History YMMV / ElvisPresley

* NeverLiveItDown: Elvis will always have a negative reputation as being a white face of black music, as he was the one to become the face of rock & roll, over the many black musicians who shaped the genre before him, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among others. A particularly infamous example is how Big Mama Thornton - then an up and coming black singer from Alabama - saw her rendition of "Hound Dog" sell about 1/20th what Elvis' version sold three years later. Elvis, to his credit, was a diehard Fats Domino fan, and wondered openly why people listened to him over Fats. In general, he always gave credit to his African-American influences, compared to certain [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand later]] and [[Music/LedZeppelin hipper]] blues-influenced white rock performers, who became notorious for either claiming that blues songs with well-attested authors were "traditional" to avoid paying royalties, or outright plagiarizing them. The Comeback Special tastefully acknowledged his debt to Black music with a sequence that starts with Elvis talking a bit about how rock music evolved from GospelMusic, followed by a cut to Black dancer[=/=]choreographer Claude Thompson, wearing a serious expression on his face, doing a solo dance to the old spiritual song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", with the implication that he represents the spirit of the people brought over from Africa into slavery ("Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long, long way from home"), before Elvis joins a mostly Black group of singers and dancers in a gospel medley.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: In "Return to Sender", the singer tries to send his apology letter to his former lover, only to be sent with a "Return to sender, / Address unknown, / No such number, / No such zone" (referring to postal district/zone numbers that were inplemented by the United States Post Office Department in 1943). Ironically, within nine months of the song's release in 1962, all postal zone numbers were replaced with the nationwide rollout of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code ZIP [Zone Improvement Plan] Codes]] by the United States Postal Service in 1963, making the song seem dated before its time.

* ArchivePanic: Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} counts the total number of songs he recorded at '''786''', spread out over dozens of studio and live albums, and countless compilations and box sets.

* NeverLiveItDown: Elvis will always have a negative reputation as being a white face of black music, as he was the one to become the face of rock & roll, over the many black musicians who shaped the genre before him, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among others. A particularly infamous example is how Big Mama Thornton - then an up and coming black singer from Alabama - saw her rendition of "Hound Dog" sell about 1/20th what Elvis' version sold three years later. Elvis, to his credit, was a diehard Fats Domino fan, and wondered openly why people listened to him over Fats. In general, he always gave credit to his African-American influences, compared to certain [[Music/TheRollingStonesBand later]] and [[Music/LedZeppelin hipper]] blues-influenced white rock performers, who became notorious for either claiming that blues songs with well-attested authors were "traditional" to avoid paying royalties, or outright plagiarizing them. The Comeback Special tastefully acknowledged his debt to Black music with a sequence that starts with Elvis talking a bit about how rock music evolved from GospelMusic, followed by a cut to Black dancer[=/=]choreographer Claude Thompson, wearing a serious expression on his face, doing a solo dance to the old spiritual song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", with the implication that he represents the spirit of the people brought over from Africa into slavery ("Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home"), before Elvis joins a mostly Black group of singers and dancers in a gospel medley.

* NeverLiveItDown: Elvis will always have a negative reputation as being a white face of black music, as he was the one to become the face of rock & roll, over the many black musicians who shaped the genre before him, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among others. A particularly infamous example is how Big Mama Thornton - then an up and coming black singer from Alabama - saw her rendition of "Hound Dog" sell about 1/20th what Elvis' version sold three years later. Elvis, to his credit, was a diehard Fats Domino fan, and wondered openly why people listened to him over Fats. In general, he always gave credit to his African-American influences, compared to certain [[Music/TheRollingStones later]] and [[Music/LedZeppelin hipper]] blues-influenced white rock performers, who became notorious for either claiming that blues songs with well-attested authors were "traditional" to avoid paying royalties, or outright plagiarizing them. The Comeback Special tastefully acknowledged his debt to Black music with a sequence that starts with Elvis talking a bit about how rock music evolved from GospelMusic, followed by a cut to Black dancer[=/=]choreographer Claude Thompson, wearing a serious expression on his face, doing a solo dance to the old spiritual song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", with the implication that he represents the spirit of the people brought over from Africa into slavery ("Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home"), before Elvis joins a mostly Black group of singers and dancers in a gospel medley.

