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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason why Elvis Presley<\/a> was called the King. It\u2019s more than a boss, more than a prince, more than anything else. The King has a kind of divine element to them, as if they\u2019re chosen from something above, something bigger. That\u2019s how Elvis felt \u2013 a force that seemed to emerge from above and shake everything up with the shake of his hips. From his first breakout single, nothing was ever the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n It sounds like an overstatement, but it\u2019s not. Sure, Elvis\u2019 entire brand is basically just appropriating what came before, taking bits and pieces of blues or country<\/a>, especially taking bits and pieces from the work of black American artists, and repackaging them into something new and more sellable at a more ignorant time. But it wasn\u2019t that he was simply just whitewashing it and making it vanilla.\u00a0<\/p>\n There was always an appreciation there as Elvis certainly played a part in desegregating the radio with the success of his music, in spite of the initial outrage over his seductive style and somewhat countercultural look.\u00a0<\/p>\n But really, what made an impact was just the sheer scale of his success. Pretty immediately after his first singles, he was charting. Pretty quickly, his crowd sizes were swelling and swelling as his influence spread overseas until it was total mania. Before Beatlemania, it was Elvis who introduced that kind of manic fan culture as audiences at his shows screamed until they fainted, and every move he made was swiftly mobbed. When he was enlisted in the army, countless fans desperately wrote to the actual government<\/a> of the United States begging them to keep him safe or at least begging them not to make him shave his head.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, as we know well, success and sales aren\u2019t always one and the same. Time and time again, the separation between those two things is shown, making it surprising that even in Elvis\u2019 decades-long career, and in a career that is historically powerful, the number of number ones he had isn\u2019t as high as might be expected<\/a>.<\/p>\n