The Music of the Beatles (1968)

As valid and thought-provoking as this article is (was?) I find myself struck by two things: 1) Written in 1968? That was fifty years ago! How greatly our world has changed in that time in terms of culture, yet the Beatles music feels as fresh and immediate today as then. How innocent some songs are "I want to hold your hand" - to a degree it would be inconceivable on today's vulgar radio.

2) The references to contemporary composers of the 30s and 40s were almost totally lost on me. The big bands, the jazz & blues men, and such were familiar. Shows just how few compositions (and more rarely, composers) stand the test of time.

For a delicious counterpoint, I suggest this: https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/music/sgt-pepper... A reviewer who called Sgt Pepper (Rolling Stones #1 rated of 500 albums) “Busy, hip and cluttered”, “a surprising shoddiness in composition” and “fraudulent.”

There's no accounting for taste, it seems.

A lovely piece of characteristic pretention from the NYRB (a journal I love BTW) which it still preserves today: "on one side were Sinatra, Horne, and Holiday, stylists of a high order, wonderfully performing material of little musical interest (when not derived from Gershwin or Porter) and dim literary content. On the other side were specialized concert singers—Frijsh, Fairbank, and Tangeman—who, though vocally uneven, helped to create a new style..."

The author could probably guess that Sinatra, Horne and Holiday would still be popular 50 years later while Frijsh, Fairbank, and Tangeman are essentially unknown.

But as others have written this piece has aged well, and that too I predict will be true of most contemporary NYRB articles.

This piece aged fairly well.

Confession: despite being a rabid Beatles fan for 20 years, I only really listened to John Lennon’s first solo album this week. I think I dismissed it partly because it has a silly name (Plastic Ono Band). It is fantastic.

The thing about The Beatles is that their catalogue underwrites our cultural obsession with ‘albums’, which is a ridiculous standard to impose on everything else. Much fairer to judge songwriters on their accumulation of worthy tracks spread over many years and projects, even if they never come together in one perfect album. Beatles solo careers are prime victims of this unfortunate standard.