Why did The Beatles get so many bad reviews?
tedgioia.substack.com
tedgioia.substack.com
I realize that "getting it wrong" could be a shorthand for "being so different from the historical majority opinion" but the piece doesn't seem to approach things that way.
It's significant in a way because I think over time majority opinions have a way of stifling minority perspectives on things that are most popularly seen as "great art". I don't mean to sound contrarian, I'm just suggesting that maybe consensus about a given work isn't quite what it seems all the time, that there are social pressures and dynamics at play that sometimes distort how people might consciously consider a piece versus how they might react to it completely independently without labels.
I also think it points to other things, like art perception being contextually dependent. People change and their tastes change — it doesn't mean one perspective is invalid, just that it was occuring in a different time.
Of course, sometimes people just don't fully appreciate something because it's new and are looking at it with a certain lack of imagination. But I also sometimes think we look back at the past as if it were preordained, more so than how we see the future.
A music critic can't just say "I didn't care for it" and move on - or rather, they could, but then they wouldn't write the article.
I think the lesson here is more for the editors: maybe find someone who's a fan to write the piece? Or maybe we get a better picture now that aggregate ratings (like Rotten Tomatoes) are widespread?
Objectivity in journalism may not exist, but most poor quality journalism I find is directly correlated to how big a fanboy that person is about the particular subject.
You need intelligence when approaching criticism far more than reverence, is I guess what I'm saying. If someone can intelligently relate to me specifically why they might not like the Beatles, or specific song, in a way that I can understand, I would consider that person more trustworthy than the alternative.
But that relies on me, or rather the reader/audience, to be open and receptive to challenging opinions.
I look around on YouTube for recordings I like. There are lots of recordings I don't like for whatever reason. I don't post them. Why bother?
So, nowadays, I'm not sure why anyone should spend time reviewing music they don't like. At all. What's the point? The slush pile is vast. Make the best collection you can of stuff you like. If other people find it good then maybe they'll start to trust your judgement.
Admittedly, I have a tiny audience, a newspaper is a little different, and sometimes people like to read a good takedown. But it seems unnecessary?
If something is extremely popular but you perceive something wrong about it of course that's a good reason to write about it.
At the same time many critics seem to just try to put artists down because that makes it seem the critic is above the artist because he can see the wrongness in the artist. Critics are wannabe artists.
It's different for other media, like an article about how a book or TV show or movie is historically inaccurate is sometimes fun.
I guess it's just the wrongheaded logic of criticism: The critic must prove they are doing their job. They are "critics", right? Therefore they must criticize. :-)
That happens more in video games reviews than in movies but often reviewer reviews some title in niche genre well but it isn't anything worth attention for actual fan because it doesn't do anything special over different games in the title or is outright going backward.
But the "omni-reviewer" that reviews everything that comes their way won't know that, they play say RTS or some strategy game once every 3 years so anything that seems pretty competent gets a good score even if compared to the peers in the genre it might be weak. Ability to communicate flaws doesn't help here really that much if reviewer by nature of their generalism doesn't even have point of comparison.
That's not how it is at all for games, though, is it? I mean, there are very few niche genres that gamers (even if they aren't reviewers) haven't tried.
A games reviewer will at least have already played the most popular games for each of the popular genres. You will find it hard to find a games reviewer who hasn't played the top RTS games, the top FPS games, the top Mobile games, the top RPG games, etc.
> That happens more in video games reviews than in movies but often reviewer reviews some title in niche genre well but it isn't anything worth attention for actual fan because it doesn't do anything special over different games in the title or is outright going backward.
But niche genres don't do well anyway. If the game is not a side-scroller, a platformer, a dungeon crawler, an RTS, an FPS, a point-and-click, an ARPG, a hidden object game, an RPG ... what exactly is it[1]?
If the game doesn't fall neatly into a genre, then it's not going to do well anyway, because ordinary players won't be able to review just like the reviewer won't be able to review it - what exactly do they compare it to?
[1] This is one of the problems that plagued Brigador, which didn't neatly fit into a genre and was a failure.
Funny enough we are actually took a step BACK from marketwide aggregated ratings in recent years.
Using RT as an example, they changed their system in recent years so their shareholders had more control over the ratings, who can rate them and what is said.
They basically shifted from a simple internet movie rating site to slowly becoming another Hollywood mouthpiece with their selection of pro-Hollywood narrative critics and making it harder for normal people to raise opinions, we seem to be reverting back to the status quo.
