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A completely alternate explanation that I don't quite believe but can't pass up mentioning: Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great, but were massively p

A completely alternate explanation that I don't quite believe but can't pass up mentioning: Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great, but were massively popular for reasons other than master craftsmanship. Fast-forward a handful of decades, and few now dare voice a dissenting opinion. (My own personal opinion is that they were great songwriters who never bothered to tighten up their production and performance chops. I disliked them on first listen, then gave The White Album very close attention twenty or thirty times, and that's where I landed.)

nine_k 4y ago
To my mind, the best songs written by The Beatles are their later songs, written when the Beatlemania has receded. To me, they progressed from being a typical pop band to producing much more interesting and artful stuff. But likely for many at the time they digressed from producing vibrant pop hits like Hard Day's Night to inane psychedelic experiments.
- bbreier 4y ago
  I really, really want to agree with this, but as much as I enjoy Abbey Road, I also can never get enough Rubber Soul
- robotresearcher 4y ago
  The Beatles were a really, really good pop band - much better than typical. Can't Buy Me Love, Hard Day's Night, Help!, Day Tripper, We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Yesterday, Nowhere Man are mid-career Beatles, 1964-66. Most charting bands don't produce memorable pop songs like this over and over. And then they made the more ambitious albums. McCartney proved again later that he is an outstanding pop musician. Maybe I'm Amazed, Live and Let Die, etc.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    > that he is an outstanding pop musician He became one. None of them were very good in 1962. It's debatable how good they would have been without George Martin guiding them.
    - robotresearcher 4y ago
      In 1962 Paul was 20 years old and had not yet released an album. Are we knocking off points for not being a child prodigy?
  - ahoho 4y ago
    It is pretty remarkable that I, someone born decades after those songs were released, can immediately bring each one to mind as I read that list
  - adastra22 4y ago
    “Memorable” and yet I don’t know any of those songs :\
    - gattilorenz 4y ago
      You have never heard “yesterday”, even by mistake? I can’t imagine it was never in a commercial, movie, on the radio…
      - adastra22 4y ago
        Probably. Beetles songs are everywhere. But my point was that I don’t recognize any of them by name.
mixmastamyk 4y ago
> production and performance chops Production was done in 60s Britain—still recovering from WWII. With two tracks most of the time. Only around Abbey Road time, do the albums sounds decent by modern standards despite millions focused on remastering. Apparently they/studio finally bought better equipment in that time frame. Performance, well the guys were in their early twenties. Let's see what anyone else accomplished at that age. There are certainly better soloists on each instrument, but virtuosity is not enough to make compelling music. And then it was done.
tantivy 4y ago
I dunno. It's worth asking, but we're not spoilt for people writing songs like "There's A Place" right out of secondary school. They had the juice.
the_af 4y ago
> Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great, but were massively popular for reasons other than master craftsmanship. Aren't the Beatles just an example, though? The piece starts with jazz, and even mentions Beethoven got terrible reviews. I think it's about a more general phenomenon than just the Beatles, though they do get most of TFA's time.
nitwit005 4y ago
There is this strange phenomenon where once something gets anointed as "a classic", people treat it as immune to criticism, and even consider not appreciating it as a sign of poor character. Aside from the raw popularity of the Beetles, there's been all these books, documentaries, and academic work. It's put them into a category like Shakespeare.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  And yet, here we are, and folks are criticizing them. It's actually a national pastime, taking potshots at golden idols. The fact that folks don't do it much to the Beatles must mean, what? That folks probably like them?
- epistemer 4y ago
  I am not much a fan of the Beatles but I don't know how any person who is serious about music can view them as overrated. They were objectively so influential that any contrarian take on this just sounds like bullshit to me.
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    Thanks for helping prove my point. Appreciate it.
petodo 4y ago
Agreed, just my personal opinion I went through Beatles, Abba and Queen discography in recent years and honestly Beatles were the most underwhelming (for this 80s kid), Queen being good but not that great for my taste and Abba being by far my favorite on completely different level than the other two. I know it's probably not fair since music advanced over years, but if I had to choose only band I'd be forced to listen in deserted island from Beatles era it would still be Rolling stones or Beach boys rather than Beatles. I'm listening every day 80s radio during lunch and dinner with my kids and think 80s/90s was peak music, 70s was pretty great and it went really quick downhill in 00s.
