not, so I looked it up
…I’m still not sure if I can believe this
Ooh. If we didn’t have the big bopper we’d still have Richie Valenz
I thought about that and that’s why I picked Croce - different flight than Big Bopper, Richie Valenz, and Buddy Holly.
Similar story, when I was 12 I was late for the school bus and ran about 2 blocks with a full backpack and a snare drum. Ended up puking in the bus aisle about halfway through the hour long ride. Basically the same thing.
Chris Brown because fuck that guy.
It would be super simple too, just obtain footage of him beating the shit out of Rihanna and make it public, his music career would surely be destroyed in seconds.
The brutal details of Rihanna’s domestic violence report against Chris Brown and the photo of her injuries are so common as to have been a copypasta for over a decade, and his fans still worship him.
Exactly, I don’t know how he has fans at this point. The celebrity worship is crazy.
Cause half of them think its okay to beat women, and half of them want to be the women he beats.
Cause the weird cults of personality that form around fame and fortune are beyond rational comprehension.
Better to do it early so he never beats rihanna in the first place.
I’d do the inverse of this and see what might have happened if Charles Manson had had a successful music career. I heard an album of his songs and they were actually pretty good, kind of a mix of The Beach Boys and The Doors. Maybe if he’d sold some more songs then he wouldn’t have gone into the whole murder cult thing.
But then again maybe it would have positioned him to be way worse and we’re actually living in the universe where somebody stopped Manson from achieving true wealth and power and like leading a nationwide death cult or something.
I think it would have been better for Brittany if she hadn’t been famous.
Black Eyed Peas, I feel like that band was forced on me for like a decade.
Linkin park. Cuz in the end, they didn’t even matter.
I hate how people on Reddit have a fucking bizarre fascination with this band. Yeah, I was 13 once, too, and also thought it was deep then. Then I grew up.
I enjoy some of their latest stuff. Rip Chester. That last album especially I thought was great.
I own Meteora and when I try to listen to it in ViMusic the program serves me so many iterations of it I don’t know which is the original.
Elvis. Just to see what happens.
Nothing.
Elvis didn’t invent anything musically, he was just the first white guy to do what Black guys had been doing.
If it wasn’t Elvis, it would have been someone else a couple months later.
Actually, that was one thing I considered. If he hadn’t become a superstar by never writing a single song, would it have changed the industry’s thoughts on using pretty faces to sell other people’s songs?
“Though I’m not the first king of controversy
I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
To do Black music so selfishly
And use it to get myself wealthy (Hey!)
There’s a concept that works
Twenty million other white rappers emerge
But no matter how many fish in the sea
It’d be so empty without me” - EminemWell maybe he was the one with the charisma to do what black guys were doing.
A lot more piano probably.
Jerry Lee Lewis was poised to be one of the first white rock and roll superstars until his career was rocked with scandal. Had that happened it is very possible that the piano would become the predominant instrument in white rock.
The genre already has its roots in jump blues and boogie woogie, both piano driven styles. Little Richard and Fats Domino were at the top of the charts.
Had a piano player been the king of white rock then you would have likely seen a lot more artists picking up that instrument rather than the guitar.
Jerry Lee Lewis became fairly successful in Country after his Rock career faltered. Most country musicians still play the guitar rather than the piano though.
The most popular country music star contemporary to Jerry Lee Lewis was a guitar player. Guy by the name of Hank Williams.
True, but many of country’s conventions were well established when he got into it. When he got into rock it was new, especially white rock. I think he would have a more significant influence there.
Nah, guitar is the musical equivalent to football (soccer). It’s cheap, easy to learn, you can take it with you, and you can play with your friends.
The trope of a kid turning up with their guitar couldn’t happen with a piano.
You’re right. I shouldn’t have suggested that the piano would be more popular than guitar, only that you might have heard a lot more piano if Jerry Lee had been the face of white rock instead of Elvis.
People are going to play whatever they can get their hands on. I remember reading in a Muddy Waters biography about someone who started off writing songs using an old piano wire attached to a shack because that’s all he had available.
Nothing wrong with suggesting a different idea :)
It would have been cool to watch 90’s kids humping pianos to band practice with their friends though :D
So you’re saying we could have had the keytar decades earlier?
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We’ve had that movie. Now let’s see the Elvis one.
Tbh the movie really didn’t push the idea very far.
Yeah, I actually really like that movie, because it pulls all the right heart strings for me, but overall they didn’t really explore all the impacts of the Beatles being gone on the actual music industry, besides a runaway joke about Oasis. It mostly focuses on how the protagonist makes a career out of his special knowledge.
Amy Winehouse. If she stayed a blues singer in London she might not have had so many drug issues made worse by fame.
Drake.
Wanker.
Probably a very unpopular opinion but…
Taylor Swift. I am so sick of seeing her name mentioned all the time.
Courtney Love already did this
