1. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    The Beatles…. I don’t get it. I’m sure plenty of the musicians that I do like are heavily influenced by them but I have never, ever got what’s so good about their music or the music and cultural pursuits of the band members.

    An ex girlfriend got really into them while we together. She generally had a really good taste in music and her interest in The Beatles graduated from knowing the stuff everyone knows to listening to their albums from start to finish and knowing stuff about when and where it was made etc. I can only compare the experience of listening to it and hearing about the band members as liking eating thin soup. It tastes a little bit of something but generally is bland and unsatisfying. It’s like the world wants to bang on about how great it is to just drink a heavily diluted oxo vegetable stock cube….
     
    Last edited: Nov 18, 2021
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  2. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    I think you have to consider their music in the context of its time. The early 'mop top' stuff with Beatlemania was simply influenced by the likes of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly (who were themselves innovative in their time), but the impressive thing was how quickly they progressed from being essentially a boy band to producing some truly innovative and technically sophisticated music from the mid 60s onwards. Of course it won't be to everyone's taste - nothing is - and so much has happened in music in the following 50-odd years that we're bound to have found other things we prefer by now.
     
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  3. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Pretty much exactly how I feel about Bowie as posted above.
     
  4. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    Yeah that’s what made me think of The Beatles!
     
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  5. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    But the main point is, even then, they wrote their own songs & insisted that only their own compositions would be released as A-sides. The commercial success they had whilst doing so totally changed the prevailing dynamic that had 'controlled' popular music up until then. The 'industry' realised the big money could come from 'beat groups' releasing their own compositions to be bought by the teenagers who identified with the content of that music & had recently gained access to sufficient spare cash to spend it on that 'product'. Without that fundamental shift, it's doubtful many of the subsequent developments in 'pop music' could have happened.
    They didn't just 'influence' subsequent artists; they effectively created the environment within which they flourished.

    Whether anyone thinks their music is 'objectively good' or not is a different issue; they created the current landscape and didn't allow the 'industry' to neuter them the way it had with Elvis.
     
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  6. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Right, and I agree, but presumably that's not why people such as @Filbert's ex are listening to them today?
     
  7. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    It could be because some people find their music 'objectively good'. I was trying to highlight the distinction between lauding their influence on the 'history of pop' due to the role they played and the merits or otherwise of their music. It seems a common misconception that people who agree with the former must, ipso facto, think their music was excellent or whatever.
     
  8. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Indeed, but obviously there must be something which is particulalry 'objectively good' about them, otherwise modern listeners would be just as drawn to the music of (say) The Kinks or The Small Faces.

    I've intentionally chosen two critically lauded bands from the same era there - I would guess (without empirical evidence) that worldwide listening figures/sales for the latter two are still much lower than for the Beatles.

    Do those people listen to the Beatles ahead of the other two simply because they are 'more famous', I wonder?
     
  9. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    Something about The Beatles clearly sets them apart from every other band and cultural phenomenon of the era. The fact that I didn’t grow up with The Beatles’ music playing in my house but I did absorb a lot of cultural references to them (largely thanks to there being a Beatles reference in every single episode of The Simpsons!) speaks to the fact that they exist on a different strata of popularity. I don’t think you get there unless the majority of people agree that there is something about them which is objectively good and unique about them. I just don’t know what it is.

    In the end, I do feel like I’m missing out on a party that everyone else is invited to because they are the biggest band of all time.

    Sometimes when I can’t decide on which 00’s alternative rock album I want to listen to on the way to work I do kind of wish that I just liked Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi instead and pop radio 1 on. It would just be easier…. Unfortunately I think utter ****.
     
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  10. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    They're ok, but they're no "Rubettes".
     
  11. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    TBF their record sales and chart success was pretty astonishing. A run of 16 #1 singles broken only by a #2 over a 7 year period, and those songs were all very different, not like a collection of Boyzone/Westlife hits.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_discography
    They changed the way the industry worked as noted above. Not a great fan but I "like" pretty much everything they did.
     
  12. GoingDown

    GoingDown "The Stability"

    I was about to say the same. Utterly zero idea what the fascination with him was. Shockingly boring to listen to in interviews, music that makes your ears bleed (I especially can’t stand Starman) and this Ziggy Stardust nonsense is vomit inducing. Especially when someone was dressed up like him outside his house on the day of his death.

    I’m sure that’s what every member of the household wanted to see when looking out the window that evening. Someone dressed up as the deceased holding a Tesco’s candle.
     
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  13. It's the songwriting. If you've ever tried to write a song you'll know how tricky it is not to sound simplistic or derivative. The number of fantastic, cleverly constructed songs that were so different from the basic pop of the era, in shut a short space of time, is phenomenal.
     