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  Interesting perspective. I will say that at dance clubs music stopped advancing at early 00s. Aside from hip hop that seems to be peak dance music (hip hop has pushed forward a bit since but not enough). This is to the point that clubs that normally cater to those in their early 20s now play music that was made before some of those clients were born as opposed to even one track from the last decade.
  - cdavid 4y ago
    I now old and past 40, but would say it depends on the clubs. There is still quite a lot of new electronic stuff worth listening to. Lots of it is derivative, but that has always been true for most pop music styles. Whatever one may think about it, stuff like barker, raim, empty set, Laurel Halo, all sound very much post 90ies (the period I was a teenager, and started to listen to tons of electronic music).
  - tinco 4y ago
    I'm not saying I agree 100% but there's definitely something there. I was surprised when out of nowhere Justin Bieber coopted into a world wide hit in a genre that was in the clubs when I frequented them a full decade earlier (with Despacito). I'm not sure things like that would happen, it used to be that genres basically went out of style every 10 years or so. That said, I wouldn't say things are standing still either in club music. I don't pretend to have been to a club in the past 5 years or so, but even though they played roughly the same genres there's definitely a difference in depth between the acts we danced to in the 00s and acts like Major Lazer and The Weeknd. Maybe the genres are just sticking around longer and go through subtler changes. If you let teenage me hear Despacito I would've liked it but wouldn't be surprised. Major Lazer though would've blown my mind.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
"Great" is subjective. I'm sure there are many people that don't like the Beatles today, just as there were in the 1960s. Among the younger people I work with (<30 years old) many don't even know any Beatles songs FWIW. I think the Beatles were great but then there are other artists that I don't really like at all that are also considered great.
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  I have not heard a single Beatles song that made me want to listen to it again or sing along or hum the melody. I am almost 37, and think The Rolling Stones, Guns and Roses, Def Leopard, Led Zeppelin, and Tom Petty are fantastic.
  - petodo 4y ago
    Technically that doesn't mean they were bad at the time, that just aged much worse than the other bands you mention, so depends whether you rate them in context of their era or in present day, some things age bad, some age good.
    - IgorPartola 4y ago
      To me they are like Citizen Kane: it’s a great movie because what it did had never been done before but I have no interest in watching it ever again.
      - petodo 4y ago
        Funnily enough I share same sentiment about Beatles as about Citizen Kane, I forced myself to watch it together with Casablanca and few other "classics" and it's horrible movie by nowadays standards and I'd say you don't need to see it even once unless you are really movie nerd. Back in the day it was revolutionary and important I guess, but by nowadays standards it's utterly mediocre movie despite people praising it as something amazing, but to be fair I don't think I'd find movie from CK era which I'd like while I have no problem to find better artists from Beatles era whose music I enjoy much more and like them even nowadays compared to present day music. And one more unpopular opinion from someone who experienced jail like environment I think even recent highly rated Shawshank redemption while very good and enjoyable movie is romantic unrealistic fairy tale (for women) and I'd rather recommend everyone to watch Das Experiment to see more realistic display of prison I can sign, yet I've of them is rated asking best movies in history and the other is pretty much unknown.
wincy 4y ago
I became a teenager right airline the time Napster showed up and could download anything I wanted. I had a music collection in the 10s of gigabytes, and I’d never heard of the Beatles except in passing. Certainly nobody was pushing me to like them. Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band absolutely blew my teenage mind. I listened to it over and over again. Truly a unique and incredible album. My uncle grew up when it was brand new and relayed a similar story years after I’d come across them independently. His friend said “check out the Beatles!” And he said “that band with I wanna hold your hand? That’s a girlie band!” But took his friends advice, then proceeded to go home and listen to Sergeant Peppers a dozen times in amazement. Maybe I could chalk it up to some unrealized bias but it sure seemed like genuinely interesting and good music to me. Conversely, I recognize exactly one song from the White Album, and couldn’t sing a line from any of them.