It'd be a shame if the audience rating became less reliable in that regard.
RT is not such a good example - didn't they recently start weighting reviews (viewer reviews count less and less)?
I think Metacritic still allows you to see the viewer reviews independently of the critic reviews. I remember using Metacritic in the past, and my general experience was that any movie with:
1. High reviews from the critics but low reviews from the viewers = probably trash, expect to be assaulted with some deeper meaning or message which is completely out of context.
2. Low reviews from critics but high reviews from viewers = Probably good entertainment, bring the popcorn but don't expect a deep message from the movie.
3. Consistently low reviews = absolute trash, don't waste your money
4. Consistently high reviews = appeals to a very broad segment of the population, probably appeals to you too.
It's not that I'm necessarily going to agree with the negative reviews. But I definitely find them much more useful.
It's a sad state of affairs when we're told that there's only one correct opinion about a particular piece of media and dissenting views are "wrong." We lose the deep insight that comes from looking at who likes and dislikes a piece and why. And it's hard to truly like something when liking it is presented as the only correct choice from the start.
Negative reviews tend to be a bit more articulate and specific about what they didn't like, and why they didn't like it. Pain points tend to stand out a lot more than positive things, especially if you go into an experience with the expectation that you'll enjoy it.
That said, there's also plenty of occasions where I've found nothing useful in the negative reviews, but found some positive reviews compelling enough to try a book.
Movies, TV shows and music I tend to ignore specific reviews altogether, and just go by the description and overall positive/negative average from ratings. There are so many more dimensions that short form reviews generally aren't useful at all.
Wouldn’t that be an entirely solvable problem? Or am I expecting too much from machine learning?
But this is exactly what you look for. How many of the bad reviews are people who seem like they whine a lot, how many are just unlucky, how many have seemingly reasonable complaints, etc.
How dumb are the bad reviews? If most are just stupid, it’s probably a good product, if you can find at least one review that really seems like it was by a real person with a real issue, it’s an indicator that some of the reviews are at least real.
But maybe that’s just a "me" issue ;)
In some cases, I've instead decided that a completely different kind of product can fill the same need in a better way.
That’s what often ends up happening, but then I also don’t want to be wasteful and buy something new before the old thing breaks.
Another is when they had a problem with something external to the item itself such as shipping.
Something like a cross between an issue tracker and a lightweight court of law.
If Amazon were whacked around the head with an antitrust stick like Microsoft was in 2001, this is the kind of innovation that might actually flourish from newer startups.
On the other hand, reviews don't need to do that, and the shorter ones don't, and criticism certainly doesn't need to engage with the question of whether a piece of media is at all enjoyable.
So a review can be right or wrong from my perspective based on how well it reflects my tastes.
Look at a piece like Picasso’s Guernica [1] without any context and in all likelihood you’ll consider it an ugly, confusing mess. But then if you take some time to read the history [2] and it completely changes how you look at the work.
[1] https://www.parisupdate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Paris...
Sometimes (often?) these critiques contain an element of social or cultural connotation as well. Techno definitly is hedonistic, rap and hiphop are connected to certain demographics and classes within society, as where the Beatles. That means a criticism should always also be seen in that light: Who criticizes whom from what standpoint? If that country fan dislikes the latest and harshest noise rock release that might be a good guide for fellow country music afficionados, but someone who likes noise rock might rather take that negative review as a compliment. Both sides could try to use the border they draw towards the other as cultural capital within their own ingroups.
That means when the Beatles became popular a lot of the criticism they got was also criticism the old generations had towards the younger generations. It was not only about the music, it was also about who decides what good music is.
Today (thankfully) we live in times where objectively good art is revealed as the delussional idea it always was.
Well if you're a critic you're supposed to have an informed opinion, something that is not just your personal, knee-jerk reaction but a well thought-out intellectual construction that explains what's good and what's less good and why.
Otherwise what's the point? I can get an opinion from any patron at any bar, or from dogs even.
Perhaps the Beatles really weren't that great, but were massively popular for reasons other than master craftsmanship.
Fast-forward a handful of decades, and few now dare voice a dissenting opinion.
(My own personal opinion is that they were great songwriters who never bothered to tighten up their production and performance chops. I disliked them on first listen, then gave The White Album very close attention twenty or thirty times, and that's where I landed.)
