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The Beatles were a truly global phenomenon. No one outside of USA has heard of or gives a toss about Miles Davis. They're not even remotely comparable.
by mdoms 5y ago
The Beatles were a truly global phenomenon. No one outside of USA has heard of or gives a toss about Miles Davis. They're not even remotely comparable.
- bananamerica 5y agoThe Beatles are truly incomparable in terms of fame, but Miles Davis is a global phenomenon as well. He is very well known by pretty much all serious music fans.
- donarb 5y agoIn other words, true Scotsmen.
- bananamerica 5y agoNaming fallacies is not only lazy, unpersuasive, and infantile... In this case it is just plain wrong. This is a debate, not fallacy UNO.
- lostmsu 5y agoPlease demonstrate how your statement is not the fallacy then. It should be clear to be a fallacy to anyone who likes music and never heard of the dude you're talking about, and there are just so many of us.
- bananamerica 5y agoI'm not playing logic UNO with you. I can live with the fact that some person on the internet thinks I'm wrong.
- lostmsu 5y agoNo, you aren't playing "logic UNO" as you put it. You are just not having a discussion in good faith. As you first imply people never hearing about some musician are not "serious", and then you claim that having a logical discussion is somehow a lower form of a debate.
- WalterBright 5y agoI'm a serious music fan. I've heard of Miles Davis, but cannot identify a single one of his songs. Though I suspect you'd conclude that not knowing Davis' discography automatically makes me not a serious music fan.
- zeruch 5y ago"Though I suspect you'd conclude that not knowing Davis' discography automatically makes me not a serious music fan." Not necessarily. Just not a serious jazz fan. Most people when they say they are a "music fan" invariably mean rock/pop of various stripes (from indie to metal and everything in between) and not jazz, or opera or "world music" so maybe it's that you gave a pretty broad statement with no caveats?
- tclancy 5y agoThat is some confidentially wrong stuff there. The Beatles are The Beatles and wonderful, but Miles … beyond standard jazz, he means something to afropop, funk, Japanese jazz, etc. To be that wrong feels like a gift. Embrace it. Play the spaces between the notes and try to learn from it.
- rewgs 5y agoFor real. Miles changed music, what, at least three times? Birthed dozens of careers of the people that went through his band (as well as, you know, "the cool"). This dude straight up just doesn't know what he's talking about.
- dylan604 5y agoSometimes -4 just isn't enough
- WastingMyTime89 5y agoI mean with deep respect for Miles Davis and as an admire of Kind of Blue and someone who generally likes bebop, the idea that he was more influent that the Beatles is somewhat comical. Miles changed jazz multiple times but from fusion onward jazz becomes mostly an irrelevant genre like rock-and-roll sadly is today. Meanwhile the Beatles are the top selling band of all time, voted by specialists as the greatest artists in history. Their impact on global culture is impossible to measure. Virtually everyone knows a Beatles song. So much so that their general impact on the 60s and the world onwards is an actual field of study.
- microtherion 5y ago> Virtually everyone knows a Beatles song OK, Boomer… Obviously, the Beatles were an enormous global phenomenon for baby boomers and for GenXers like myself. But if you were to poll my children and their classmates how many Beatles songs they could name, you might end up in the single digits. Not that Miles Davis, whom I prefer, would fare any better, mind you.
- analog31 5y agoNot necessarily Miles Davis specifically, but the jazz era in the US is a shot that continues to be heard around the world.
- rewgs 5y agoUh. What? This might be one of the single most ignorant comments I've ever read on HN.
- JoyrexJ9 5y agoIt really is peak HN. Classic stuff. Ignorance spouted a fact. It's like some people are almost proud of how little they know about the world
- benjimouse 5y agoMiles was, and is well known outside of the US. In his autobiography he talked about how much he enjoyed playing in france during the late 50s, because there he was treated like a star, and not a 'black man' like back home.