adastra22 4y ago
80’s kid here. I never liked any Beatles songs. Not a single one. And “classic rock” from the 60’s and 70’s is my go-to genre. I always assumed their recognition was more historical. They kicked off the pop band phenomenon as we know it today, and the base rhythms of their songs were no doubt influential. But I’ve never felt that their actual songs were very good. Many of them are downright corny and cringe by the time I listened to them.
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great... That's exactly what I think... The Beatles were my parents' generation, not mine but I heard them a lot. I'm listening to music from that era: but that'd be, say and YMMW, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, ... I always looked at the Beatles as the commercial, pop, easy, and a bit "cheesy" band of their time. The Beatles are still catchy more than half a century later but, yeah, even if it's an unpopular opinion it's just, to me, mass produced pop that's not particularly deep.
hgomersall 4y ago
I think that's missing the point. My understanding, though I wasn't there, is that the Beatles basically defined what they did. They're no longer the best example of what they did, but that's because so many have built on what they created. At the time, there was nobody to compare them to. Their contribution is huge in musical history. When a sound is so common, it's hard to think what it might have felt like when it was rare.
- mattejade 4y ago
  > At the time, there was nobody to compare them to. Why do you assume this? When Sgt. Peppers came out in 1967 -- which we now mythologize as a revolutionary step -- that same year you had equally adventurous records by Pink Floyd, The Byrds, Love, Cream, The Doors, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the 13th Floor Elevators, and on and on. If you draw yourself back to the early 60s, then there's still nothing about their music that other artists weren't making. If you want to say that they made the "rock band" thing happen, then that's highly debatable because there were an absolute plethora of garage rock (and surf rock) bands around at the time, and I'm sure they were compared endlessly to The Beach Boys. But even if they did make the "rock band" thing happen, that's a result of their popularity at the time and not necessarily whether their music was particularly unique.
mattejade 4y ago
Exactly. It's not that critics weren't able to recognize the genius of The Beatles, it's that they weren't obligated to assume it's there. They could see clearly about how they actually felt when hearing the music; they could see without the mist of the mythology that now influences us to see The Beatles as revolutionary. They were allowed to point to Motown and say "this has better songwriting", or early Pink Floyd and say "this is more experimental/adventurous", and they wouldn't have to factor in things like 'influence' when evaluating how they actually felt when listening to the music.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  That's kind of like saying the champion team in $sport isn't the best, because they lost some games sometimes.
  - d0gbread 4y ago
    It's not like that at all unless you've selected a single criteria, not mentioned it, and assume everyone applies it the same.
paganel 4y ago
> Fast-forward a handful of decades, and few now dare voice a dissenting opinion. There are (mostly young) people who have started doing it, maybe in connection with a recent post in here which was talking about the lack of a counter-culture (counter to that post, we still seem to have one). They're seen as precursors of today's "pop optimism", granted, not as commercialised yet as today's pop, but definitely the most worthy predecessors. In today's gloomy and uncertain age that commercialised pop optimism doesn't sit well.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  > They're seen as precursors of today's "pop optimism", granted, not as commercialised yet as today's pop, but definitely the most worthy predecessors. In today's gloomy and uncertain age that commercialised pop optimism doesn't sit well. Funny, that reminds me how some 17/18 or so years ago at school some classmate told me that the music collection on my MP3 player wasn't bad, but somewhat a bit "too happy", or some words to that effect :-) – and I did like the Beatles already back then (though at that point I didn't yet have their complete albums) and still like them.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
That's how I sorta feel about Stevie Ray Vaughan. Take any individual song and it's great. Texas Flood, for example, was wonderful. Take his songs as a unit and he's repetitive as hell in his guitar solos. But then pair him with another blues legend like Albert King where he's not just mailing it in and suddenly he's great again. I think SRV had massive talent but a limited imagination when left to his own devices.
- bsder 4y ago
  SRV was young. At the time he should have been finding his voice (about 20-25 years old) he was having quite a bit of drug problems. He had finally dried himself out and then died in a helicopter crash at 35.