Can't Buy Me Love, Hard Day's Night, Help!, Day Tripper, We Can Work It Out, Paperback Writer, Yesterday, Nowhere Man are mid-career Beatles, 1964-66. Most charting bands don't produce memorable pop songs like this over and over.
And then they made the more ambitious albums.
McCartney proved again later that he is an outstanding pop musician. Maybe I'm Amazed, Live and Let Die, etc.
He became one. None of them were very good in 1962. It's debatable how good they would have been without George Martin guiding them.
Are we knocking off points for not being a child prodigy?
Production was done in 60s Britain—still recovering from WWII. With two tracks most of the time. Only around Abbey Road time, do the albums sounds decent by modern standards despite millions focused on remastering. Apparently they/studio finally bought better equipment in that time frame.
Performance, well the guys were in their early twenties. Let's see what anyone else accomplished at that age. There are certainly better soloists on each instrument, but virtuosity is not enough to make compelling music.
And then it was done.
Aren't the Beatles just an example, though? The piece starts with jazz, and even mentions Beethoven got terrible reviews.
I think it's about a more general phenomenon than just the Beatles, though they do get most of TFA's time.
Aside from the raw popularity of the Beetles, there's been all these books, documentaries, and academic work. It's put them into a category like Shakespeare.
It's actually a national pastime, taking potshots at golden idols. The fact that folks don't do it much to the Beatles must mean, what? That folks probably like them?
They were objectively so influential that any contrarian take on this just sounds like bullshit to me.
I'm listening every day 80s radio during lunch and dinner with my kids and think 80s/90s was peak music, 70s was pretty great and it went really quick downhill in 00s.
There is still quite a lot of new electronic stuff worth listening to. Lots of it is derivative, but that has always been true for most pop music styles.
Whatever one may think about it, stuff like barker, raim, empty set, Laurel Halo, all sound very much post 90ies (the period I was a teenager, and started to listen to tons of electronic music).
That said, I wouldn't say things are standing still either in club music. I don't pretend to have been to a club in the past 5 years or so, but even though they played roughly the same genres there's definitely a difference in depth between the acts we danced to in the 00s and acts like Major Lazer and The Weeknd.
Maybe the genres are just sticking around longer and go through subtler changes. If you let teenage me hear Despacito I would've liked it but wouldn't be surprised. Major Lazer though would've blown my mind.
Back in the day it was revolutionary and important I guess, but by nowadays standards it's utterly mediocre movie despite people praising it as something amazing, but to be fair I don't think I'd find movie from CK era which I'd like while I have no problem to find better artists from Beatles era whose music I enjoy much more and like them even nowadays compared to present day music.
And one more unpopular opinion from someone who experienced jail like environment I think even recent highly rated Shawshank redemption while very good and enjoyable movie is romantic unrealistic fairy tale (for women) and I'd rather recommend everyone to watch Das Experiment to see more realistic display of prison I can sign, yet I've of them is rated asking best movies in history and the other is pretty much unknown.
Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band absolutely blew my teenage mind. I listened to it over and over again. Truly a unique and incredible album.
My uncle grew up when it was brand new and relayed a similar story years after I’d come across them independently. His friend said “check out the Beatles!” And he said “that band with I wanna hold your hand? That’s a girlie band!” But took his friends advice, then proceeded to go home and listen to Sergeant Peppers a dozen times in amazement.
Maybe I could chalk it up to some unrealized bias but it sure seemed like genuinely interesting and good music to me.
Conversely, I recognize exactly one song from the White Album, and couldn’t sing a line from any of them.
That's exactly what I think... The Beatles were my parents' generation, not mine but I heard them a lot. I'm listening to music from that era: but that'd be, say and YMMW, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, ...
I always looked at the Beatles as the commercial, pop, easy, and a bit "cheesy" band of their time.
The Beatles are still catchy more than half a century later but, yeah, even if it's an unpopular opinion it's just, to me, mass produced pop that's not particularly deep.
Why do you assume this? When Sgt. Peppers came out in 1967 -- which we now mythologize as a revolutionary step -- that same year you had equally adventurous records by Pink Floyd, The Byrds, Love, Cream, The Doors, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, the 13th Floor Elevators, and on and on.
If you draw yourself back to the early 60s, then there's still nothing about their music that other artists weren't making. If you want to say that they made the "rock band" thing happen, then that's highly debatable because there were an absolute plethora of garage rock (and surf rock) bands around at the time, and I'm sure they were compared endlessly to The Beach Boys. But even if they did make the "rock band" thing happen, that's a result of their popularity at the time and not necessarily whether their music was particularly unique.
