Are the Beatles overrated - YesI shake my head at people who think a band with 30 No 1 singles, 13 No 1 albums (in 7 years) and over 80,000 cover versions of the songs they wrote by the worlds top recording artists can even begin to call them overrated.
No other band comes close to those stats.
As for Queen I'm not a fan but realize they were a very talented band.
Genuine answer, I tried to listen to it in my early 20s (around 1990) to see what all the fuss was about, and then as now, i think the same, some catchy tunes in a sea of shite.
I do get how peoples favourite bands mean something to them and how someone not liking them feels like a personal assault. For example, during the 80s I thought Simple Minds were the Bee's Knees, I fingered banged my first girlfriend whilst it played in the background. The music said something to me...Adult me realises Jim Kerr was smoking a lot of shit whilst writing non sensical faux philosophical nonsense...I still like the songs though as they remind me of a time finger bangin my first girlfriend despite knowing that AI can write sudo philosophical bollox with the same degree of skill.
The Beatles were the Taylor Swift to todays masses, A Justin Bieber to the first less sexually repressed Britons, 4 talented boys marketed to millions of people that had lapped up songs Like Billy Don't be a Hero previously.
The lyrics to the Beatles best selling single ever below...Without fear of persecution, prostitution and perspiration I can tell you Robbie Williams wrote better shit than than garbage Take That's "I want you Back" is more sophisticated
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
You think you've lost your love
Well, I saw her yesterday
It's you she's thinkin' of
And she told me what to say
She says she loves you
And you know that can't be bad
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad
She said you hurt her so
She almost lost her mind
But now she says she knows
You're not the hurtin' kind
She says she loves you
And you know that can't be bad
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad, ooh
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
You know it's up to you
I think it's only fair
Pride can hurt you, too
Apologize to her
Because she loves you
And you know that can't be bad
Yes, she loves you
And you know you should be glad, ooh
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
With a love like that
You know you should be glad
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Very well written post mate. Excellent.Haha! I love that Simple Minds story :D
Anyway, they definitely weren't comparable to the likes of Bieber or Swift.
It's hard to listen from the past and hear it today as if it's written today. She Loves You is about 60 years old which is a relic in terms of pop/rock music. There's a couple of things about the song to bear in mind.
Firstly, they are at the start of their careers and are putting their take on US rock n roll. Psychedelia hasn't been invented yet and pop music is very much a teen thing and by no means anything to be taken seriously. In this song though the harmonies are very good and sound different to other rollers at the time. It's also got a type of energy that sounds like it's a bit "punky" and again sounded different. Finally they aren't writing about "I love you", it's written from the perspective of a friend who's telling his mate that She Loves You and this wasn't something you heard at the time. It might not be groundbreaking to us, but back then people sat up and took notice of them for it . Also they were pretty young when they wrote this.
I think the fact "they wrote this" also highlights a massive impact they had on other people: The Beatles wrote their own songs and made it the norm that an artist wrote and sang their own songs. At the time many artists like the Stones etc recorded songs by other people. That was normal.
Nowadays we absolutely take it for granted that - say - Radiohead right their own music. If they didn't they wouldn't be regarded as a serious artist. The fact we can speak of sat Radiohead as a serious artistt highlights the fact that pop and rock are now regarded as valid art forms - it just wasn't the case in the early 60s. They pretty much singlehandedly made it a fact you HAD to write and perform your own music.
Whilst I think they are a great band, if you just take them at a catchy tune level, you're ignoring the impact they had on music both in the 60s and beyond. It's like me saying Beethoven's symphonies aren't as catch as a Michael Jackson song.
By taking influences from classical composers like Stockhausen they brought tape looping into pop music. Nowadays we would call this sampling and can be heard on Tomorrow Never Knows. Taking influence from Indian classical music they brought in the drone and the concept of other cultures music. I could go on but what they said to everyone was that pop music wasn't about simple chords, lyrics and playing live. Sgt Pepper is arguably the first modern album in that it was made in a studio and demonstrated just how wide pop music could be. When the album was released it was apparently jaw dropping as you'd never heard anything like it.
Every album they made was an "event" in that they broke new ground with every release. Other artists were on their trails and in the link I posted you get a flavour for how far ahead they were, constantly pushing boundaries and taking pop to places thought impossible just 3 years before. Again, I can't think of any modern band who have done anything like this.