* NeverLiveItDown: Elvis will always have a negative reputation as being a white face of black music, as he was the one to become the face of rock & roll, over the many black musicians who shaped the genre before him, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among others. A particularly infamous example is how Big Mama Thornton - then an up and coming black singer from Alabama - saw her rendition of "Hound Dog" sell about 1/20th what Elvis' version sold three years later. Elvis, to his credit, was a diehard Fats Domino fan, and wondered openly why people listened to him over Fats. In general, he always gave credit to his African-American influences, compared to certain [[Music/TheRollingStones later]] and [[Music/LedZeppelin hipper]] blues-influenced white rock performers, who became notorious for either claiming that blues songs with well-attested authors were "traditional" to avoid paying royalties, or outright plagiarizing them.

* StrictlyFormula: While Elvis's roots were forever based in 12-bar blues and gospel, he would expand his musical repertoire throughout his career, moving from rock to pop, novelty, worship, and even funk and proto-disco near the end of his life with songs like "I Got a Feeling in My Body" and "Moody Blue". The same was not true of his 1960's movies, which began to lapse into a easily replicated formula after ''GI Blues'': Elvis plays a free-spirited young man -- either a sociable, friendly guy or a gruff lone wolf, but always a romantic at heart -- that blows into town; he gets involved with a girl that's madly in love with him, tries to get involved with a girl that can't stand him, or both; he performs several diagetic songs, both on and off-stage; he starts, or gets roped into, a brawl at some point (which he wins, or at least is winning when it's broken up); he participates in some kind of vehicle race (especially common after the climax of ''Film/VivaLasVegas''); a happy ending, where Elvis emerges triumphant and (usually) gets the girl.

* BrokenBase: No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one-of-a-kind performer. At the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him more or less making a career out of singing other people's songs and reaching stratospheric heights thanks to the racist American music industry favoring white artists, while leaving the original versions, often by Black musicians, in obscurity. To Elvis' credit, he was himself on the latter side - he was fully aware of the effect he was having, and was not ''at all'' happy about it, especially since he wound up doing this to his idol, and the reason he got into music in the first place - Music/FatsDomino. He makes a passing mention to rock & roll's roots in African-American musical traditions - rhythm & blues and gospel music - in the middle of his comeback special in 1968. Of course, it's a little awkward seeing him say this to an almost entirely white audience. Regardless of Elvis' own feelings on the matter, it hasn't stopped the base-breaking over his impact.

* BrokenBase: No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one-of-a-kind performer. At the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him more or less making a career out of singing other people's songs and reaching stratospheric heights thanks to his white privilege, while leaving the original versions, often by Black musicians, in obscurity. To Elvis' credit, he was himself on the latter side - he was fully aware of the effect he was having, and was not ''at all'' happy about it, especially since he wound up doing this to his idol, and the reason he got into music in the first place - Music/FatsDomino. He makes a passing mention to rock & roll's roots in African-American musical traditions - rhythm & blues and gospel music - in the middle of his comeback special in 1968. Of course, it's a little awkward seeing him say this to an almost entirely white audience. Regardless of Elvis' own feelings on the matter, it hasn't stopped the base-breaking over his impact.

* SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct: Elvis is often remembered as starring in a lot of movies despite not being a good actor, and this was famously ribbed on by Creator/EddieMurphy in his ''Delirious'' special ("Elvis sang so good, they put him in movies; he couldn't act!") Elvis actually had a perfectly acceptable screen presence and undeniable charisma and sincerity; it was the films themselves that let him down, and didn't use him to his full potential.

* BrokenBase:
** No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one-of-a-kind performer. At the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him more or less making a career out of singing other people's songs and reaching stratospheric heights thanks to his white privilege, while leaving the original versions, often by Black musicians, in obscurity. To Elvis' credit, he was himself on the latter side - he was fully aware of the effect he was having, and was not ''at all'' happy about it, especially since he wound up doing this to his idol, and the reason he got into music in the first place - Music/FatsDomino. He makes a passing mention to rock & roll's roots in African-American musical traditions - rhythm & blues and gospel music - in the middle of his comeback special in 1968. Of course, it's a little awkward seeing him say this to an almost entirely white audience. Regardless of Elvis' own feelings on the matter, it hasn't stopped the base-breaking over his impact.
** His relationship with Priscilla Presley is this. She was only 14 when they met and he did many questionable things to her throughout their marriage.

