Elvis Presley would have been 80 years old today.

While the automatic sentiment on posthumous birthdays seems to be “it’s hard to imagine him at age X,” I actually find it harder to keep in mind he was only 42 — three years younger than I am now — when he died. Considering that Willie Nelson is still going strong at 80, B.B. King is doing the same at 89, and Tony Bennett is up for a Grammy this year at 88, I find it quite easy to imagine The King at 80, still actively recording, performing, collaborating with younger artists, and exploring the music that energized him. The great tragedy of his death isn’t that it came too soon — although of course it did — but that it came while he was at his lowest point. If he’d died truly young, like so many other rock-n-roll legends, from Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran to Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, or if he’d lived long enough to clean himself up and become an elder statesman like his contemporaries Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, then I think he’d be far more respected than he is today. Unfortunately, far too many people remember him only for his later excesses, the pathetic “Fat Elvis,” than for his talent or his absolutely seminal contribution to early rock and the development of modern youth culture… which of course has become popular culture in general, even for those of us who are, ahem, not so young anymore.

I have a running debate with a couple of friends over which Elvis — Presley or Costello — is the more significant, which one made the greatest contribution, was the better musician, was the greater icon of cool. Now, to a large degree, this is subjective, just another one of those pointless pissing matches that hinge on individual taste, about as irrational a thing as there is. But in my mind, it isn’t even a question, and it doesn’t matter what arguments these college-radio “alternative” loving music snobs — and that really is what they’re being when they start in on this subject — deploy in support of Costello. The simple fact is that his career, and those of practically every other musical idol of the past 60 years, wouldn’t have happened without Elvis Presley blazing the trail in the first place. At least, Costello and the others wouldn’t have happened in the idiom we all call “rock and roll.” Because Elvis Presley was the first. No, he didn’t invent the form, but he defined it and brought it to the mass consciousness. He was the first true rock star, in every sense of that word: as a top-selling performer, as a totem of youthful sexuality and vitality, as a catalyst for fusing existing genres into something new and exciting. And everyone else that’s now held up by somebody as being better than him — The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Freaking Costello, Bruce Springsteen, even the almighty Bono — has only built on the foundations that were laid by the boy from Tupelo in the brief span of time before he was drafted. (He made a lot of good music later in his career, after his stint in the Army, but I concede his most important work, his moment of greatest influence, was in the years 1954-58.)

But hey, as Levar Burton used to say, you don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s an article that lists five reasons why Elvis still matters. Even better, check out this chart created by the gurus at Spotify showing all the artists who were influenced by The King, and how that influence has propagated, and continues to propagate even today. Keep your eyes open for Elvis Costello; he’s on there.

And now, assuming I can figure out how to make it work, here’s a playlist of some of my favorite Elvis tracks… the ones my mother played over and over when I was a little boy, the ones that showcase the energy and charisma that have sadly been displaced over time by the image of the bloated, unhappy, unhealthy man he became…

Happy birthday, old son.