They could see clearly about how they actually felt when hearing the music; they could see without the mist of the mythology that now influences us to see The Beatles as revolutionary.
They were allowed to point to Motown and say "this has better songwriting", or early Pink Floyd and say "this is more experimental/adventurous", and they wouldn't have to factor in things like 'influence' when evaluating how they actually felt when listening to the music.
There are (mostly young) people who have started doing it, maybe in connection with a recent post in here which was talking about the lack of a counter-culture (counter to that post, we still seem to have one).
They're seen as precursors of today's "pop optimism", granted, not as commercialised yet as today's pop, but definitely the most worthy predecessors. In today's gloomy and uncertain age that commercialised pop optimism doesn't sit well.
Funny, that reminds me how some 17/18 or so years ago at school some classmate told me that the music collection on my MP3 player wasn't bad, but somewhat a bit "too happy", or some words to that effect :-) – and I did like the Beatles already back then (though at that point I didn't yet have their complete albums) and still like them.
I think SRV had massive talent but a limited imagination when left to his own devices.
He had finally dried himself out and then died in a helicopter crash at 35.
In our school there was a huge amount of buzz about the Beatles before anyone had heard them. There were plenty of cynical kids who didn't buy the hype. But once we heard them and later watched them on the Ed Sullivan show there was near consensus among my peers that they were terrific.
For me it was the first time that I felt something truly changed everything. In time I came to become a bigger fan of the Rolling Stones because of the blues influence. But no one at the time was the least bit critical in the least about the Beatles. In time their new albums were eagerly anticipated. I still look at music as before the Beatles and after the Beatles.
I do think the Beatles were (and still are) a little bit overrated.[0] My own feelings are that Sergeant Pepper is the only solidly-good album they released and for the rest, about half the tracks are good and worth listening to today, with the other half being anywhere from bad to dull.
The Beatles were very much an experimental and influential band and deserve recognition as such. Sometimes experiments end up as duds, and well, those are the tracks that don't get played on radio or movies these days :)
[0] Conversely, for 1960s music, I think The Doors are probably underrated, with a much higher hit-to-miss ratio than the Beatles. Well, I'll just continue to enjoy them both in healthy amounts.
I also really like revolver, abbey road, the white album. Not every track, but more than half of each. So I guess we just like different music.
I actually agree with that. I find Sgt. Pepper's to be harsh and gimmicky in production (e.g. left-right channel wipes because stereo was a novelty).
I appreciate their contribution to change in music, but not so much their actual sound. Sometimes I enjoy covers more, like Fiona Apple's Across the Universe. I don't know if that speaks to my sound preference or simply when I was coming of age.
Similarity, I never really liked Nirvana that much, but they certainly changed the sound of popular music. In both cases, was it really the band, or did they simply become the havee of change that was already happening?
Either way, you'll always get reviews that seem laughable in hindsight because significant change fundamentally creates a sense of culture shock.
It's worth remembering that all studio releases and masters of the Beatles were done entirely in monoaural sound. Stereo mixes didn't happen until well after the band broke up and lost all creative control over the material. When stereo was new, there was a tendency to overdo it, and that's what happened with stereo mixes of The Beatles: the older ones sound terrible and are not representative of what the band intended.
You'll often find the hardcore fans adamant that the songs must always be listened to in the original mono mixes, and this is a large reason why.
That's not quite right. First of all, Abbey Road was done fully in stereo right from the start, with the band's full creative input. Secondly, all the previous studio albums were all released both in mono and stereo versions right from the start, so contemporary stereo mixes were done for all previous albums, too.
What's true though is that after their first albums, once the Beatles started getting personally involved with the mixing sessions, they usually only bothered attending the sessions for the mono mixes and left the stereo mixing to George Martin and whoever the respective recording engineer at the time was, right up until around the time of the White Album, where they finally started getting slightly more involved with the stereo mixes, too. (And then like I mentioned Abbey Road was only done in stereo.)
The stereo versions of their first two albums were also hamstrung by only having two-track recordings to work with, so even beyond the initial tendency to treat stereo as a gimmicky novelty there wasn't much that could have been done beyond panning the vocals to one side and the instrumental backing to the other side, anyway. (Which is indeed an argument for preferring the mono editions of those albums, unless you need a Karaoke version of those songs :-) )
> Stereo mixes didn't happen until well after the band broke up and lost all creative control over the material.
