Somehow, I got the urge to listen to some Beatles stuff, and goddammit if they weren't great. Back then, more artists tried to say something with their music and be innovative. The record companies weren't as good at pimping their performers like they are now, and things were more pure. The Beatles just wrote so many heartfelt songs and you could tell they were trying to innovate and introduce new sounds...just like Prince did early in his career.

TonyC said:

yeah, you're right. They changed everything... I listened to Revolver for the first time in a while all the way through, and it still blows me away.

TonyC said:

Yes, I agree with you 100% and their music still stands up today. They were and are still great!! Everyone should have some Beatles music in their collection

kisscamille said:

All I have, thank goodness, is the White Album. Fantastic it is!

sabaisabai said:

At least you have that, and yes, it's an amazing album. Get more!!

TonyC said:

Overrated.

yeah I think they are the best band ever.. probably the most growth in a short period of time!

The Beatles.

They are great and thank god they made the anthology, because I missed the whole beatlemania back in the 60s.

BlueNote

They're like musical oxygen. Some of my earliest memories are running around singing their early songs. The energy of them is still incredible and unique, a 3 year old can hear it. Their progression in their career is simply stunning, think of the lyrics to Love Me Do and then think of A Day in the Life. 13 or 14 albums in 8 years and hardly a dud among any of them. That they managed to produce them under intense scrutiny is awesome. And they still managed to remain reasonably sane real people unlike the fruit loops American stardom produces

The Beatles are the most overrated band in history.

The Strokes are the most overrated band in the now.

MrWhatever said:

The problem with that is they kept on being 'overrated' for years and years and years, one overrated album after another. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

as for The Strokes pffft No band or artist will ever have the impact that The Beatles have had. Michael Jackson came close in the '80s because he ran with music videos and took those to a new level but theres too much competition from other stimulus than just music, especially in this A.D.D era.

MrWhatever said:

They are probably overrated, but it doesn't the fact that they were incredibly great. Overrated doesn't mean bad, it just means not as godlike as people make them out to be at times.

Most good artists can turn out two or three great songs, max and that's a stretch. The Beatles, like Prince, were amazing because they knocked out classic songs one after the other after the other...album after album.

In which way overrated?

BlueNote

They were talented and they were respectable and they were innovative, but not that great. Their music was sort of obnoxious.

MrWhatever said:

MrWhatever said:

Can you give an example?

BlueNote

she loves you yea yea yea, helter skelter, i am the walrus, oob la di obb la da, yellow submarine... etc.

it's just so corny...

The Beatles were a decent rock n' roll band in their day, though not as good as the Rolling Stones and a few others.

They were innovative in the quite limited field of their rock and pop era, in that they were among the first bands to write their own individual songs that expressed their own feelings and beliefs, instead of using outside song writers. They were also innovative in bringing in influences from outside the conventional rock and pop area, eg using 'classical' musicians and being influenced by people like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa.

In my view, while I like some of their later stuff, they are definitely over-rated, and (through no fault of their own) have been a damaging and limiting imfluence over later generations of artists and listeners, who have mainly sought to copy the sound and style of the Beatles and not the spirit of discovery and invention that some of their best work could have inspired.

For me, Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa are the true greats of late '60s rock-related music, partly because they were too big for one paltry musical category to contain them, but mainly because, like Prince has in later years, they just destroyed all around them with their brilliance and originality.

The Beatles were not great musicians, they were good song-writers and 'personalities', and, in my view, without George Martin, the true 'fifth Beatle', to guide them, they would not have had the long-lasting success they have had.

So sayeth Miles!!!

Miles said:

I half agree with you. They weren't the greatest musicians, Paul was probably the most talented musician being pretty competent on both piano and guitar, and the only one to develop a distinctive instrumental style with his bass playing.

They're over rated as much as the "big" acts are (Elvis, Michael Jackson etc), but they tapped into something that still extists, and is still relevant today. A lot of snobbery exists with the Beatles, some music fans refusing to give them any credit, largely because it is such a cliche to do so, however most cliches only exist because they have a foundation.

Between 1962 and 1969 they consistently produced some of the greatest pop songs we have in our culture. They grew in style, stature and artistry, and whilst they weren't the left field innovators Paul McCartney would have loved them to be, they were prolific in the delivery of great albums. From A Hard Days Night to Revolver to Abbey Road. They wrote all their own stuff, way before the Rolling Stones were writing their own songs, and i dont believe people give them enough credit for the production side of things.

I would definitely consider George Martin the fifth Beatle, but reckon he acted as more of a technical translator, channeling their ideas into a reality. More them guiding him to guide them rather than him having any kind of Svengali influence.

Of course i dont believe that everyone should love or even like the Beatles, but I dont believe you can argue with their record and impact on popular culture and music.

The Beatles

Helter Skelter defined punk before it was ever considered a type of music.


Check the bass line paul is ripping in that one.. BRILLIANT SONG

McCartney's bass playing that is his true talent!

YODAHENDRIX said:

Crank up helter skelter, listen to his thumping.. Its possible the strings on the bass became twisted

It's about time The Beatles catalogue was remastered.

Cloudbuster said:

Wonder whos gonna get the check...

JohnDoe

JohnDoe said:

Two have been remastered so far.

Yellow Submarine and Let It Be Naked

U can honestly say the anthology sets are remastered, well.. set 2 and 3

Sdldawn said:

"Magical Mystery Tour" & "Abbey Road" also claim to be digitally remastered,however this was done in the late 80s and they dont sound nearly as good as "Let it Be...Naked"