nine_k 4y ago

To my mind, the best songs written by The Beatles are their later songs, written when the Beatlemania has receded. To me, they progressed from being a typical pop band to producing much more interesting and artful stuff. But likely for many at the time they digressed from producing vibrant pop hits like Hard Day's Night to inane psychedelic experiments.

bbreier 4y ago
I really, really want to agree with this, but as much as I enjoy Abbey Road, I also can never get enough Rubber Soul
robotresearcher 4y ago
The Beatles were a really, really good pop band - much better than typical. Can't Buy Me Love, Hard Day's Night, Help!, Day Tripper, We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Yesterday, Nowhere Man are mid-career Beatles, 1964-66. Most charting bands don't produce memorable pop songs like this over and over. And then they made the more ambitious albums. McCartney proved again later that he is an outstanding pop musician. Maybe I'm Amazed, Live and Let Die, etc.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  > that he is an outstanding pop musician He became one. None of them were very good in 1962. It's debatable how good they would have been without George Martin guiding them.
  - robotresearcher 4y ago
    In 1962 Paul was 20 years old and had not yet released an album. Are we knocking off points for not being a child prodigy?
- ahoho 4y ago
  It is pretty remarkable that I, someone born decades after those songs were released, can immediately bring each one to mind as I read that list
- adastra22 4y ago
  “Memorable” and yet I don’t know any of those songs :\
  - gattilorenz 4y ago
    You have never heard “yesterday”, even by mistake? I can’t imagine it was never in a commercial, movie, on the radio…
    - adastra22 4y ago
      Probably. Beetles songs are everywhere. But my point was that I don’t recognize any of them by name.

mixmastamyk 4y ago

> production and performance chops Production was done in 60s Britain—still recovering from WWII. With two tracks most of the time. Only around Abbey Road time, do the albums sounds decent by modern standards despite millions focused on remastering. Apparently they/studio finally bought better equipment in that time frame. Performance, well the guys were in their early twenties. Let's see what anyone else accomplished at that age. There are certainly better soloists on each instrument, but virtuosity is not enough to make compelling music. And then it was done.

tantivy 4y ago

I dunno. It's worth asking, but we're not spoilt for people writing songs like "There's A Place" right out of secondary school. They had the juice.

the_af 4y ago

> Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great, but were massively popular for reasons other than master craftsmanship. Aren't the Beatles just an example, though? The piece starts with jazz, and even mentions Beethoven got terrible reviews. I think it's about a more general phenomenon than just the Beatles, though they do get most of TFA's time.

nitwit005 4y ago

There is this strange phenomenon where once something gets anointed as "a classic", people treat it as immune to criticism, and even consider not appreciating it as a sign of poor character. Aside from the raw popularity of the Beetles, there's been all these books, documentaries, and academic work. It's put them into a category like Shakespeare.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
And yet, here we are, and folks are criticizing them. It's actually a national pastime, taking potshots at golden idols. The fact that folks don't do it much to the Beatles must mean, what? That folks probably like them?
epistemer 4y ago
I am not much a fan of the Beatles but I don't know how any person who is serious about music can view them as overrated. They were objectively so influential that any contrarian take on this just sounds like bullshit to me.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  Thanks for helping prove my point. Appreciate it.

petodo 4y ago

Agreed, just my personal opinion I went through Beatles, Abba and Queen discography in recent years and honestly Beatles were the most underwhelming (for this 80s kid), Queen being good but not that great for my taste and Abba being by far my favorite on completely different level than the other two. I know it's probably not fair since music advanced over years, but if I had to choose only band I'd be forced to listen in deserted island from Beatles era it would still be Rolling stones or Beach boys rather than Beatles. I'm listening every day 80s radio during lunch and dinner with my kids and think 80s/90s was peak music, 70s was pretty great and it went really quick downhill in 00s.

