4 ms·

The Music of the Beatles (1968)

18 points by tintinnabula 9y ago

jackhack 9y ago
As valid and thought-provoking as this article is (was?) I find myself struck by two things: 1) Written in 1968? That was fifty years ago! How greatly our world has changed in that time in terms of culture, yet the Beatles music feels as fresh and immediate today as then. How innocent some songs are "I want to hold your hand" - to a degree it would be inconceivable on today's vulgar radio. 2) The references to contemporary composers of the 30s and 40s were almost totally lost on me. The big bands, the jazz & blues men, and such were familiar. Shows just how few compositions (and more rarely, composers) stand the test of time. For a delicious counterpoint, I suggest this: https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/music/sgt-pepper-critic-stands-behind-67-review-despite-bad-speaker/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/music/sgt-pepper... A reviewer who called Sgt Pepper (Rolling Stones #1 rated of 500 albums) “Busy, hip and cluttered”, “a surprising shoddiness in composition” and “fraudulent.” There's no accounting for taste, it seems.
- w4tson 9y ago
  Also interesting he was not keen on “I am the Walrus”. He didn’t seem to mention production either. Sgt Peppers was the birth of concept album recorded in stereo!
  - gumby 9y ago
    > Sgt Peppers was the birth of concept album recorded in stereo! I believe that honor goes to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, though the public wasn't ready for it in 1966.
Tycho 9y ago
This piece aged fairly well. Confession: despite being a rabid Beatles fan for 20 years, I only really listened to John Lennon’s first solo album this week. I think I dismissed it partly because it has a silly name (Plastic Ono Band). It is fantastic. The thing about The Beatles is that their catalogue underwrites our cultural obsession with ‘albums’, which is a ridiculous standard to impose on everything else. Much fairer to judge songwriters on their accumulation of worthy tracks spread over many years and projects, even if they never come together in one perfect album. Beatles solo careers are prime victims of this unfortunate standard.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  > Beatles solo careers are prime victims of this unfortunate standard. Quite true. Each Beatle's solo albums always had 2-3 good to great songs. This is pretty much what each would bring to a Beatles album too, but collectively, that would give them 6-10 really great tracks per album. They never could possibly deliver entire albums of greatness (or even "really good"ness) year after year individually. Put another way, each Beatles album could be looked at as a 'best of' each member at that point in time. A "greatest hits" collection every 6 months or so, really. But no one person would be able to keep that pace (even they couldn't, eventually).
  - Tycho 9y ago
    We could have had at least five more years of classic Beatles albums if they hadn’t split up in 1970, just based of what songs they went on to write. And probably longer owing to the creative atmosphere and competitiveness within the group setting.
gumby 9y ago
A lovely piece of characteristic pretention from the NYRB (a journal I love BTW) which it still preserves today: "on one side were Sinatra, Horne, and Holiday, stylists of a high order, wonderfully performing material of little musical interest (when not derived from Gershwin or Porter) and dim literary content. On the other side were specialized concert singers—Frijsh, Fairbank, and Tangeman—who, though vocally uneven, helped to create a new style..." The author could probably guess that Sinatra, Horne and Holiday would still be popular 50 years later while Frijsh, Fairbank, and Tangeman are essentially unknown. But as others have written this piece has aged well, and that too I predict will be true of most contemporary NYRB articles.

18 points by tintinnabula 9y ago

As valid and thought-provoking as this article is (was?) I find myself struck by two things: 1) Written in 1968? That was fifty years ago! How greatly our world has changed in that time in terms of culture, yet the Beatles music feels as fresh and immediate today as then. How innocent some songs are "I want to hold your hand" - to a degree it would be inconceivable on today's vulgar radio. 2) The references to contemporary composers of the 30s and 40s were almost totally lost on me. The big bands, the jazz & blues men, and such were familiar. Shows just how few compositions (and more rarely, composers) stand the test of time. For a delicious counterpoint, I suggest this: https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/music/sgt-pepper-critic-stands-behind-67-review-despite-bad-speaker/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/music/sgt-pepper... A reviewer who called Sgt Pepper (Rolling Stones #1 rated of 500 albums) “Busy, hip and cluttered”, “a surprising shoddiness in composition” and “fraudulent.” There's no accounting for taste, it seems.

w4tson 9y ago
Also interesting he was not keen on “I am the Walrus”. He didn’t seem to mention production either. Sgt Peppers was the birth of concept album recorded in stereo!
- gumby 9y ago
  > Sgt Peppers was the birth of concept album recorded in stereo! I believe that honor goes to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, though the public wasn't ready for it in 1966.

Tycho 9y ago

This piece aged fairly well. Confession: despite being a rabid Beatles fan for 20 years, I only really listened to John Lennon’s first solo album this week. I think I dismissed it partly because it has a silly name (Plastic Ono Band). It is fantastic. The thing about The Beatles is that their catalogue underwrites our cultural obsession with ‘albums’, which is a ridiculous standard to impose on everything else. Much fairer to judge songwriters on their accumulation of worthy tracks spread over many years and projects, even if they never come together in one perfect album. Beatles solo careers are prime victims of this unfortunate standard.

mgkimsal 9y ago
> Beatles solo careers are prime victims of this unfortunate standard. Quite true. Each Beatle's solo albums always had 2-3 good to great songs. This is pretty much what each would bring to a Beatles album too, but collectively, that would give them 6-10 really great tracks per album. They never could possibly deliver entire albums of greatness (or even "really good"ness) year after year individually. Put another way, each Beatles album could be looked at as a 'best of' each member at that point in time. A "greatest hits" collection every 6 months or so, really. But no one person would be able to keep that pace (even they couldn't, eventually).
- Tycho 9y ago
  We could have had at least five more years of classic Beatles albums if they hadn’t split up in 1970, just based of what songs they went on to write. And probably longer owing to the creative atmosphere and competitiveness within the group setting.

gumby 9y ago

A lovely piece of characteristic pretention from the NYRB (a journal I love BTW) which it still preserves today: "on one side were Sinatra, Horne, and Holiday, stylists of a high order, wonderfully performing material of little musical interest (when not derived from Gershwin or Porter) and dim literary content. On the other side were specialized concert singers—Frijsh, Fairbank, and Tangeman—who, though vocally uneven, helped to create a new style..." The author could probably guess that Sinatra, Horne and Holiday would still be popular 50 years later while Frijsh, Fairbank, and Tangeman are essentially unknown. But as others have written this piece has aged well, and that too I predict will be true of most contemporary NYRB articles.