- bamboozled 5y agoI don’t downvote for being incorrect, just to let you know however, you’re really incorrect. Miles Davis is popular and well known all throughout the world.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoyou really need to travel outside the U.S - for more than a couple weeks vacation at a resort. You could come to the Copenhagen Jazz festival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Jazz_Festival https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Jazz_Festival - basically lots of people around town who don't much care about the Beatles but will go crazy talking about Miles.
- frant-hartm 5y agoI never heard of him. He may be known to jazz fans, but if you go to any other festival like rock, pop, metal, folk.. everyone has heard about Beatles, about this guy? Just the minority of jazz fans and music nerds.
- Intermernet 5y agoI think you should possibly ask some of those people at those festivals. I can almost guarantee they've all heard of Miles, even if you haven't.
- lostmsu 5y agoI just did, a sample of 1 did not know, as expected.
- vlunkr 5y agoThis is nonsense. If you go to a jazz festival in the US people will talk about miles Davis too.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agothe guy said nobody cares about who Miles Davis is outside the U.S.
- paganel 5y agoYou're downvoted just for stating an opinion (which I don't agree with, incidentally, but I also don't agree with the downvotes), but in the same vein I'm wondering how much are the Beatles known and especially listened among the, let's say, under 40s. I'm in the early 40s myself and I do regard them as one of the greatest music bands ever, even though I used to listen more to the Beach Boys and I regard Michael Jackson as a bigger phenomenon/star than the Beatles ever were, but I'm curious how much of that feeling is shared by kids/young adults in their teens or in their early 20s. Incidentally I've seen lots of 14, 15-year old kids with Nirvana or Kurt Cobain shirts but, of course, none of them with Beatles shirts (never seen a Beatles shirt, to be honest).
- Lio 5y agoI agree. I think it’s less about how popular someone is in their own time, although that’s clearly important, but how much they endure with future generations. T-shirt merchandising is probably more to do with who owns the rights though and if they want to sell products in places like Target or Tescos. For a long time you couldn’t download Beatles albums on iTunes. That was purely down to the dispute over the name “Apple” rather than popularity of the music.
- WalterBright 5y agoMJ was popularity was for much more than his music. He was a showman in the way the Beatles never were. The Beatles would competently play their music on stage. MJ would put on a performance. And yes, I have every MJ album.
- zeruch 5y agoCan't tell if you're trolling or simply have no idea how influential Miles Davis was (and is, since he still has the highest selling jazz album, that continues to sell year over year, and it's over 60 years old). Miles is arguably the most influential musician of the 20th century, period. While the Beatles were indeed a "global phenomenon" so was Miles (his success was hardly limited to the US). Whereas the Beatles indeed sold more records, Miles was a musicians musician who helped vanguard a half dozen subgenres of jazz (and jump started the careers of dozens of others who eventually became giants in the genre, as well as crossover successes like Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, and Marcus Miller) his influence extended well beyond jazz into pop, funk, rock, hip hop, punk, hip hop and on and on. Even metal bands like Helmet and Mastodon name check him. Often the bands/artists that have the most impact on the actual direction of music aren't the ones who benefit the most commercially from it.
- frant-hartm 5y agoWho was more influential on computers? Turing or Gates? Hardly anyone heard of Turing outside of computer science and WW2 history buffs. At least until The Imitation Game movie, and most forgot when they left the cinema anyway.
- squarefoot 5y agoBeing a global phenomenon means nothing in art. (Justin Bieber is a lot more popular than Frank Zappa, so what?) Personal taste aside, other unrelated issues must be taken into account. For example, were the Beatles black, could they have had the same popularity back then? And what about the other way around (a white Miles Davis)?
- skinnymuch 5y agoThis is a big point I think about quite a bit. Everything you said is spot on.
- Intermernet 5y agoUm, I'm pretty sure the Beatles would have told you that Miles Davis was a phenomenal genius. Maybe you should do a bit more research. P.S. I'm not from the USA.