Post a controversial opinion

Early pink floyd was like that, and some early bowie, but by the late-60s wasn’t that nursery rhyme stuff fading out? And what was it about, just stray bits of musical memory that came to the surface while taking acid?

Xp tom

There was a lot more of that stuff around than early Pink Floyd and Bowie. It's like a whole subgenre of UK psychedelia! I agree that it was odd that they were still doing it in 1969 though.

the only good beatles song is my sweet lord and that's because it's not a beatles song, george harrison just ripped off the chiffons

I'm sure Lennon and Harrison were delighted to find themselves recording "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" in 1969. If they're actually on the track.

the only good beatles song is the end tbh

is it kids songs or remnants of the dreaded british music hall tradition

A muddled distinction in my mind.

Yes, bit of crossover going on.

"Yellow Submarine" isn't music hall... though I could imagine George Formby singing it I suppose.

when I was a kid I somehow mixed up the 59th Street Bridge song and Yellow Submarine, so I would keep singing the former to the tune o the latter. i like it better this way.

the only good beatles song is my sweet lord and that's because it's not a beatles song, george harrison just ripped off the chiffons

― cat, Tuesday, June 29, 2021 7:05 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Woah, we got a live one here!

after reading this thread, I'm starting to come around to The Beatles are underrated POV as well, at least on ILM, but yes, we have been successful at listing out some of their sillier songs. OTOH, they put out a ton of original music in a short span of time and much of it is really good.

xpost Not only is it not a Beatles song, it's not even a Beatles song

As the world turns away from guitar-based rock/pop (maybe permanently?), their position seems to be pretty secure

overrated by boomers and underrated by gen x, y, and z?

properly rated by the Greatest Generation

Regardless of right or wrong it’s super hot right now to constantly go “actually, X is not that great, in fact, it’s the literal worst” and the Beatles are the easiest target in the world for that sort of thing. But in general if enough people like something it’ll be a matter of time until someone on Twitter tries to blow everyone’s minds with an attention seeking controp and send the pendulum swinging to the opposite side.

Blind Guardian > Beatles

my controversial opinion is that paul mccartney is Actually Good

i mean he's corny as hell and has certain proclivities of extraordinarily wealthy people of his generation, but he's spent nearly 60 years as literally the most famous person in human history and imo he's handled it about as well as one could hope. we could have done a lot worse

also a number of good tunes

Im sorry in what universe are the Beatles underrated? Its 60 years later and they and the Stones are still the freaking go-to canon rock music pantheon.

What annoys me about The Beatles/McCartney is not so much the nursery rhyme songs but the old-timey songs - When I'm 64, Honey Pie etc. Why was McCartney so keen on these? And he continued doing them into the seventies (You Gave Me The Answer) and maybe beyond...

He was trying to be his own dad.

Why was McCartney so keen on these?

He obviously liked the old music hall song and dance stuff, found it entertaining and fun, so he tried his hand at emulating it from time to time.

Uh, you may as well ask why was it so popular with so many people for so long? Dunno. There's no real mystery here beyond the obvious and ordinary one of popular tastes congregating around a style for a while, then forsaking it en masse for a different style. It's all music.

irl lol @ halfway there but for you

There's always been some number of people who don't like the beatles, but calling them overrated usually meant that you thought other artists from roughly the same period were just as good, or at least as good. It was equivalent to calling them a sacred cow.

Everyone did it! I was 22 when I realzed "the Beatles are overrated" wasn't the actual name of the band.

The difference now is zoomers, for the most part, don't go back that far. They're interested in the 1980's, but not the 1960's ime. The Beatles don't seem to be a paragon of anything much. I don't know who that would be now, maybe Michael Jackson. It doesn't matter, this post is really pointless.

Actually, yeah—for all the talk of their influence, they are actually really singular in many ways, and not really ways I like.

― treeship

I don't know what you're referring to, but I've always experienced their music as more heavily stylized than that of others.

Part of it is that their voices sound a lot alike, especially George and John. But every element feels distorted. Even when they're clearly trying to imitate their peers, like say the Byrds or Cream, it comes out as a kind of charicature. Everything gets transposed into the 2-dimensional beatles universe.

Why don't we do it (play kickball) in the road?

Can confirm that my 16 year old son wouldn't know a Beatles song if it bit him in the arse. His musical world probably starts somewhere in the late 90s. Which makes generational sense, as my musical world probably starts a few years before I was born too.

Even the Oldies station doesn't play anything released before 1976 at this point

For what it's worth, I gave my middle school French students an assignment to find a picture of someone they consider a style icon and describe what they're wearing, and one of them chose Ringo.

What was he wearing in that photo? :)

Classic early Beatles black suit iirc.

Not what i expected!

Anyway 60's English "nursery rhyme stuff" >>>>> 70's English Tolkien/orc bullshit

Stfu about gollum

Everyone thinks the 70s prog era is full of "English Tolkien/orc bullshit", but it largely isn't, and early Marc Bolan largely is.

trying to think of examples, and except Bolan there's Marillion and Leonard Nimmoy's Bilbo Baggins single, and struggling to think of any others. Even Genesis didn't go there.

For what it's worth, I gave my middle school French students an assignment to find a picture of someone they consider a style icon and describe what they're wearing, and one of them chose Ringo.

tbh Ringo was a style icon and a half, "a spacer, a star chaser" if you like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQyjEaoUPvg

xp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfHLvDBxj_k

When I was in 5th grade (early 80s), a 6th-grader who was super into The Beatles got a few of us together to stand on the playground equipment and sing Beatles' songs to the seemingly adoring screams of our younger classmates. He was John; I was Paul. We mostly sang the early hits plus Here Comes the Sun, Yellow Submarine, and Octopus' Garden.

I don't listen to them but once every couple of years and they tended to drown out other worthy groups, but hating The Beatles is for the joyless.

Bollocks, hating the Beatles is perfectly reasonable.

I don't know why you people go on about the nursery rhyme songs and music hall influences when the stuff recorded before 1965 exists and sounds awesome.

I don't like their early stuff at all tbh.

That's fair, but the thread revive pretends the raucous and pretty sophisticated absorptions of girl groups and Motown doesn't exist.

Hating the Beatles is nonsense, admitting to hating whatever you personally feel about their influence and ubiquity is allowable i spose

"I don't like the beatles" is the musical "I don't even have a tv"

Fair enough if you believe hating any group/artist is nonsense.

I didn't own a TV for about 5 years but didn't feel a need to bring it up or incorporate it into my personality

I see what you did there

paul ambushing a half empty bar in london to start a beatles sing along with his band was charming enough for me to overlook the fact that james corden was the reason it happened