Elvis was the king of pop.
Listen to the originals/predecessors of many of Elvis’ better known recordings and you’ll realize all of the genres he incorporated (Al Jolson’s recording of Are You Lonesome Tonight may be eye opening).
The Beatles held one foot in pop as well and certainly their catalog became one of the last groups to create such a song list that was successfully covered and reinterpreted by so many other bands.
“Elvis was the king of pop.
Listen to the originals/predecessors of many of Elvis’ better known recordings and you’ll realize all of the genres he incorporated”
You can say that, and it’s probably true that he mized as many genres as Michael Jackson at least. But I also think you can better pinpoint his subgenres, and that two of them at least were strong enopugh to constitute a true style, or two true styles, rather than the amalgqm that is Thriller, for instance. These two are rock and roll—blues played faster and harder so as to be maximally danceable—and rockabilly—an even balance between rock and roll and country and western.
Granted, you can dig up veins of pure predecessors within the predominant mixtures. You can find within Elvis the blues proper, as well as rock, country, rockabilly, doo-wop, the generic popular style that some people theorize to run through all of popular music, as well as a more jazzy pop, bossa nova, pure gospel, soul, folk, and so on.
Even so, there is a style, or two styles, Elvis is best known for, and these are fairly well defined, or at least moreso than are the styles of other “pop royalty,” namely MJ and Madonna.