The only case where that is sort of true is with Help! and Rubber Soul, which were remixed in the 80s for their CD re-release, and where that remix has mostly supplanted the original stereo mixes. (Though at least those remixes were done by George Martin, too, and not somebody else random.)
Beyond that, there are also the recent remixes of the subsequent albums, though at least for now those are being offered as additional versions, with the original mixes still being available, too.
> The reviewer admits that the Beatles were once good in the past
Sgt Pepper was a concept album that didn't work, but was released on momentum based on a previous track record.
And then "A Day in the Life":
> It remains one of the most celebrated songs in music history, appearing on many lists of the greatest songs of all time, and being commonly appraised as the Beatles' finest song. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Day_in_the_Life
If something is truly new, and truly valuable, with an emphasis on "truly" for both parts,it will be different enough that the conventional wisdom will reject it, but it will win in the long tun. That's because it isn't obvious in the current context; if it was, someone would already be doing it. Because it's not obvious, when people are first exposed to it, their immediate instinct is that it is worthless because non-mainstream things usually are, and it's easier to reject all non-mainstream things then to delve deeply enough into each one to actually understand whether it has value or not. In fact, there just isn't enough time to do so, and because it means overriding deep, long-held assumptions, it can be extraordinarily difficult.
It's the same in the tech business as it is in art.
An anecdote from my personal experience: When, in the mid-90's web sites had to try to actively sell their advertising space in order to get ad revenues, which made it virtually impossible for small sites to get those revenues, I had the idea of ads being distributed through hubs and targetted by tracking people using what are now called "tracking cookies"[1]. I presented the idea to the guy who had been on the cover of Business 2.0 magazine and called the best VC around a few months before, and who was heavily invested in traditional advertising, he said:
"I don't see how there's much money to be made here."
I think something similar is happening here on HN now with respect to a knee-jerk, snobby rejection of the potential of blockchain by people who have no idea what's being built or what it can enable, especially with respect to potential uses of zero-knowledge proofs in a blockchain context, but see the scams that have been happening which make it especially easy to feel safe in being rejecting.
[1] https://www.garyrobinson.net/2021/07/did-i-invent-browser-co...
These reviewers were working from a larger picture than "is this a good item purely against the backdrop of pop/rock albums?"
Note that the reviewer mostly focused on the lack of content.
He didn't say that The Beatles couldn't sing well, or play instruments. Nothing of the sort. And he praised the production.
Today we understand that rock doesn't need content. It needs good sound, good vibe, skillful execution. Those kinds of stylistic elements are the content. You (mostly) don't go to rock for intellectual content, like intricate counterpoint, labyrinthine key changes or elaborate lyrics.
I often think it might be the opposite. A lot of the overly effusive praise for the Beatles seems to come from people who aren't very familiar with what was happening with music at the time, and act as if the Beatles single-handedly created modern rock (you get some of this from Velvet Underground fans as well). If you really dig into the music at the time, though, you see that there was a very rich mix of different musical groups experimenting with a lot of different styles that would influence what came later.
"Yesterday's lullaby sung by my mother was very sweet and I fell asleep like I was supposed to (mostly due to boredom), but beyond that it had little redeeming value. The lyrics were overly simple and repetitive, and it didn't stray from the major scale, except by accident, which could partly be attributed to the gaping lack of instrumental accompaniment."
Pathetic hacks like him never gave Kansas, Styx, Journey, or Abba the time of day. They loved burning up 1500 words on the existential tragedy that Van Halen wasn’t Lou Reed. How many people know Carry On Wayward Son vs. dried-up manlet Robert Hilburn now?
Declaration of interest: I was living and going to school in Liverpool at the time, and everyone admired The Beatles.
cf the caption of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-punk#/media/File:Televisie...
> And consider this: Not only were the Beatles breaking their own rules, but each time they left behind the biggest money-making formula in commercial music. They would develop a new concept, unleash it, sell tens of millions of albums, and. . . then they would walk away from it. > There really is no equivalent—not then, not now, not anytime.
It's unreal how dedicated they were to inventing entirely new musical ideas (or pastiching them together from many sources), and then on their next album they throw it out the window and create something new all over again.
