"The U2... haven't brought anything new..."
U2 may not be to everyone's taste, and that's fine... but to say they haven't brought anything new is borderline heresy. I've said it once and I'll say it again: they are the most inspirational band for today's young groups, (although many of these suck is another matter), just like Nirvana and Bon Jovi. And Achtung Baby is the album that changed their style; their sound is different from what came before, it's the peak of Bono and Co.'s maturation... Of course, "The Joshua Tree" is also a masterpiece, musically even superior to Achtung, but the latter is among the cult albums and the most important from '90 to today, together with "Nevermind". I can say this because, even though I don't like almost anything about today's music, I still follow it simply because I'm curious and I like to keep up with trends... something that you others may not do. Therefore, I can tell you that U2 is the band that has had the most impact on the pop-rock scene of the last 15 years.
And what about The Edge, the brains of the group, the one who practically invented the U2 style? That truly unique way of playing guitar, utilizing particular effects: he's not a technician, a virtuoso, yet he managed to invent a guitar style that is now widely copied.
"The Beatles are not the greatest band ever, there are about twenty before them."
Well, obviously I don't agree with you here either: for me, to define a band as "great," it must meet these parameters: 1-innovation 2-impact on future generations 3-the ability to revolutionize music as well as culture, to be an absolute vanguard. While there may be bands that have reached or maybe even surpassed the Beatles in the first point (I could think of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin), I don’t believe there’s any band that can match them in the other two points: the four lads from Liverpool are the band that has most revolutionized music in the last 60 years, transforming the way music is conceived, whose ideas and songs had an unprecedented impact on both societal norms and society itself. John Lennon anticipated hippie ideas, he could himself be considered one of the first hippies in history, and undoubtedly the most famous and representative; within just a few years they became baronets, the Rolling Stones waited 40 years to achieve that, and every little thing they did became news, a trend, a social phenomenon, starting with their look, which turned into a fashion in England and beyond, or the news that they might have smoked a joint at Buckingham Palace, which became a matter of national interest (and so on, for every minor incident); a group, indeed the first group, that began to legitimize certain "phenomena" that later became emblems of rock, such as the use of hallucinogens and drugs, alongside the Stones; sure, those things existed before (I think of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis), but they didn't have the same social impact that the Beatles had; and then, well... There’s THE MUSIC! We're talking about the group that has sold the most in history, over 1,000,000,000 copies sold worldwide to date (behind them is Elvis, with 1,000,000,000); when you conduct a survey, when you ask people on the street to compile their hypothetical ranking of the 100 greatest songs of all time, at least 20 of those in the top 100 will be Beatles songs; no group, moreover, has maintained such an impact on music over 40 years and beyond: Pink Floyd, to name one, might not even exist without the Beatles, who, let’s emphasize, were the first to experiment with a certain psychedelic sound (later developed much more extensively by the Pink); and even if the Pink had existed, they wouldn't have produced the type of music they did; and the same goes for Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin... up to the present day, music would be completely different—without the Beatles, it wouldn't exist or would not be as we know it—between 50% and 70% of the music of the last 45 years. If this isn't the GREATEST, MOS