Nowadays we take albums in the studio for granted and that we could happily sample an Indian guy playing a sitar but in the 60s it had never been done before. The range of influences they brought together just changed music in ways we still live today. Maybe the only "modern" music which had such a profound effect would be the synth becoming cheap and maybe rap music but no artist in either field has anything as good as The Beatles created.
As I've said they turned pop music from a teen thing I to a serious art form. You cannot compare them to any modern day artist.
They changed how music was recorded, the sounds you hear on their albums were meticulously created. The techniques they pioneered in the studio are still in use today.
They pretty much influenced every artsis who came after them as the list of quotes I posted shows. You won't be able to find a similar list for ANY other great band let alone Bieber etc.
Their songwriting is right up there with any other great songwriters on the 20th Century. The Americans have The Great American Song Book but The Beatles could make The Great British Song Book themselves, and in multiple volumes. The quality and quantity of songwriting, not to mention the complexity of their music in them later years again is unmatched by any other band. This did it all in about 7 years too.
What I guess I am trying to explain is the context of why they are highly regarded. To sum it up, you won't find anyother pop, tock band with the level of influence they have. Whilst it's perfectly fine to say you don't like them, to say the are overrated is difficult to justify by any measure. We can happily debate whether Queen are overrated but The Beatles weren't and it's not just a personal opinion.
One way to think of it is nowadays saying Cruyff is overrated. His Cruyff turn is easy and even Anthony at United does it better. He was slow so would be ok at Forest maybe so he's not good really. City would thrash his Barcelona team and he won very little and no way compares to Michael Carrick. His Ajax team were average and didn't win many CLs. I hope you get where I am coming from!
You could argue that but you'd be ignoring the fact he did the turn first, in a World Cup against a fine Italy team. You'd ignore the impact of seeing that live in every kid watching it. His ideas on possession football inspired Masia, Pep Guardiola and even Spain to become the finest academies, teams and managers of their generation and beyond. The concept of possession football looks totally alien to the way English teams playing in the 60s, 70s and 80s. His impact in football is colossal really.
The Beatles are similar - their impact is so large and taken for granted we just don't see it now and we have little to compare them too.
You still might not like their music, that's absolutely fine but I do think you should reconsider their place in history and consider what it was like when they arrived and what it was like just after. The music in 1962 sounds completely historical to music in 1972 for example and The Beatles were absolutely one of the major reasons for that.
I would like somone to nominate a Queen album one day.
Very well written post mate. Excellent.
I go on a very busy American music forum with discussions by audiophiles, people who will spend 50 grand on hifi equipment, they regularly argue/debate about the best sounding version of a particular song or album, like the vinyl or the cd etc.
As far as discussions about the actual music there is a ton more threads about the Beatles than any other band. 54 years after they split up. Such is their influence. It's amazing really.
Even members who don't like them say they appreciate what they achieved.
Beatles - Massively overrated imo. They broke a mould in the early 60s and ran out out of credible ideas after four or five years. Important because of the time they 'hit the scene', but in reality, Lennon and McCartney were no better than Difford and Tilbrook in Squeeze.
Queen - Again, massively overrated as a group. A few memorable songs, pretty much all the work of one of the world's genuine music talents, Freddie Mercury. The rest of the band could have been made up of any available session musicians hanging around the studios.
It's all subjective.
Music is about opinions, none are right or wrong, there is no answer.
To me, the Beatles were a boy band, can't stand them other than a couple of songs....yes they are the most covered, but imo most covers are far better than the Beatles original.
Did they change music, yes but so did many others....whoever (i don't know who, as I hate it) was the first 'rap' artist changed it more, rap was far more diverse than anything that came before it!
Yes they were diverse in their musical styles (as their number one fan pointed out on here)....but no more, if as, diverse as Alice Cooper.
Queen? I like rock music....but they are not in my top 10, maybe 15 rock bands.
All opinions ;)
Subjective! I think it’s objective to say the rest of Queen couldn’t have been session musicians.
The Beatles were basically Boyzone.
Fucking hell - and with bangers like Millennium Prayer, who can blame them............ :-)Cliff Richard's worldwide sales are 260 million, which makes him the second highest selling British male solo artist worldwide of all time, after Elton John.
