“Beautiful”: the singer James Brown predicted will live forever
From Oasis to Irene Cara, there have been plenty of hit songs that have discussed the idea of eternal life, even though there’s no proof that immortality exists.
Besides, the entire idea of living forever sounds pretty horrific anyway. Getting old is something that most people live in fear of happening, so allowing yourself to exist eternally while your body slowly decays and loses all of its necessary functions for a comfortable life would be nothing but a dismal affair. Nobody really wants to live forever, and I say with a relative degree of confidence that nobody born in my lifetime will ever achieve this ghastly feat.
Of course, a lot of the time, when artists talk about living forever, it isn’t actually meant to be taken literally, and they usually mean it in the sense that someone will be remembered for eternity, not that they’ll keep on breathing well into their third millennium. Living forever in someone’s memory is arguably a much more pleasant affair, and while you won’t have any knowledge of whether this will happen to you after you perish, you can certainly hope that people will fondly reflect on your existence long after you’re gone.
This is the sort of sentiment that is spoken about from artist to artist outside of the context of songs, with some declaring that other artists have the potential to live forever as a result of their artistic endeavours and maintain a long-lasting relevance for an extended period after their death.
James Brown may have departed in his corporeal form on Christmas Day in 2006, but what he left behind was a legacy, and something for other artists to look up to and hopefully match the level of. As one of the most exceptional entertainers to have ever graced the planet, the fact that he’s referred to in many circles as the ‘Godfather of Soul’ ought to indicate that he’s going to remain present in the minds of people for a long time.
Much like Brown, who hasn’t left the consciousness of people in the 20 years since his death, one artist who is certainly still in the hearts of many is Elvis Presley, who, during his lifetime, earned himself a similar honorific title to Brown, being dubbed the ‘King of Rock and Roll’.
Presley touched millions around the world with his work, and Brown was one of them, as he declared in an interview many years later, where he declared that, in spite of his flaws and the criticisms he received from black artists for appropriating their work, he was a true icon who deserved to be held in the highest regard.
“Elvis and I were very good friends up until the last minute of his bodily life,” Brown stated, emotionally shaken by the loss of his dear friend. “But he’ll always live because of the fact he was such a beautiful man. I don’t care what nobody says. I know Elvis. There are a lot of rumours. I love what he done for the people and the chance he gave me.”
It’s hardly surprising that there was a mutual respect between them, given how they both contributed to significant changes to their respective genres, but for Brown to say that Elvis will live on forever has so far proven to be an accurate assessment of how his legacy will be measured. Undoubtedly, the further we get from Brown’s passing, he’ll still be regarded in the same way.
