Most Overrated Big Music Star?

Dr. X posts this from the Acoustical Evaluation Center at Moffett Field:

"I caution you that what follows is material that will be incorporated in an upcoming monograph in the International Journal of Comparative Popular Musicology, so may not be republished in any form without the express written permission of my old thesis advisor.

"As usual, people on the Internets fail to approach an interesting question scientifically. We can measure how popular an artist is by how many albums they sell. Here is a best-estimate list of the most popular music acts of all time:

• Abba
• Alla Pugacheva
• The Beatles
  
• Bing Crosby
• Chubby Checker
• Sir Cliff Richard
• Sir Elton John
• Elvis Presley
• Frank Sinatra
• Julio Iglesias
• Led Zeppelin
• Madonna
• Michael Jackson
• Nana Mouskouri
• Queen
• Tino Rossi

We can quickly winnow this list by removing the good musicians - those who were generally accepted to be innovators, composers, or masters of performance. That leaves:

• Abba
• Alla Pugacheva
• Julio Iglesias
• Madonna

Now that is a list. The next question would be - does Joe Queenan have a view? Yes, on several:

• Abba - Queenan hates Abba. Here is an entry from the index of Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon: "Abba, alarming popularity in Lourdes of''
• Alla Pugacheva - No known view.
  
• Julio Iglesias - "Latin lounge lizard has-been"
  
• Madonna - No Queenan quotes on Google. I substitute Joni Mitchell's comment that "she has completely sucked the importance of talent out of the arena."
  

Now, let me make two deletions on the grounds that the artists involved have some claim to actual artistry.

First of all, Abba. They were not innovators, nor masters of performance. But their songwriting is defensible. I say we can favorably compare a typical Abba song (say, "Fernando") with the work of Neil Diamond and many other respected pop songwriters. That is to say, even if it is not exactly good, it is not wretchedly awful. That should be enough to remove this group from the list. (With the rehabilitation of Barry Manilow this completes my betrayal of my teenage years, but the 70s were hard for all of us.)

Next, Julio. A has-been, perhaps, and I didn't care for him when he was supposedly in his prime. But he is a man of considerable talents. His smooth singing style is limited, but not bad. His Tango album is both improbable and good, as if Mel Torme had somehow pulled off a blues album (not that he couldn't).

That leaves two candidates, Pugacheva and Madonna. One state-supported, the other capitalist in the worst sense of the word. I admit that even the most analytical techniques are unable to clearly distinguish between the suckiness of these two mediocrities. Only further research can determine which is the most deserving.