I think my comment is also motivated by a conversation I had a few months ago with a 23 year old graduate student. I’m in my early 30s now and I had mentioned to him some TV shows I enjoyed in re-runs growing up – Facts of Life, Different Strokes, Growing Pains, Threes Company. Even though he is plugged into popular culture and had TV growing up, he had no knowledge of these shows that I remember fondly, their characters, or theme songs and I was taken aback.

It took me a few minutes to remember that the popular culture of my youth is hardly any better than that of a younger generation, and that what I remember fondly would seem hokey and outdated to a younger generation with different concerns. Why should a kid who grew up on Malcom in the Middle check out Growing Pains re-runs unless he is a TV historian or aficionado? Can he talk about those shows with his friends? Not really. Are they “essential viewing,” no. Some things — I Love Lucy, Johnny Cash, et cetera — may survive through the generations, but very few. I came to realize how unreasonable I was being in expecting a younger generation to like the stuff my generation liked.

So Paul Dennis made the comment about Tim McGraw being forgotten in 30 years but not Glen Campbell. Campbell hasn’t had a hit or been part of mass culture for twenty years already, and McGraw is still having hits today. I doubt my grandkids will care one whiff about Tim McGraw or Glen Campbell, and quite frankly, I see little reason why they should.

But it seems odd to say Mc Graw will be forgotten in 30 years (many of his fans will be in their 50s or 60s in 30 years) while Campbell will be remembered (his fanbase will be between 70 and 100, but mostly dead).

But I think country fans who are my age and who are from my area of the U.S. are more likely to remember MC Hammer, Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw and Saved by the Bell than Glen Campbell. That’s not to make any comment on artistic/entertainment quality, just what was popular when we were growing up. We’re not likely to remember Campbell because we were never introduced to him.

And I’d hope Campbell fans are ok with that, just as I had to learn to be ok with the fact that a younger generation doesn’t give one crap about the TV shows that I treasured as a kid. Likewise, most Glenn Campbell fans might not be interested in Taylor Swift or Hunter Hayes; I hope they could understand why Swift and Hayes fans would return the disinterest, and be perfectly justified in doing so.

I should hasten to point out that, even before hitting really big nationally in 1967 with John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind”, Glen did a number of earlier recordings, including the much-covered “Long Black Limousine”, and the Buffy Sainte-Marie protest song “Universal Solider.” They very much showed the man’s diversity and cagey song selection from very early on (early-to-mid 1960s).

however, my first contact with glenn campbells music was “galveston”, which is still my absolute favourite from his musical portfolio. my mother must have liked his hairstyle better, judging from some old photos. looking back, that one, lynn anderson’s “rose garden” and johnny cash’s “ring of fire” were the tunes that kicked off my lifelong love for the genre. the country universe on swiss radio was a very tiny quadrant to get started.

I’m 30 now and have been listening to country music for 20 years. “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “Southern Nights” are the only Campbell songs I can identify, and until just now I had no idea who sung “Rhinestone Cowboy”. I don’t think any of my friends have ever mentioned Glen Campbell to me, much less tried to have a conversation about him. I can’t think of any Glen Campbell references on currently popular TV or radio programs.

No doubt Campbell was well known to my parents generation, but probably not to mine. And I’d be shocked if more than a tiny percentage of today’s teenagers know anything other than a passing fact about him – if that. Therefore, I’d be surprised if he is remembered in any meaningful sense by more than a very small percent of individuals in 30 years. Hard core music fans, perhaps. But outside of that?

Getting back to Campbell, his career is very analogous to that of Dolly Parton, in that both of them have done it all and some of it they did very well.

Glen wasn’t the songwriter that Parton is, but Dolly isn’t in the same stadium as Glen as an instrumentalist. Both had marginal careers in the movies, success as television stars, recorded a variety of successful duets and many successful solo records. Glen’s biggest hits are among the best remembered songs of his generation.

Internationally Glen Campbell achieved a level of success that far exceeded what most country stars apart from Jim Reeves would even dream of achieving. I’m not sure where the less than 10 million album sales comes from as he had 12 RIAA certified gold+ albums – most of the numbers I’ve seen suggest upwards of 45 million albums in the US alone

I am not the biggest fan of Glen’s pop-country material but there is very little of it that will send me fleeing the room if it comes on the radio. His best material is exquisite. I think I would have Campbell in my top thirty. I notice that Tim McGraw is in the slot just behind Glen – I predict that in 30 years McGraw will be forgotten and Campbell still remembered (I doubt if I’ll make it to 90, so somebody exhume me and let me know how this prediction pans out !!)

Glen Campbell had four million-selling 45 records: “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “Rhinestone Cowboy”, and “Southern Nights.”

Given the length of time that male country artists have been relevant and how the marketplace has expanded and changed over that time, total sales aren’t terribly useful as a measuring stick.

In terms of relative sales, meaning how an artist sold compared to his peers at the time, Campbell was incredibly successful.

But even that measuring stick has its limits. If we went just by relative sales, Olivia Newton-John would’ve been the most important female country artist of the seventies!

There are a small handful of artists that didn’t make the list who have sold more than him (John Michael Montgomery, Billy Ray Cyrus.)

If he’d hit his peak in the late seventies or after, he’d certainly be higher on the cumulative sales list.

After all, Johnny Cash has only sold 21.5 million albums, and a large percentage of those were sold after his death.

I think it is also a little too easy to see him, as some still do, as a “middle of the road” artist. He was in a lot of ways, but he was also very honest about it, and still managed to create actual Art out of it all (IMHO).