vingu

3d

· edited

The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all time are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all time. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics, instead, are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers.
In a sense, the Beatles are emblematic of the status of rock criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena and too little to the merits of real musicians. If somebody composes the most divine music but no major label picks him up and sells him around the world, most rock critics will ignore him. If a major label picks up a musician who is as stereotyped as can be but launches her or him worldwide, your average critic will waste rivers of ink on her or him. This is the sad status of rock criticism: rock critics are basically publicists working for major labels, distributors and record stores. They simply highlight what product the music business wants to make money from.

Hopefully, one not-too-distant day, there will be a clear demarcation between a great musician like Tim Buckley, who never sold much, and commercial products like the Beatles. At such a time, rock critics will study their rock history and understand which artists accomplished which musical feat, and which simply exploited it commercially.

Beatles' "Aryan" music removed any trace of black music from rock and roll. It replaced syncopated African rhythm with linear Western melody, and lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.

Contemporary musicians never spoke highly of the Beatles, and for good reason. They could never figure out why the Beatles' songs should be regarded more highly than their own. They knew that the Beatles were simply lucky to become a folk phenomenon (thanks to "Beatlemania", which had nothing to do with their musical merits). That phenomenon kept alive interest in their (mediocre) musical endeavours to this day. Nothing else grants the Beatles more attention than, say, the Kinks or the Rolling Stones. There was nothing intrinsically better in the Beatles' music. Ray Davies of the Kinks was certainly a far better songwriter than Lennon & McCartney. The Stones were certainly much more skilled musicians than the 'Fab Four'. And Pete Townshend was a far more accomplished composer, capable of entire operas such as "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia"; not to mention the far greater British musicians who followed them in subsequent decades or the US musicians themselves who initially spearheaded what the Beatles merely later repackaged to the masses.

The Beatles sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented "Beatlemania" in 1963, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time reading these pages about such a trivial band.

The Beatles were not a terribly interesting band, but their fans were and still are an interesting phenomenon. I can only name religious fundamentalists as annoying (and as threatening) as Beatles fans, and as persevering in sabotaging anyone who dares express an alternate opinion of their faith. They have turned me into some kind of Internet celebrity not because of the 6,000 bios that i have written, not because of the 800-page book that i published, not because of the 30 years of cultural events that i organized, but simply because i downplayed the artistic merits of the Beatles, an action that they consider as disgraceful as the 2001 terrorist attacks.

I find it quite amusing that almost all of the Beatles songs have their own entries on Wikipedia (nothing wrong with that in itself, actually), even if they are not singles, and each of them is meticulously dissected as if there were transcendental suites exceeding human comprehension, yet bands like Faust or Red Krayola, etc. have biographies even shorter than just one article about any random Beatles song. Needless to say, none of their songs have any articles on them, yet I'm sure there would be a lot more to talk about. Moreover, if you had put any bad review of their album on the site with the intention to show the broader scope of opinions, you'd risk your "life" there, since such fanatics don't accept any single sign of trying to be objective. You are seen as public enemy number 1 to them. It is like your article is one giant cognitive dissonance to them and vandalizing your bio was the only way to reduce this dissonance.

The Beatles most certainly belong to the history of the 60s, but their musical merits are at best dubious.

The Beatles came at the height of the reaction against rock and roll, when the innocuous "teen idols", rigorously white, were replacing the wild black rockers who had shocked the radio stations and the conscience of half of America. Their arrival represented a lifesaver for a white middle class terrorized by the idea that within rock and roll lay a true revolution of customs. The Beatles tranquilized that vast section of the population and conquered the hearts of all those (first and foremost the females) who wanted to rebel, without violating the social status quo. The contorted and lascivious faces of the black rock and rollers were substituted by the innocent smiles of the Beatles; the unleashed rhythms of the first were substituted by the catchy tunes of the latter. Rock and roll could finally be included in the pop charts. The Beatles represented the quintessential reaction to a musical revolution in the making, and for a few years they managed to run its enthusiasm into the ground.

Furthermore, the Beatles represented the reaction against a social and political revolution. They arrived at the time of the student protests, of Bob Dylan, of the Hippies, and they replaced the image of angry kids, fists in the air, with their cordial faces and amiable declarations. They came to replace the accusatory words of militant musicians with overindulgent nursery rhymes. Thus the Beatles served as middle-class tranquilizers, as if to prove the new generation was not made up exclusively of rebels, misfits and s***maniacs.