* BrokenBase: No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one-of-a-kind performer. At the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him more or less making a career out of singing other people's songs and reaching stratospheric heights thanks to his white privilege, while leaving the original versions, often by Black musicians, in obscurity. To Elvis' credit, he was himself on the latter side - he was fully aware of the effect he was having, and was not ''at all'' happy about it, especially since he wound up doing this to his idol, and the reason he got into music in the first place - Music/FatsDomino. He makes a passing mention to rock & roll's roots in African-American musical traditions - rhythm & blues and gospel music - in the middle of his comeback special in 1968. Of course, it's a little awkward seeing him say this to an almost entirely white audience. Regardless of Elvis' own feelings on the matter, it hasn't stopped the base-breaking over his impact.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Elvis was a huge fan of Music/FatsDomino, and invited him to his first concert in Vegas in 1969. After the show, Elvis publicly called Fats "the real King of Rock N' Roll" and got a picture taken with him. 'Til his dying day, Fats said that picture was one of his most treasured possessions.

* SugarWiki/HeReallyCanAct: Elvis is often remembered as starring in a lot of movies despite not being a good actor, and this was famously ribbed on by Creator/EddieMurphy in his ''Delirious'' special ("Elvis sang so good, they put him in movies; he couldn't act!") Elvis actually had a perfectly acceptable screen presence; it was the films themselves that let him down, and didn't use him to his full potential.

* SignatureSong: A few candidates here, actually! "Heartbreak Hotel," "Jailhouse Rock," "Hound Dog" and "Blue Suede Shoes."
** For latter-day Elvis, it's "Suspicious Minds", "Burning Love" and (for his live concerts) "Can't Help Falling in Love".

* FandomRivalry: With Music/TheBeatles. The fact that they had their artistic zenith which helped transform popular music in the [[UsefulNotes/TheSixties late 1960's]] while Elvis was going through his DorkAge draws a lot of unfavorable comparisons. The fact that Elvis then tried to get US President UsefulNotes/RichardNixon to ban the band from the USA, seemingly out of sheer jealousy, even as he regularly covered their songs in his concerts also embitters fans.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one-of-a-kind performer. At the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him more or less making a career out of singing other people's songs and reaching stratospheric heights thanks to his white privilege, while leaving the original versions, often by Black musicians, in obscurity. To Elvis' credit, he was himself on the latter side - he was fully aware of the effect he was having, and was not ''at all'' happy about it, especially since he wound up doing this to his idol, and the reason he got into music in the first place - Music/FatsDomino. He makes a passing mention to rock & roll's roots in African-American musical traditions - rhythm & blues and gospel music - in the middle of his comeback special in 1968. Of course, it's a little awkward seeing him say this to an almost entirely white audience. Regardless of Elvis' own feelings on the matter, it hasn't stopped the base-breaking over his impact.

* DorkAge:
** The peak of his career ended when he was drafted into the US Army in 1958, but when he completed his service in 1960, he seemed poised for a comeback. Unfortunately, his manager Colonel Tom Parker pushed him into a film career, which saw him star in a long string of StrictlyFormula musical comedies that, while mostly successful at the box office, were almost universally panned by critics. Worse, the heavy production schedule (he was making two or three movies a year for the whole of TheSixties) was cutting into his music career. Most of the hits he had in the '60s came from the soundtracks to his movies, which were met with diminishing returns starting mid-decade as UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion caused his style of RockAndRoll, already quite sanitized by then compared to the edge of his GloryDays, to feel increasingly out-of-date. Until his [[Music/ElvisNBCTVSpecial televised comeback special in 1968]], he did not perform live after 1961 and only recorded one album of non-soundtrack music after 1962. By the time his career bottomed out with the failure of the film ''Clambake'' and its soundtrack in 1967, music enthusiasts saw him as a joke and his former fans saw him as a has-been. His comeback special inspired a CareerResurrection, and while he never again enjoyed the mega-stardom he had in TheFifties (Music/JohnLennon, upon Elvis' passing, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoJAdTuFMh0 remarked]] that Elvis "died when he went in the Army" and that the rest of his career was [[FranchiseZombie a "living death"]]), he still found success as a {{country|Music}} and adult contemporary musician. By the time he died in 1977, he had regained his position as pop music royalty and the King of Rock & Roll.
** That said, the last few years of his life, often derisively referred to as the "Fat Elvis" period (a term [[http://www.recmusicbeatles.com/public/files/bbs/jl_yo.playboy/lennon4.html popularized]] by Lennon), are remembered as a pretty ignoble way for a legend to go out. Starting in 1973, Elvis' health went into decline due to both drug addiction and a very heavy touring and production schedule, and before long, he was stumbling out of limousines high on barbiturates; after Elvis' autopsy, his doctor saw his license to practice medicine suspended for three months due to all the sedatives, amphetamines, and narcotics he had prescribed the singer. His divorce from his wife Priscilla also took a steep toll on his finances, leaving him less able to afford his extravagant lifestyle. A 1976 show in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState Syracuse, New York]] went down in history for all the wrong reasons when the ''Syracuse Post-Dispatch'' published [[http://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/08/fat_puffy_has-been_elvis_panned_in_syracuse_video.html a scathing review]] calling him a "fat, puffy has-been" who seemed to be going through the motions, while numerous other shows were canceled outright due to Elvis not being in good enough health to perform. That same year, Elvis' father Vernon, by that point also his ''de facto'' manager, fired three bodyguards who had been members of Elvis' "Memphis Mafia" clique, leading them to co-write a tell-all book called ''Elvis: What Happened?'' that came out shortly before his death in 1977. As [[UndignifiedDeath the final insult]], when Elvis finally died on August 16, it was in one of the bathrooms at his Graceland estate, leading to a popular {{urban legend|s}} claiming that he had died while sitting on the toilet (and many jokes about "the King on his throne").