You can listen to pretty much any pop album from any group in the mid-late 60s and know immediately what year it was recorded. Does it have tape loops/backwards audio? It was recorded right after Revolver. Does it have animal sounds or evoke childhood nostalgia? Recorded right after Sgt Pepper (granted, Brian Wilson started the animal noises thing). Is it stripped down and with very simple production? It was recorded right after the white album.
Yes, a NYTimes reviewer didn't like Sgt. Pepper. But lots of other reviewers did (Time Magazine put it on the cover, and loved it). The internet is big -- it is easy to find examples of bad predictions. And, because it is big, you no longer have to extrapolate from N=1 (although sometimes N=1 and things are repeated). I often remember the review of the new IBM VGA standard, which had no significant advantages (to the reviewer) over the older CGA. The Beatles got bad reviews because review accuracy (whatever that is) has a distribution that includes statements that do not stand the test of time.
Hell, this still happens today. Consider the following 5 songs from Eminem's portfolio:
My Name Is
The Way I Am
Stan
Lose Yourself
Godzilla
Now, granted, he's not a musician in the traditional sense, but each of those songs are very different. And even though this is a high school dropout, his work will be studied for decades simply due to his rhyming structure. And just like the Beatles, the method and manner in which he chose to express himself rubbed some critics the wrong way. He challenged orthodoxy and wrote the songs he wanted to write.
Personally the only Beatles album I think has any truly great lasting value is Revolver, that's the only one I'll listen to occasionally, and after that it was mostly downhill - but that's just another subjective opinion, and of course many will disagree. Which is fine, if you like the same thing recycled over and over but just not as good as the high point. Maybe the critics were right? Maybe all that success went to their head and they got lazy and lost their way? The end of their live shows was the end of it? The White Album is just boring noodling-about-at-the-ashram, not inspired at all?
I think that's how critics make their living, tossing out opinions that'll get people all riled up one way or the other.
I have close friends which are big music fans, they play music as well. We share almost all our tastes in music but they love the Beatles and I never got it.
My idea is taste is very tight to genetics and sense does not react the same for everybody. And I am very honest when I say I hate the Beatles!
You need to have a feeling for the cultural context around some things to appreciate them.
It also doesn’t take much work to refresh a song’s styling and execution to sound relatable.
It's been bothering me my whole life because it seems so irrational. I love plenty of adjacent music, just not them. Same goes for Elvis.
My theory has been that it's because I feel like I'm being gaslit into believing they are innovators when they are really popularizers. Doesn't sit well with me how often those are conflated for the sake of marketing and an indifferent public.
it sounds like The Beatles are just not to your taste, although they had such a wide varying range of styles it seems unlikely there wouldn't be some song you'd think ok that one's ok.
They're not wrong.
This is…not true. Many Whigs were sympathetic to the American cause.
Why did Van Gogh die insane and in poverty?
Why did Nietzsche sell just a few hundreds copies of his works during his lifetime?
Why was Bach forgotten and then suddenly rediscovered a hundred years later?
Why are many works that were regarded as masterpieces a century ago out of print today, and nobody reads them anymore?
Because any notion of "quality" applied to cultural products is invariably subjective, and indeed more closely resembles (intellectual) fashion than anything else. In the late 23rd century, people may decide that 1980s dance music was actually timeless genius, and the "classics" of 1960s counterculture were boring political drivel. It won't mean anything, just like today's assessment of the Beatles and Van Gogh doesn't mean anything.
Is this not the most valuable thing to know in order to understand the work?
The post death fame was heavily influenced by his life story being clusterfck - but those people were not the ones who had to deal with Goghs seriously disturbin behavior. They were safe, but Goghs contemporaries were not.
Fight me.
For The Beatles specifically, I don't think it's a particularly controversial take to say that while the Beatles made great music, they (with perhaps the exception of Ringo) were unremarkable musicians. Lennon's butchery of the bass line in "The Long and Winding Road" is one famous example but hardly an outlier. I don't think we need to be too harsh on critics who compiled a long lists of technical failings in the latest Beatles album without recognizing its importance to the trajectory of pop music.
The counterexamples are perhaps even more interesting: cases like The Ramones's debut album that were commercial failures but recognized, correctly, by contemporary critics as the start of a momentous change despite its technical failings.
EDIT: this is hilarious, and not unexpected. As soon as you say something against the Beatles, all the self-described "experts" come out to tell you "you're entitled to your opinion, but your opinion is wrong".
Also, the first album is basically enthusiastic teens manipulated by a record company. So try the more mature albums, starting at Rubber Soul as others said.
