People of today, Lady Gaga isn’t the first one to push boundaries of what we are willing to accept from our stars in terms of eccentricity. Elton John started blazing trails of strange looking clothing, obnoxiously large earrings and oversized sunglasses back in the 70s, and his reign as a pop icon has lasted for more than four decades. Just to give you some perspective on how popular he is, here are some stats I find unbelievable. He’s sold more than 250 million albums, putting him in the same class as Elvis, the Beatles, Michael Jackson and the Rolling Stones; those numbers helped by his seven straight number one albums in the US. Oh, in case you weren’t impressed enough, his tribute to Princess Dianna A Candle in the Wind, sold 33 million (THAT’S RIGHT 33 MILLION) copies. (To put that in perspective, it takes one million copies sold to make a record platinum certified and five million to make it diamond certified.) He’s still relevant too, check out Elton at the Grammys with Eminem.
They probably consider themselves a folk duo, but Simon and Garfunkel are pretty much everything a pop band should be. From the folk mold, they sampled acoustic instrumentation, simple harmonies and traditional song structure. But folk in many cases had become political (like Dylan) or attempted to emulate the common man by sounding like him (like Woodie Guthrie) or was rough around the edges (like Pete Seeger), yet Simon and Garfunkel inherited none of these characteristics. Their songs are finely polished and record not man at his most weary, but man at a stage of perfection, with graceful harmonies that are caressing enough to put a baby to sleep.
The Music Court 
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