IgorPartola 4y ago
Interesting perspective. I will say that at dance clubs music stopped advancing at early 00s. Aside from hip hop that seems to be peak dance music (hip hop has pushed forward a bit since but not enough). This is to the point that clubs that normally cater to those in their early 20s now play music that was made before some of those clients were born as opposed to even one track from the last decade.
- cdavid 4y ago
  I now old and past 40, but would say it depends on the clubs. There is still quite a lot of new electronic stuff worth listening to. Lots of it is derivative, but that has always been true for most pop music styles. Whatever one may think about it, stuff like barker, raim, empty set, Laurel Halo, all sound very much post 90ies (the period I was a teenager, and started to listen to tons of electronic music).
- tinco 4y ago
  I'm not saying I agree 100% but there's definitely something there. I was surprised when out of nowhere Justin Bieber coopted into a world wide hit in a genre that was in the clubs when I frequented them a full decade earlier (with Despacito). I'm not sure things like that would happen, it used to be that genres basically went out of style every 10 years or so. That said, I wouldn't say things are standing still either in club music. I don't pretend to have been to a club in the past 5 years or so, but even though they played roughly the same genres there's definitely a difference in depth between the acts we danced to in the 00s and acts like Major Lazer and The Weeknd. Maybe the genres are just sticking around longer and go through subtler changes. If you let teenage me hear Despacito I would've liked it but wouldn't be surprised. Major Lazer though would've blown my mind.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

"Great" is subjective. I'm sure there are many people that don't like the Beatles today, just as there were in the 1960s. Among the younger people I work with (<30 years old) many don't even know any Beatles songs FWIW. I think the Beatles were great but then there are other artists that I don't really like at all that are also considered great.

IgorPartola 4y ago
I have not heard a single Beatles song that made me want to listen to it again or sing along or hum the melody. I am almost 37, and think The Rolling Stones, Guns and Roses, Def Leopard, Led Zeppelin, and Tom Petty are fantastic.
- petodo 4y ago
  Technically that doesn't mean they were bad at the time, that just aged much worse than the other bands you mention, so depends whether you rate them in context of their era or in present day, some things age bad, some age good.
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    To me they are like Citizen Kane: it’s a great movie because what it did had never been done before but I have no interest in watching it ever again.
    - petodo 4y ago
      Funnily enough I share same sentiment about Beatles as about Citizen Kane, I forced myself to watch it together with Casablanca and few other "classics" and it's horrible movie by nowadays standards and I'd say you don't need to see it even once unless you are really movie nerd. Back in the day it was revolutionary and important I guess, but by nowadays standards it's utterly mediocre movie despite people praising it as something amazing, but to be fair I don't think I'd find movie from CK era which I'd like while I have no problem to find better artists from Beatles era whose music I enjoy much more and like them even nowadays compared to present day music. And one more unpopular opinion from someone who experienced jail like environment I think even recent highly rated Shawshank redemption while very good and enjoyable movie is romantic unrealistic fairy tale (for women) and I'd rather recommend everyone to watch Das Experiment to see more realistic display of prison I can sign, yet I've of them is rated asking best movies in history and the other is pretty much unknown.

wincy 4y ago

I became a teenager right airline the time Napster showed up and could download anything I wanted. I had a music collection in the 10s of gigabytes, and I’d never heard of the Beatles except in passing. Certainly nobody was pushing me to like them. Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band absolutely blew my teenage mind. I listened to it over and over again. Truly a unique and incredible album. My uncle grew up when it was brand new and relayed a similar story years after I’d come across them independently. His friend said “check out the Beatles!” And he said “that band with I wanna hold your hand? That’s a girlie band!” But took his friends advice, then proceeded to go home and listen to Sergeant Peppers a dozen times in amazement. Maybe I could chalk it up to some unrealized bias but it sure seemed like genuinely interesting and good music to me. Conversely, I recognize exactly one song from the White Album, and couldn’t sing a line from any of them.

adastra22 4y ago

80’s kid here. I never liked any Beatles songs. Not a single one. And “classic rock” from the 60’s and 70’s is my go-to genre. I always assumed their recognition was more historical. They kicked off the pop band phenomenon as we know it today, and the base rhythms of their songs were no doubt influential. But I’ve never felt that their actual songs were very good. Many of them are downright corny and cringe by the time I listened to them.

