I’m not sure what the official dividing line is between pre-LSD Beatles and post-LSD Beatles. If we say it’s before Rubber Soul, I’d argue the Beatles had some absolutely solid songs:
No one has ever done or will ever do what the Beatles did pre-LSD. They had like a majority of the top-5 songs (sometimes 4 out of the top-5) for 5 years or something.
And then to have a second act like they did. Nothing comes close.
Help! is an under-appreciated Beatles album. It’s before they got all psychadelic and they were still making pop-friendly songs for teenage girls, but there are some great tracks. There’s just a hole in your soul if you can’t enjoy this:
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PS: also, Yesterday, the most-covered Beatles song ever, bitches.
HELP! is their best movie too.
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I get hating on preLSD Beatles (I disagree but I can get it), but LSD Beatles is something else
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Beatles are fine, but when somebody says that’s their favorite band I’m going to look at them a little funny and suspect they’re a very dull person.
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what the fuck that is a legit scorching hot take. One weekend when I was in college the local theater showed Yellow Submarine, I was there for it two days in a row. One of my favorite movie experiences seeing that on the big screen.
A Hard Day’s Night is a lot of fun too. I’ll quote some Ebert here, he absolutely loves the movie
When it opened in September, 1964, “A Hard Day’s Night” was a problematic entry in a disreputable form, the rock ‘n’ roll musical. The Beatles were already a publicity phenomenon (70 million viewers watched them on “The Ed Sullivan Show”), but they were not yet cultural icons. Many critics attended the movie and prepared to condescend, but the movie could not be dismissed: It was so joyous and original that even the early reviews acknowledged it as something special. After more than three decades, it has not aged and is not dated; it stands outside its time, its genre and even rock. It is one of the great life-affirming landmarks of the movies.
The innocence of the Beatles and “A Hard Day’s Night” was of course not to last. Ahead was the crushing pressure of being the most popular musical group of all time, and the dalliance with the mystic east, and the breakup, and the druggy fallout from the '60s, and the death of John Lennon. The Beatles would go through a long summer, a disillusioned fall, a tragic winter. But, oh, what a lovely springtime. And it’s all in a movie.
The Beatles are my favorite band, but also you’re not wrong.
I saw it a couple times as a little kid. Weird but not that memorable to me.
I cannot listen to pre-LSD Beatles in the same way I can’t listen to a pure 440 Hz sine wave. This feeds into my drugs theory of music which is if the music wasn’t created with or deeply-inspired by drugs, then you yourself need to be on drugs to listen to it. Still trying to think of a way to fit The Doors into this theory though.
The Beatles are important to music in the same way Chris Moneymaker is important to poker: right place, right time and gets the credit for actually doing it, but the influence is mostly false attribution. For highly-influential bands, Nirvana is in a completely different universe as an art form: deeper, grittier, more powerful. Counterculture based on some skippedity-doo bullshit? C’mon.
Bob Dylan sucks too in sort of the opposite way of The Beatles. There’s meaning and cultural depth but it’s just some redneck squawking over beginner chord voicings on an acoustic guitar.
First time I, and perhaps anyone in the world, has ever heard Robert Allen Zimmerman called a redneck.
Not the first time I’ve heard someone say Dylan couldn’t sing. It might be the least hot take itt. Can’t sing. Can’t play. Still great.
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A significant number of Bob Dylan’s songs have been improved by a cover. But Like a Rolling Stone is transcendent and can’t be improved.
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Bob Dylan is awesome.
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If that seems harsh, it needs some perspective: neither the Beatles nor Bob Dylan suck anywhere near as much as classical music. You do have to give credit to the Beatles for realizing human brains aren’t wired to listen to shit that doesn’t repeat for 45 straight minutes and milking that for all it’s worth. And Dylan correctly figured out that Americans aren’t reading some fucking book of poems (or anything, for that matter). So props to both imo.
wtf?
Go and listen to all of Highway 61 or Blonde On Blonde if that’s really what you think.
Ok, I get it now - you’re just trolling.