If you look for the cultural impact in the u.s (I know that wasn't the question) the Beatles are the second biggest selling u.s act of the SOUNDSCAN era. Yes i'm talking from 21 years AFTER they split to today.

Prince is 57th, behind such stars as Frank Sinatra, Britney Spears, Backsteet Boys, Kenny G.Now thats the influence of the last 16 years.

I can't be alone on the forun in being in this position...but I've been a Prince fan for 23 years and a Beatles fan for 27 years. I own all general releases by both acts. I am totally commited to both acts as my favourite 2 acts of all time. But for me and just a personal thing, it's Beatles all over.

I feel Beatles songs very deeply,just as with Prince. I also dispute the idea the Beatles lack of Prince's variety. Come on , I think Love Me Do to Tomorrow never Knows in 4 years is as wide a variety as you could wish to find.And the beatles managed to grow and expand but still keep their audience, something Prince unfortunately failed to do.

As a musician yes Prince is the Better, and yes Prince is 1 person against a band. I love Prince, but let's be honest, the only place on earth where Prince will come out over the Beatles in a question of who is best is on a prince forum.

Anywhere else, without bias...The Beatles win every time

skywalker said:

Love your response! The word "better" must be defined by the individual. But... I might argue that Prince's body of work is more important also to the shape of pop culture/pop music.

You can see Prince "influencees" everywhere... Terrence Trent D'Arby, D'Angelo, Andre 3000, Lenny Kravitz... and I'd even argue Babyface, Seal, Culture Club... of course the Time... and look what Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis did with Janet Jackson and implementing the Minneapolis sound. Dare I add Sting... and ARGUABLE the poetry and innuendos of Dave Matthews.

I don't know that I see direct Beatles influencees that stretched into the 80's... where as Prince's "influencees" have evolved and taken music into another stratosphere.

I could be wrong... but that's the reason for this post.

VERY interesting.

If you don't see a direct influence of The Beatles that stretched into the 80's then you need to sit down and listen to Around the World in a Day and Parade immediately!!!!!
[Edited 4/7/07 12:47pm]

MantuaPharoah said:

Are you kidding?! Have you ever heard of little album called Around The World In A Day? The Beatles' fingerprints are all over it!

skywalker said:

Great minds...

MantuaPharoah said:

Lenny kravitz..have you HEARD his first album??? I built this garden for us etc.. pure Beatles, even has sean lennon on one of his albums.Babyface, I would guess is far more influenced by Smokey Robinson and Holland Dozier Holland. Yes jam and Lewis (who aren't prince last time I checked) infuenced the minneapolis sound...the Beatles influences spread the world over. No spread past the 80's...what about Oasis, Coldplay, Travis, And look who they originally influenced..Elton John, Billy Joel, Don Henley. If you use jam and lewis to say Prince has influenced artists, we can use Billy Joel, Elton, oasis as examples of Beatles carrying on influencing music. prince really influences mostly one small area of popular music artistically...the Beatles go across the board.

Genesia said:

Lol, yea I love ATWIAD but it's as much a Prince homage to the Beatles pepper album as Ready For The World's debut album was a tip of the hat to prince,lol.

Speaking as someone who saw the first appearance of The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 (in real time, I might add), there is absolutely no question that the Beatles were bigger than Prince has ever been, even in the Purple Rain days.

That is not a knock against Prince (I own every last one of his albums, but not a single one by The Beatles). It is simply a fact. The Beatles were a worldwide phenomenon and the songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney was, quite simply, the most synergistic and magical in the history of modern music. Period.

Genesia said:

Oh yeah! LOL Well umm... that's 1. LOL

Yeah... yeah... Coldplay... Oasis... okay... so there ARE influences. And I'm sure plenty more. But these are the responses I was looking for.
[Edited 4/7/07 12:58pm]

GoldTimer said:

Well said, GT. I am also a huge fan of both P. and The Beatles, so saying one's "better" than the other is virtually impossible.

skywalker said:

higher quality output on criteria of personal emotional impact, melody, and creative technique.

Oh please!

These threads need 2 stop

Sly said:

Let it be.

One thing to keep in mind is that The Beatles + George Martin + Brian Epstein were pretty much IT for the duration. They had a few guest performers here and there, but the core was the same. The creativity came from those 4 members and the production was very consistent.

Prince is extremely talented - yes. But he owes a LOT to the members of his band, which he keeps switching. He's had dozens of band members, and his sound changes with each incarnation (not always a good thing).

So it's hard to compare Prince's body of work (which is the combined effort of dozens of band members over almost 30 years) to the product of 4 men with the same producer.

Se7en said:

I agree with you

I played Beatles stand tunes music for marching band in high. I hate those songs cuz I want to speed away with my flute part and be done with it. Prince's music is everything! So, yeah. Prince won this battle.

Chopadelic said:

And John Lennon once said The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Just because they said it doesn't make either statement true.

