The Beatle Who Got Away

Davy Jones was a singer before The Monkeys. He had a single make the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965, and a couple singles that made the top 10 that year in Australia. He could also play drums. But he was also short and it wouldn't work out well visually to have him on drums.

Micky Dolenz had a band of his own in the early '60s where he played guitar and was lead singer, and also wrote songs. But his character in the show played the drums, which he had never played.

Mike Nesmith played guitar and bass and sang in several folk and country bands before The Monkeys, and wrote songs. His song "Different Drum", written a year or two before The Monkeys, became a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1967. He had offered that song to the producers of The Monkeys but they didn't want it.

Peter Tork played piano, base, guitar, and banjo long before The Monkeys and had spent a lot of time doing folk music in New York.

They were allowed to have some songs the wrote on their albums. The first two albums each included one Nesmith song and one song Nesmith cowrote.

Their 3rd included 3 Nesmith songs, 2 songs that they all wrote, a Dolenz song, a song Tork cowrote, and one that all 4 cowrote with one other person.

Their 4th included a Nesmith song, a Tork song, one cowritten by Nesmith, and one cowritten by Jones.

Their 5th included 3 by Nesmith, and one he cowrote, and 2 that Jones cowrote.

The rest are fairly similar.

The Beatles were arguably an earlier incarnation of this - a v rough and ready covers band propelled to 'stardom' by Epstein and heavily produced, notably by George Martin. Just like Jimmy Miller's shaping of the Rolling Stones in their glory years it's the people behind the curtain who transition these acts into the big league.

(The Jones Stones were a very good UK R&B covers band in their early years just as the Beatles were originally a rock and roll covers band)

Funny thing from the recent Rubin/McCartney interview series: McCartney mentioned that they'd play with other bands the same night and that there was always the risk that another band did a better cover of a song that was also on their set list. So, they started writing their own songs to avoid that other bands would play the same songs that night.

They grew up in an era when American R&B was literally revolutionizing the musical culture of Britain. And in crossing the pond and being selected by disc jockeys with rabid audiences, there was a distillation that took place.

So the Beatles in their youth were not just exposed to some American music - they were listening to the absolute best R&B ever created, and way more of it than most white kids in America were getting.

It’s fascinating that this sort of convergence of all the most incredible aspects of American roots music had to take place outside of the US, create genres like Skiffle (unheard of in America), and spit out kids like Paul McCartney who would go on to “invade” America with a sound that was familiar to US ears and yet something else entirely.

The magic still happens - see Amy Winehouse, the Scoundrels - but these are sort of like subsequent moon landings, despite being amazing in their own right.

It's She loves _you_, yeah, yeah. Little quirks like that (using second person) set the early Beatles records apart from contemporary boy bands and were a forebode of that they were more than just a boy band.

There was a particular set-up at a particular time that meant that pop music was going to go very big and that explains more of The Beatles phenomenal success than your very interesting points do.

Pop was already big, see Elvis. If The Beatles were not as exceptional as they were, they would have maybe two or three hits and disappear, like most bands of the time. They were exceptional songwriters, who stood relevant for almost a decade, because they infused new ideas (e.g. from avant garde) into pop music. In contrast to e.g. Frank Zappa, they were able to convey these ideas to a large audience.

Around 1969-1970 they started to loose their edge. After a wildly experimental period (~Revolver to Magical Mystery tour) they slowly returned to more conventional Rock & Roll (see e.g. the album Let It Be). If they hadn't broken up in 1970, they would've probably become less relevant after then. E.g. even though McCartney's songwriting was still good in the 70ies, the world had moved on (disco, punk, etc.), with the ex-Beatles becoming less and less relevant. Except perhaps Lennon, who would work with more contemporary artists like Bowie.

That part of the GP's post makes little sense to me. There were plenty of post-WWII (and pre-WWII) popular music stars who fit that description.

Yes, an endless parade of popular music stars was inevitable, but something like the Beatles wasn't. Pop would have evolved with or without them, of course, but their impact was insane.