easycure

Well, this could be debated... really in the early years they were also and above all a boy band :-) ..that they later made music of a different depth is obvious.. but it's just as obvious that if they've survived to this day, as you say, it's due to the huge media/cultural impact they've had. That this impact is actually a consequence of the quality of the music seems rather naive to assert.

Everything is beautiful

But what does it mean that they have endured until today? Of course they have endured until today: they are one of the greatest mass phenomena of the 20th century.. however, I don’t understand what this has to do with quality.. On the contrary.

Sorry for any typos. Last night I suffered from insomnia :-)

Well, I didn’t say they don’t have their own style because they refer to the past, but because they never move beyond those references in their compositional phase: how can one not notice how their melodies are always outdated, haphazard? If LSD had been written a couple of years earlier without those sounds, it would have been completely insignificant... and the same can be said for most of Sgt. Pepper. Perhaps not for Penny Lane or Paperback Writer, which I still consider their two most important pieces overall, but even in those cases, it feels like a conversation that has been briefly touched upon but not fully developed. As Revolver confirms, which is a collection of disjointed experiments, never homogeneous, and thus never becomes cohesive in style. The comparison with the Byrds was simply referring to the approach towards melodic pieces: at least in the Byrds, it is much more 360° in seeking certain atmospheres. As for Nirvana, I listened to All of Us, but even there, the concept of arrangement seems enormously superior compared to what it is in the Beatles. I don’t think it’s impossible to analyze certain characteristics objectively. We are talking about very simple pieces. And I really don’t understand how, once considered sufficiently globally, the 60s can be met with indifference in light of their substantial superficiality, which I repeat, obviously transcends reasons of the quantity of influence exerted, a factor that a phenomenon like the Beatles could hardly overlook.

Me too. However, certain things need to be said: unfortunately, the link doesn't work for me, anyway... that the Beatles were influential is all too obvious: they were excessively famous even with the intent of playing, let's say, "real art," and I think it was inevitable that any group from the period that came before or after them would have to measure themselves against them. Despite this, their approach remains enormously limited for me: they never really evolve from the skiffle/beat pop song with which they started, which is simply overloaded with more or less interesting arrangements. Of course, often these very arrangements change the essence of the piece itself (I think of "Bungalow Bill" or the same "Eleanor Rigby"), but the fact remains that their style/compositional approach is immature, elementary, annoyingly tied to old and even quite trivial stereotypes: this seems obvious to me as I listen not so much to them, but to the dozens of more or less unknown contemporary groups. In relation to the year of release and style, for example, I think the Byrds' "Fifth Dimension" remains extremely underrated, much more evolved in filtering tradition and avant-garde, melodicism and psychedelic mindsets: the Byrds truly complete the circle of psychedelic melodic song, giving it a genuinely personal imprint; something I think the Beatles lack. The same imperfect and equally underrated "Smiley Smile" by the Beach Boys is much braver: there's true courage in dismantling and reassembling the pieces, they genuinely distort them, there's an idea of arrangement really aimed at expression and not limited to the surface. "Vegetables" is the piece that the Beatles always wanted to write but never managed to create; it's ironic, it trivializes as pop should always do, but it has true courage. Perhaps what the Beatles never had. Not to mention English psychedelia, the Blossom Toes, the Floyd, Nirvana, Tomorrow—they're all groups certainly influenced, but already enormously ahead of the Beatles often with just their debut album: the Blossom Toes are a true generational band, they genuinely put a certain type of neurosis and conflict into music, you feel it in the frantic oscillation of atmospheres, instruments, and sounds of the pieces, you feel it in the playful melodies that, however, change unpredictably, always implying an unresolved incompleteness. This is missing in the Beatles, too tied to the typical pop song format (which, moreover, was codified before the Beatles). I believe that this substantial lack of a true style in the Beatles has been predictably misunderstood as a more "universal" approach, and therefore ultimately more important, compared to other groups. Hence the attribution of enormous and often unmotivated merits. To me, their music seems like a continuous, pale exercise in style. Perhaps pleasant, at times interesting, but really quite limited.

Nick! Actually yes, but I might have missed the reference.. :-D who are you talking about?

it seems interesting. I am looking for

I wouldn't have given him half a dime after reading the reviews of those who saw it, but she is, as always, highly persuasive. So, let's pay our respects abundantly and finally watch this film (which I actually bought more out of sheer solidarity than anything else).

Of course, I have the opposite consideration. If albums like this had been more famous, we would all be less brainwashed by this notion that the Beatles are the greatest of all time. But that's that; mass opinions are hard to die. I don't know this album in particular, but from your precise description, it sounds really interesting.