btpnlsl said:
I'm not that big a fan of the Beatles, or of Nirvana, but I can understand why lots of people are.
My mother really likes the Beatles. She was a teenager when Beatle-Mania hit the US. She remembers what popular music was like before they were around and how they introduced a bunch of sounds and ideas that are now a standard part of the lexicon of music, popular or otherwise. Backward track masking, backward guitars, sitars in pop songs, crazy album art, controversial lyrics. For people of her generation the music the Beatles were making was some of the most exciting and innovative stuff that they'd ever heard when compared to other contemporary music from the time period.
Personally, the Beatles never did much for me, but that's probably more because by the time I first heard them, all the innovative things that they first did were pretty commonplace in popular music, and, to be honest, I feel a bit of a backlash against them due to all the people from my parents generation going on about how great they are.
But the only real way to 'get' why so may people make a big deal about them is take them in context with what was happening before their time. Try listening to nothing but Motown tunes and late Elvis Presley ballads for a week and then put on 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band'. It's radically different. The same could be said for the Sex Pistols or Nirvana or Slayer or Led Zeppelin or Public Enemy.
It's fair enough to believe it's mainly nostalgia for their hype (I think that's what you're saying), but you're wrong. These bands do have other strengths, even strengths you don't even hear these days, which kinda makes them a big deal now too.
The Beatles wrote more memorable melodies than any other band, Paul McCartney has an amazing voice and the whole band could harmonize really well (how many bands do that today?) as well as their recordings are more clear than most, they actually experimented unlike so many other pop groups (especially todays pop bands), and because of that, they made some different structures and found unique and tough melody's. Those innovative things they did are definitely not common, I wish it was but it's not.
Same goes for Elvis Presley. I find most of his melody's weak and they're mostly about love, but no one else sings like him and his music is perfect for rock n' roll swinging and dancing. It's not common.
You need to find their strengths, every band has a strength otherwise no one would like them. Well, except certain singers and groups that are more popular for their looks.
