The Greatest Musician of our Time

My brother Scott called me yesterday morning on my drive to work and asked me a question that I was sure would ruin my whole day. Fortunately my day at work was busy so I was able to concentrate on something more than this question. The question is this. “Mike, who do you think the greatest musician of our time is”? I need your help on this.

Here is my take on question. The first thing that must be done is to define “our time”. Well I am 27 years old and my brother is 31 so that really narrows it down a bit. Also you have to define “greatest musician” of which I believe is just that (greatest musician). This, I don’t think would include “most successful” but just the greatest. Now you can make the argument that the greatest is decided by how successful one is. So this is how I define this question.

My first thought was David Grohl, front man of the band the Foo Fighters and former member of the band Nirvana. David was the drummer of Nirvana and then moved on to be the lead singer and guitarist for the band the Foo Fighters. He is a drummer, guitarist, singer, song writer, and who knows what else. He has had upwards of twenty songs that have hit the top ten charts between Nirvana and the Foo’s. Dave is obviously a very talented musician.

Then I started to think of a man by the name of Danny Elfman. Danny not only had a successful contemporary band called Oingo Boingo but he also became a composer for the movie industry. Danny now writes music for many T.V. shows and movies of which include Nightmare Before Christmas, Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, the Hulk, Men in Black 1 & 2, Army of Darkness and so on. Just look up Wikipedia for a full list. I think Danny also plays every instrument known to man and plays them all well. There are many other movie composers that are likely as talented but I can’t think of any that also had a very popular contemporary band as Danny did.

It probably is impossible to identify the “greatest musician” of our time due to relativity, but I will have to say that my opinion is probably going to lie with Danny Elfman. I could be terribly mistaken so if you can please give me your opinion of who you think is “The Greatest Musician of our Time” I would be very much obliged.