For most of their career, the Beatles were four mediocre musicians who sang melodic three-minute tunes at a time when rock music was trying to push itself beyond that format, one originally confined by the technical limitations of the 78 rpm record. They were the quintessence of "mainstream" (assimilating the innovations proposed by rock music) within the format of the melodic song.

The Beatles belonged, like the Beach Boys (whom they emulated throughout most of their career), to the era of the vocal band. In such a band the technique of the instrument was not as important as that of the chorus. Undoubtedly skilled at composing choruses, they availed themselves of producer George Martin (head of Parlophone since 1956), to embellish those choruses with arrangements more and more eccentric.

Thanks to a careful marketing campaign, they became the most celebrated entertainers of the era, and are still the darlings of magazines and tabloids, much like Princess Grace of Monaco and Lady Di.

The convergence between Western polyphony (melody, several parts of vocal harmony and instrumental arrangements) and African percussion - the leitmotif of US music from its inception - was legitimized in Europe by the huge success of the Merseybeat, in particular by its best sellers, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Beatles, both produced by George Martin and managed by Brian Epstein. To the bands of the Merseybeat goes the credit of having validated rock music for a vast, virtually endless, audience. They were able to interpret the spirit and technique of rock and roll, while separating it from its social circumstances, thus defusing potential explosions. In such a fashion, they rendered it accessible not only to the young rebels, but to all. Mediocre musicians, and even more mediocre intellectuals, bands like the Beatles had the intuition of the circus performer who knows how to amuse the peasants after a hard day's work, an intuition applied to the era of mass distribution of consumer goods.

Every one of their songs and every one of their albums followed much more striking songs and albums by others, but instead of simply imitating them, the Beatles adapted them to a bourgeois, conformist and orthodox dimension. The same process was applied to the philosophy of the time, from the protests on college campuses to Dylan's pacifism, psychedelic d****, or Eastern religion. Their vehicle was melody, a universal code of sorts, that declared their music innocuous. Naturally others performed the same operation, and many (from the Kinks to the Hollies, from the Beach Boys to the Mamas and Papas) produced melodies even more memorable, yet the Beatles arrived at the right moment and theirs would remain the trademark of the melodic song of the second half of the twentieth century.

wild

2d

it's because of the fillers but the manga is the original source and i like it more

one piece is the 17th most popular anime rated at 8.73. only fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood (9.11), hunter x hunter (9.03), your name. (8.82), steins;gate (9.07) are more popular and rated higher. that's a good rating for an anime with a lot of filler episodes and for a manga which is the 3th most popular and 4th highest rated manga. if an anime has less watchers than one piece, then it's easier to have a higher rating, but despite how many haters drop it, it still has many fans and a high rating.

however, the best and my favorite completed anime of all time is gintama. can you even argue against that?

Lu The Ruler

2d

Those anime you listed are definitely better than One Piece though and there's many more. I'd say that they are better than Gintama, but I haven't actually watched that. But Hunter, Brotherhood and Stiens;Gate have little to no flaws. Hard for me to imagine it being better than those. I'm not saying One Piece is bad just that it ain't the best. I consider it on the level of DBZ, Naruto, Bleach, Demon Slayer, etc

I get your argument about popularity and fillers though

wild

1d

i've watched hunter x hunter, fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood, and steins;gate. hunter x hunter is a top 3 manga/anime. fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood and steins;gate are good, but one piece is superior because it went over 1,000 chapters and episodes with no flaws with the exception of fillers in the anime. one piece is not on the level of dbz, naruto, bleach, and demon slayer because no other manga/anime has better worldbuilding, storytelling, and mystery. one piece is on the same level as hunter x hunter. the creator of hunter x hunter even acknowledged one piece and said he wishes he could've created a world like one piece from the start. it doesn't make sense that you say certain animes are better than gintama when you haven't watched gintama. just say you don't care about one piece and gintama because you're not interested or because they're too long. there are other mangas/animes that i'm not interested in or don't read/watch because they're too long like detective conan, but i'm not going to say that they're worse than any manga/anime i like. saying one piece is bad or worse than anything without reading/watching it and being caught up is stupid.

Lu The Ruler

17h

It's all opinion at the end of the day. I can go how do you know one piece is the best when you haven't watched every single anime in existence? Detective Conan could be better for all you know, right?

I just hold those animes in really higher regard that it would be difficult for others to top in my opinion. Will my opinion change of I complete them? Maybe but I can say about any anime that you or I have yet to watch so what are we really doing here?

WRU

16h

yall still let this dude make threads?

Kanye mess

16h

Im not an expert but to me that band queen and guns and roses S***S on the beatles