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Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

Slight tangent:

Listened to "the song that some claim made Dylan go electric and pushed rock music into a completely new direction." I always liked it.

It's profoundly odd that "The Brits," mostly working class youngsters had this impact on american culture, by introducing and merging american themes and styles to americans... by mixing them with other american art memes.

Infusing rock n roll with smokey blues vibes. Putting Beat Generation themes into pop. Three years in and you have american musicians mimicking Liverpool lads doing impressions of an american singers' accent.

...and somehow it's not cheesy. That song sounds like authentic americana... at least to me.

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You can't leave out Bob Dylan's influence with introducing the band to marijuana, as well as Jimi Hendrix not making it big in the US, and being "shipped" to the UK to start the Jimi Hendrix Experience. That didn't just have a big effect on The Beatles, but acid rock/psychedelia as a whole. You also had Black Sabbath taking blues music and downtuning it, and playing it slower, all due to Tony Iommi's work accident where he lost his finger tips. Modern metal music owes a TON to Black Sabbath, especially styles that play slower, like doom metal and all its various sub-genres. There was a lot of sharing between countries, and I think that is why the music is so closely tied together (along with the entire psychedelic movement).

Brits singing re-packaged "race music" for Americans. Americans did try (see Pat Boone etc) but while the Beatles/Stones/Hermans Hermits dominated it was the rise of Motown that is most intriguing. Black Americans moving north for industrial jobs and having good wages finally put their music on the map. That it was playable on the radio for everybody (unlike the blues) was a masterstroke.

If you listen to the Beatles back catalog today it's pretty bad. Motown still sounds fresh.

Each to their own but there are plenty of Beatles songs that stand the test of time IMO.

Yes, there's plenty of dross, particularly on the early albums, but, say, "Strawberry Fields Forever", or "We Can Work It Out", or "Yesterday"? Superb.

Rubber Soul onwards are all masterpieces (except maybe Let it Be) and feature among the greatest music written by anyone, ever. You are seriously underrating them just by virtue of the fact that you don't personally enjoy listening to them, which seems silly to me.

Overexposure will do that

People who don't listen to the Beatles usually don't even realise it when they're listening to the Beatles anyway, the younger you are the truer it is.

If you don’t like the Beatles catalog, I consider you to be sort of musically disabled.

I don't like the Beatles either. There's just something about their sound that really grates on my nerves, IDK what it is. They were obviously historically significant, but I very much dislike listening to them.

100%. Weirdly derivative without any real insight into what they cribbed. Paul McCartney and his twee later stage gobshite, Maxwells silver hammer etc just no

I mean it's fine to not like the Beatles but they weren't derivative (literally the opposite), and not liking the song that is considered by many to be their worst or most controversial isn't saying much (and actually it's a perfectly serviceable song really, it's just the mythology that has built up around it that has really caused it to take flak).

I've always liked it. I think the only reason you would think it was their 'worst' is if you got all your opinions from a sort of musical 'hive mind' - someone that compulsively reads Rolling Stone or whatever. People need to do their OWN thinking.

If you exult a pop group like that I consider you to be immature

The feeling is mutual.

I have actually been listening to the Beatles back catalog, and its incredible. The musical invention and diversity is unlike any individual group I've ever heard. I love Motown, but honestly, if you've heard one 4 Tops song, you've heard them all, they even parody themselve with "The Same old song". But then you listen to the Beatles at the start of their hits with I want to hold your hand and then compare it to the end with the Symphonic Medley on Abbey Road, and you cant believe they're the same group, and all in a period of 6 years.The only other artist I can compare them to for so much evolution in such a short period of time is David Bowie.

The beatles back catalog feels so generic. Especially when you start hearing contemporary to that period music (the animals etc). All short sweet songs, using generic pop music chord structures and lyrical themes for the most part. Not to do them any discredit, they did come up with those lyrics but they did not come up with the chord structures or lyrical themes. They picked them because they knew they would be popular. They went up and did literally what elvis did to get his fame: rehash known good pop music with a pretty boy (or four) marketed to young girls ensuring capture of the youth market for a generation. And boy were the beatles marketed moreso than a lot of artist at the time and a long time afterward.

Are you saying Tomorrow never knows or Strawberry Fields Forever are generic?

I’m talking earlier work like the first six albums or so that got them famous in the first place to sell sgt. peppers albums.

The movie "Echo in the Canyon" is a little too worshipful and has a little too much Jakob Dylan, but it really highlights how all of the artists of that time including the Beatles were listening to each other and pushing their own art further to match or top what they heard from other artists.

They didn't write the song, theirs is the most popular version of an older folk song

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