MantuaPharoah said:

True, Prince influenced Lenny Kravitz, Babyface, Seal, Culture Club, etc., which is no small accomplishment. That is, until you compare it to the impact of The Beatles, who influenced EVERY pop and rock act that came after them.

viewaskew said:

Actually,
this was probably true,
because, back in Biblical times,
people were alot shorter than they are now (or were during Mr. Lennon's time).

Whilst it is true that Around the World In A Day and to a lesser extent Parade were a homage or at least influenced by the Beatles, the extent of Princes influence on musicians is being under-estimated in my opinion.

Forget the Jam and Lewis thing, as yes there sound may have been influenced by Prince but they grew up at the same time and played together. Prince was more of a leader at that time and Jam and Lewis followed in his footsteps more than being influenced solely by his sound.

There are so many artists that give props to Prince that I am not going to list them all here because it would take too long and I won't remember them all anyway.

There is a government radio station in Australia called Triple J that plays mostly independent music or what you would call the non-commercial stuff. It ranges from hard rock to hip-hop to metal to soul to blues and roots and basically everything on the musical spectrum. They interview many artists and I've lost count of the number of times I hear them mention Prince as an influence.

They also get in guests once a week to do a cover versions of a song they love and the leader of who has been covered would most likely be Prince. They get in musicians or well known DJ's once a week to play a 45 minute DJ set, and more often than not they mix in at least 1 Prince song.

There is also a government TV station ABC, that has a twice weekly program called Rage. On Saturday nights from around midnight to 3 or 4am they have a guest programmer who can be any individual musician or collective band and they play a few hours of their favourite songs/videos and I'm constantly amazed by the wide variety of artists that pick 1 or 2 Prince songs amongst their choices.

The whole thing with the artists giving props to Prince is that theycome from the complete spectrum of music. There are heavy metal guys, folk, blues, rock and of course hip-hop guys that give props to Prince.

Yes the Beatles have influenced a lot of people but so has Prince. Just remember that the Beatles were not 1st. You had Elvis who caused a phenomena and then the Beatles took it to a new level. Despite Lennon, McCartney and Harrison being great songwriters a lot of the production and phenomena can be attributed to george Martin whereas Prince never had to rely on another person.

The question is, who influenced the Beatles? Just like Elvis, their early pop stuff was probably influenced by the african-american stuff that was probably underground in London at the time (I'm only guessing here, as I don't know. Please don't flame just correct me). Then they were influenced by their drug taking and then by Ravi Shankar (Norah Jones father). They fused all these influences and made it marketable. Just as Prince has fused all his influences together.

mashedpotato said:

I've heard what George Martin did before and after the Beatles. And then I listened to what the Beatle members did without him... he's not a creative force by any means. No musician I know who dropped acid and smoked pot came up with anything remotely like "Day in the Life." And it bears no influence of Ravi Shankar...

Genesia said:

I agree, yet that doesn't mean that The Beatles were "better". Popularity doesn't equal "better". Ask the New Kids on the Block or Spice Girls.

ufoclub said:

Personal emotional impact:

Almost impossible to gauge. You want to measure human emotions? Good Luck. Someone in this world might be more emotionally impacted by Prince's Jughead than they are any Beatles song. That's just how odd humans and their emotions are.

Melody:

What about Rhythm? Are you not measuring the other key elements of music? Then how do you choose what melody and or rhythm is "better"? You cannot measure this stuff....

Creative Technique:

Again, explain how you would measure such a thing?

Bottom line: We are talking about elements that are hard/impossible to measure. It's not math, it's music. You cannot measure what makes people like one thing over another.

This is why it is almost pointless, yet still fun, to discuss who is "better" between Prince and The Beatles.
[Edited 4/7/07 15:57pm]

skywalker said:

I'm telling you to do a comparison yourself within your own head about which sounds have more emotional resonance, which melody is more accomplished and potent, which arrangements and sounds are produced more creatively.

When I make up a song, I find rhythm is much easier then a melody. If someone were to ask me to make my own original Prince type studio song, or my own original Beatles type song, I know for a fact that with me, a strong Beatles studio type seems much more difficult.

Just look at "Come Together" which is riffed off of a Chuck Berry vibe and sounds as supercoolcreative now as it did in 1969 (even Prince covered it a weeks ago). How do you come up with that shit? It's pure magic.

m3taverse said:

Don't I know it. Good thing I'm a quick learner.

I still doubt that even I got to know the Beatles, they'd ever come off as better than Prince.

Actually, I doubt I could ever say anybody is better than him. He's got it all.

skywalker said:

Let's compare Hendrix to The Beatles next.

Prince is the equivalent of the Beatles in the 80's...

skywalker said:

Oh, please. Both of those groups were popular for a couple years -- they flashed and burned out. If you're going to make that kind of comparison, try a little harder and make it a good one, at least.

The Beatles owned the 60s -- creatively and on the charts. (Trust me -- I was there.) And their music has lasting resonance because it was so beautifully written. (Gee...maybe that's why Prince, himself, has been doing so many Beatles covers lately.)

No.

JoeTyler said:

No, he really wasn't. As I said earlier, the Beatles owned the 60s. That was not the case for Prince in the 80s. He had a lot more competition. (Ever hear of a guy named Michael Jackson?)