Another example is "The times they are a-changing". The lyrics were amazing and really resonated with a huge segment of the young. But if you just listen to it as music, you realize that Dylan can't sing, and it's not a very good composition.
Of course a lot of people prefer the Byrds cover, which is great in its own way.
When I see people dunking on the Beatles or Tolkien, I think wow, there is a person who's really dedicated to not giving a crap about those forms of art.
Which is... fine, but what a loss.
You can stroll around a museum and treat strictly as a picture gallery, devoid of all context, or you can really get into things on a whole other level. So many famous works really come to life that way.
Either choice is okay.
“You’re entitled to your opinion, but if you don’t agree with me you must not be capable of enjoying music”
In point of fact, all I really said was that "I don't get it". I specifically stayed completely away from making any kind of direct, critical judgement of the Beatles themselves.
Maybe you might be able to see how one might see such replies as overly-defensive.
I don't care for your assertion of only two sides:
"Beatles fans" and "those who don't put effort into
understanding art."
However, that's not the assertion I made. Not even close.
I specifically said "those forms of art", not "art" in totality. I'm sure there's a lot of art you enjoy.
I also referred specifically to those who feel the need to dunk on the Beatles, not merely people who don't care for them. It's absolutely incomprehensible to me when people go out of their way to click on an article about artist XYZ simply so they can tell the world how they don't understand or don't like that artist. What an odd impulse.
Anything about the Beatles seems to draw out this sort of reaction (and counter-reaction, and counter-counter-reaction...)
A fairly huge percentage of the people who really rock music and/or make rock music think the Beatles were great. (edit: but even within that group there's plenty of dissent and/or disinterest)
I guess I can identify with people who feel like they've had them shoved down their throat. I feel that way about a lot of Dylan and the Stones and a few other darlings.
Funny, though. I've never heard "you had to be there" about these acts. I certainly love the Beatles and was not there.
I do think that your experience with the Beatles, as with nearly all art, will be greatly enhanced by some contextual awareness on your behalf. If that's not your cup of tea that's completely OK though. There is no reason you need to like or care about any particular art. I'm sure you have other things in life that you enjoy.
I might think it's a bit of a shame, but I also think it's a shame that I don't like cauliflower.
I also hate cauliflower. What is a shame is how others will try to sneak cauliflower into your meals, despite your assertions that you have already explored the full breadth of cauliflower and still find nothing there for your liking.
"Oh, but you've never had it as a pizza crust!"
I assure you, I have. I still hated it. Stop trying to assume you know more about my lived experience than me.
So it is with The Beatles. I have listened to it. I do understand the cultural context. I still don't like it. So kindly please get off my front porch.
It certainly says something about your experiences, though. People must have been attempting to cram the Beatles into your life in some extremely obnoxious ways if you feel like this.
I'm sorry you dealt with that.
If people obnoxiously forced the Beatles on me, I'd probably feel the same as you. I mean that sincerely.
Have you tried it breaded (broken to smaller pieces) and deep fried, then after cutting, sprinkle salt on each piece? It's pretty good and popular here in Czechia, only other way I ate cauliflower I think it's boiled in vegetable soup.
I think the true legacy of The Beatles is that they were the first band to understand that about themselves.
But to then assign unique artistic genius to that output--that's completely ignoring that competition existed at all. Like how some fanboys seem to think Apple invented the smartphone.
Well, at one point Dylan told Lennon that his lyrics were shit ... so you're not wrong ...
People forget that the Beatles rode a technology wave, as well. TV uptake meant that the they were in the right place and right time to be a cute Boy Band. Audio recording technology underwent a vast shift and improvement in less than 10 years. The Beatles also happened to actually have talent and be very good musicians. And managed to have a band that didn't implode until after they generated a solid catalog.
Maybe they weren't first at everything they did, but they were close enough to first and had a reach due to their Boy Band years that nobody else could possibly match. So, The Beatles doing something novel was invariably how anybody not directly in the "scene" would find out about it.
People also forget that The Hollies were arguably more popular than The Beatles back in the UK. However, America was the music market at that point.
They were a common subject of public comment in the 60s
Quite frankly, short user reviews citing why they like/hate the thing are much more useful. I know what I like
Why were they so hated? Easy, why was every popular boy band hated!? They were popular and got the girls, people hate that. Look at the response to Justin Bieber, or any pop star. It's often irrational hatred.