* NeverLiveItDown:
** "Fat Elvis." See DorkAge.
** Elvis will always have a negative reputation as being a white face of black music, as he was the one to become the face of rock & roll, over the many black musicians who shaped the genre before him, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among others. A particularly infamous example is how Big Mama Thornton - then an up and coming black singer from Alabama - saw her rendition of "Hound Dog" sell about 1/20th what Elvis' version sold three years later. Elvis, to his credit, was a diehard Fats Domino fan, and wondered openly why people listened to him over Fats. In general, he always gave credit to his African-American influences, compared to certain [[Music/TheRollingStones later]] and [[Music/LedZeppelin hipper]] blues-influenced white rock performers, who became notorious for either claiming that blues songs with well-attested authors were "traditional" to avoid paying royalties, or outright plagiarizing them.
** Elvis dying [[TheCanKickedHim on the toilet]] (or as Music/LivingColour put it, the King was sitting on his throne), has been a source of BlackComedy for decades.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one-of-a-kind performer. At the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him more or less making a career out of singing other people's songs and reaching stratospheric heights thanks to his white privilege, while leaving the original versions, often by Black musicians, in obscurity. To Elvis' credit, he was himself on the latter side - he was fully aware of the effect he was having, and was not ''at all'' happy about it, especially since he wound up doing this to his idol, and the reason he got into music in the first place - Music/FatsDomino. He makes a passing mention to rock & roll's roots in African-American musical traditions - rhythm & blues and gospel music - in the middle of his comeback special in 1968. Of course, that got a little awkward, as he was saying this to an almost entirely white audience.

** ''”Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.”''

** Elvis will always have a negative reputation as being a white face of black music, as he was the one to become the face of rock & roll, over the many black musicians who shaped the genre before him, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, among others. A particularly infamous example is how Big Mama Thornton - then an up and coming black singer from Alabama - saw her rendition of "Hound Dog" sell about 1/20th what Elvis' version sold three years later. Elvis, to his credit, was a diehard Fats Domino fan, and wondered openly why people listened to him over Fats. In general, he always gave credit to his African-American influences, compared to certain [[Music/TheRollingStones later]] and [[Music/LedZeppelin hipper]] blues-influenced white rock performers, who became notorious for either claiming that blues songs with well-attested authors were "traditional" to avoid paying royalties, or outright plagiarising them.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Compared to what some pop stars in the 2020s get away with now, Elvis' performances, which were once infamously censored on ''Series/TheEdSullivanShow'', look almost quaint. It's hard to understand how blatant and transgressive his sexual presence actually was, especially when washed-up "Fat Elvis" in the white Vegas jumpsuit is many people's go-to image of him.

* BaseBreakingCharacter: No one will deny that Elvis was one of the greatest singers in music history and was a one of a kind performer, but at the same time, many believe his success and fame was unwarranted due to him effectively making a career out of singing other people's songs while leaving the original versions in obscurity.

** "Blue Suede Shoes" is another one; it was actually a big hit for Carl Perkins before Elvis' own version was successful.
** Presley was also late to the party in recording "Shake Rattle and Roll"; his version actually combines elements of the previous hit versions by Big Joe Turner and [[Music/BillHaleyAndHisComets Bill Haley]] (Turner's lyrics, Haley's arrangement, though alternate takes with Haley's lyrics have been released, too). Possibly too late to the party as it was the first (new) Elvis RCA single to underperform on the charts.

** "My Boy" was originally written by Music/ClaudeFrancois as "Parce que je t'aime mon enfant".