Michael Jackson's Ex-Manager Angry At The Rolling Stone's Ranking

The most controversial ranking of the year strikes again! While Celine Dion fans protested in front of the New York headquarters of the magazine, many people were also surprised to see Michael Jackson, one of the greatest artists of all time, so low on the list of the greatest 200 vocalists of all time. He was only the 86th.

And the first one to be upset by this, was the king of pop ex-manager himself, John Branca. He even took the time to post a reel on Instagram explaining why not putting Michael Jackson and Celine Dion on this list was a huge mistake. In the title of his video, he even ends up with "Are you kidding me?"

In this video, he says this list is the "supposed" list of the 200 best vocalists of all time, and he highlights the word "supposed" in red to clearly mention that this list is wrong or very subjective. He then talks about the fact that he and the founder of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, went to the same school, Chadwick. Jann got graduated and John got expelled, and he still wonders why.

He keeps going, saying this list is "bizarre", and mentions that Celine Dion, one of the greatest vocalists of all time of pop music, is not even on the list. For him: "she's top 10 minimum, top 20". And after, he mentions of course his former client, Michael Jackson, who is for him "one of the most influential vocalists in history", who "drops 60 some odd spaces from one poll to the next" in this controversial list.

Trying to find an answer to what happened, he thinks that maybe It's because of "political correctness" or because they have haters in the critics of this magazine that Michael Jackson is so low. He then asks "who are these critics?", and ends up saying "we need a board of overseers so we can critique the critics". Well, It seems complicated for that, since Rolling Stone never said this ranking was objective, It's "their" ranking.

Finally, for him:  "Michael Jackson and Celine Dion are two of the most important and successful individual vocalists of all time, including Mariah Carey and Elvis Presley, they both belong in the top 10, I don't read Rolling Stone anymore". Well, seems crystal clear. But what's even more interesting is the magazine's answer, which we haven't talked about a lot.

Well, Rolling Stone never answered, but they said something exciting at the beginning of the article: "Before you start scrolling (and commenting), keep in mind that this is the Greatest Singers list, not the Greatest Voices List. Talent is impressive; genius is transcendent". This sentence says it all, they knew they would have a lot of critics about this list.

And this comment comes back to what Michael Jackson's ex-manager John Branca said about "critique the critics". The problem here, and that's why fans are so angry, is that no one can do anything about this list. This list was not delivered by an institution, by the government or by any special organization that represents the population, journalists delivered it from a magazine that has been objective, of course, but also subjective on many topics.

This ranking is Rolling Stone's ranking, not everyone's ranking. But of course, Rolling Stone is such a popular magazine in music that people thought they would mostly agree.

The ranking of Michael Jackson on this list also brought back other angry fans because of another article that was published in Rolling Stone magazine a few months ago. And one of those fans (@d_rickmj) commented on John Branca's video on Instagram: "What can we expect from the people who named Harry Styles "the new king of pop"?".

Yes, Rolling Stone said a few months ago that Harry Styles was the new king of pop. And not only the fans were angry. Michael Jackson's family, particularly his nephew, Taj, decided to answer to the article on Twitter.

As you can see, Michael Jackson's nephew asked Rolling Stone to never use this title again for anybody else than his uncle. For him, there's only one king of pop. And MJ fans will never say otherwise.