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great... That's exactly what I think... The Beatles were my parents' generation, not mine but I heard them a lot. I'm listening to music from that era: but that'd be, say and YMMW, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, ... I always looked at the Beatles as the commercial, pop, easy, and a bit "cheesy" band of their time. The Beatles are still catchy more than half a century later but, yeah, even if it's an unpopular opinion it's just, to me, mass produced pop that's not particularly deep.

hgomersall 4y ago

I think that's missing the point. My understanding, though I wasn't there, is that the Beatles basically defined what they did. They're no longer the best example of what they did, but that's because so many have built on what they created. At the time, there was nobody to compare them to. Their contribution is huge in musical history. When a sound is so common, it's hard to think what it might have felt like when it was rare.

mattejade 4y ago
> At the time, there was nobody to compare them to. Why do you assume this? When Sgt. Peppers came out in 1967 -- which we now mythologize as a revolutionary step -- that same year you had equally adventurous records by Pink Floyd, The Byrds, Love, Cream, The Doors, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the 13th Floor Elevators, and on and on. If you draw yourself back to the early 60s, then there's still nothing about their music that other artists weren't making. If you want to say that they made the "rock band" thing happen, then that's highly debatable because there were an absolute plethora of garage rock (and surf rock) bands around at the time, and I'm sure they were compared endlessly to The Beach Boys. But even if they did make the "rock band" thing happen, that's a result of their popularity at the time and not necessarily whether their music was particularly unique.

mattejade 4y ago

Exactly. It's not that critics weren't able to recognize the genius of The Beatles, it's that they weren't obligated to assume it's there. They could see clearly about how they actually felt when hearing the music; they could see without the mist of the mythology that now influences us to see The Beatles as revolutionary. They were allowed to point to Motown and say "this has better songwriting", or early Pink Floyd and say "this is more experimental/adventurous", and they wouldn't have to factor in things like 'influence' when evaluating how they actually felt when listening to the music.

hgsgm 4y ago
That's kind of like saying the champion team in $sport isn't the best, because they lost some games sometimes.
- d0gbread 4y ago
  It's not like that at all unless you've selected a single criteria, not mentioned it, and assume everyone applies it the same.

paganel 4y ago

> Fast-forward a handful of decades, and few now dare voice a dissenting opinion. There are (mostly young) people who have started doing it, maybe in connection with a recent post in here which was talking about the lack of a counter-culture (counter to that post, we still seem to have one). They're seen as precursors of today's "pop optimism", granted, not as commercialised yet as today's pop, but definitely the most worthy predecessors. In today's gloomy and uncertain age that commercialised pop optimism doesn't sit well.

iggldiggl 4y ago
> They're seen as precursors of today's "pop optimism", granted, not as commercialised yet as today's pop, but definitely the most worthy predecessors. In today's gloomy and uncertain age that commercialised pop optimism doesn't sit well. Funny, that reminds me how some 17/18 or so years ago at school some classmate told me that the music collection on my MP3 player wasn't bad, but somewhat a bit "too happy", or some words to that effect :-) – and I did like the Beatles already back then (though at that point I didn't yet have their complete albums) and still like them.

MisterBastahrd 4y ago

That's how I sorta feel about Stevie Ray Vaughan. Take any individual song and it's great. Texas Flood, for example, was wonderful. Take his songs as a unit and he's repetitive as hell in his guitar solos. But then pair him with another blues legend like Albert King where he's not just mailing it in and suddenly he's great again. I think SRV had massive talent but a limited imagination when left to his own devices.

bsder 4y ago
SRV was young. At the time he should have been finding his voice (about 20-25 years old) he was having quite a bit of drug problems. He had finally dried himself out and then died in a helicopter crash at 35.