  14. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    And has been commented on by numerous 'experts on composition'.
     
  15. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    Don't weaken, man...think of your soul.
    Try delving back into the archives of the '60s & 70s....not everything was great, some of it was not always good, but most of it was honest, even if you personally thought the premise was 5h1te.
    That's not to say there's not good stuff out there now...but I often get this nagging feeling most of them don't really believe in what they're saying.

    To paraphrase Fontaines D.C. 'Don't be owned by anyone'.
     
  16. Clive_ofthe_Kremlin

    Clive_ofthe_Kremlin Squad Player

    Beatles - Edwardian ditties redone for hippies.

    What about Elvis? Any fans in? I went to Graceland when I was in Memphis, just to have a look. I didn't really see that much of the house, more watching the grief-stricken hordes weeping, wailing and snotting without shame everywhere you looked.

    Not a fan of Bowie either. I dated a woman once who liked him, but I just used to sing the chorus of that laughing gnome song if ever she tried to put any of that old shyte on my turntable...
     
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  17. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    You mean the hippies that didn't exist in 1962?
     
  18. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Maybe. Ray Davies strikes me as a pretty decent songwriter too, though.
     
  19. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    Absolutely, there’s a plethora of 70’s rock, soul and RnB I love thanks to my dad.

    I’m quite lazy with finding new music sometimes, so I quickly get frustrated that there isn’t much new stuff coming out that appeals to me.
     
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  20. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    It's just part of the natural ageing process, m8.

    I could count on the fingers of one hand the 'new music' I have enjoyed in the last decade or so.
     
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  21. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    That’s sad and by no means inevitable. I’ve recently enjoyed a number of new artists, lots of new sounds and artists I never got into first time around.

    Podcasts on Mixcloud can be good if you can find folk you like on it.

    There is always good music being made.
     
  22. Since63

    Since63 Squad Player

    There is a lot of good '60s stuff where rock/soul/folk/country/RnB/Blues were really non-existent distinctions...Sly & The Family Stone crossed all boundaries...Grateful Dead created their own milieu....etc etc
     
  23. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    I’m not sad about it. There’s plenty of other music to discover, including other genres.
     
  24. Lyricist, yes. Musically, very basic.
     
  25. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    OK, if you say so.

    But the vast majority of people who listen to music don’t understand the principles of musical composition. So, if you’re not an actual or aspiring songwriter, why is “Penny Lane” better than “Waterloo Sunset” (not that I am at all sure that it is)?
     
  26. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    “The genre genre lives on his back.
    The Genre genre loves Chimney stacks”
     
  27. Waterloo Sunset is not better or worse than Penny Lane; it is more basic musically, but that's fine. But in terms of sheer quantity of great songs, the Kinks don't compare. And in terms of variety they are nowhere near. Likewise the Small Faces, The Move, The Who. Or the Stones. The Stones are basically a blues guitar band.
    If you go through the Beatles catalogue, the breadth of style and invention is enormous. They progressed from She Loves You to Come Together via I Saw Her Standing There, Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, Back In The USSR, Long and Winding Road, Help, Strawberry Fields, Paperback Writer, Something, Day Tripper, Lucy In The Sky, While my Guitar, Let It Be, ....
    In seven years.
    Objectively that is incredible. Subjectively, each to their own of course.
     
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  28. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Yes, I take the point about sheer volume of good songs.

    But I’m afraid I can’t shake the thought that a lot of people today (especially worldwide) listen to the Beatles simply because they are so famous, because they are the only 60s band of which they have heard. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, just trying to get to the bottom of why they have this (perhaps deserved) enduring popularity.
     
  29. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Fine, as long as we don’t lurch into ‘it’s all rubbish nowadays’ territory.
     
  30. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    Well…. It’s clearly not as good, is it? :D
     
  31. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    It's not, but I do think it's harder to find than it used to be. The good stuff, that is.
     
  32. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    As the 70s? No. It couldn’t possibly be. :)
     
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  33. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Maybe, but when I woz 16 I had loads of time to search out music. 16 year olds of today also do and have almost unlimited access to music and recommendations. They don’t have to tape John Peel or search through the 50p bargain bin.
     
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  34. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    The enduring popularity does attract new generations to listen and it seems like they are not disappointed.
     
  35. Davy Crockett

    Davy Crockett Reservist

    Agree
    Every generation think that "their" music is the best music
    That said we were at a friends BBQ during the summer and their
    daughter and her friends were raving about Tiffany and Rick Astley
    when their songs were played , "choon" and "banger" were some words being
    expressed.
     
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