I didn't say they couldn't have been, I expressed my opinion that they were no better than session musicians. Indeed, they were probably a lot worse than many 'unsung' session musicians.
No really like both, they have lasted the test of timeIt might be an unpopular opinion but does anyone else think Beatles and Queen are both overrated? Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they aren’t good bands but I don’t think they are at the very top. I much prefer Rolling Stones and the Who.
Also, objectively, not the case but also rather irrelevant. Lots of session musicians will, by necessity, have technical ability but that is very different to having personality, style or the ability compose highly successful or original music.
Roger Taylor is a very fine rock drummer, one of the the best of the many 100's I've seen live in concert.
Brian May is a great rock guitarist (Total Guitar named him as the greatest in 2020). And whether you like his guitar sound or not, it is unique. Steve Vai, who is probably as technically gifted as a rock guitarist gets and can parrot most other guitarists, has made these comments about May:
“He has real quality, integrity, rock sensibilities – he has a phenomenal ear for the actual music, you know? His inner ear constructed that amazing tone that he has, and it always sounded great. And just the fact that he was able to build that guitar when he was young… that Red Special was hand-built by him, so it has a myriad of tones to it. “But all these tones and everything in his guitar, in his amp, are just one dimension. It all comes from his fingers and his mind.”
“And I’ll never forget that day, perhaps a few days after I moved out to Los Angeles when I was 20 years old, when I walked into the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset Blvd and there was Brian standing at the bar. It was surreal.
I went up and just started talking to him and he was so so kind. He was interested and interesting, and I could not even believe I was talking to my guitar hero. He even invited me to a Queen rehearsal the next day. Of course I went and got to meet and see the whole band. It was kind of unbelievable to me. And there it was, The Red Special plugged into his Vox Rig. It was so odd to see this guitar in real time. And then Brian said, 'You’re welcome to try it.' It was just a few years prior that I was still ogling this guitar from my Long Island teenage bedroom, and now it was in my hands. Of course I played it, but to my chagrin it didn’t sound anything like Brian. All that magnificent tone is in his fingers.”
“… When I heard Queen, and all that great music of the ’70s… it held a special place that never goes away. “And lucky for me, they were all absolutely brilliant musicians. There’s nothing like that, nothing even remotely like it. It was like a paradigm shift, and what Brian was doing, and the way the stars came together with him and the band. And Brian’s whole overview of sound and guitar parts, there was just nothing like it."
Meh.Meh
Music journalism is well known for arse licking.
Steve Vai obviously loves Brian May, but he has probably met session men who are better guitarists. Stories about "Joe Soap" don't interest readers as much as famous people.
Taylor, May and Deacon were decent gigging musicians, each of whom fell on their feet when they met Freddie Mercury. They've been living off old Queen material with second rate frontmen since his death.
Much the same could be said about any band with a truly original / distinctive frontman.
Where would Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, and Woody Woodmansey have been without Bowie?
Who remembers the members of the Darkness other than Justin Hawkins?
Best / Worst... it's all a matter of opinion.
Meh.
And there's just no explaining to some people.
Vai's main inspirations are Jimmy Page & Brian May. His first job in music was playing with Frank Zappa, who is a brilliant guitarist.
May, particulalrly, and Taylor wrote or co-wrote some of Queen's best material. They were a proper band and not simply Freddie's backing band. Likening them to the Spiders is not a good comparison. Ronson was another fine rock guitarist / musician.
Roger Taylor's son Rufus is The Darkness' drummer, and he is rather good too. Justin H is of course another Brian May admirer and I've seen Brian May join The Darkness on stage.
And Jeff Beck, who knew a thing or two about playing the guitar, oftenreferred to Brian May as" The Guv'nor". High praise from a true genius.Also, objectively, not the case but also rather irrelevant. Lots of session musicians will, by necessity, have technical ability but that is very different to having personality, style or the ability compose highly successful or original music.
Roger Taylor is a very fine rock drummer, one of the the best of the many 100's I've seen live in concert.
Brian May is a great rock guitarist (Total Guitar named him as the greatest in 2020). And whether you like his guitar sound or not, it is unique. Steve Vai, who is probably as technically gifted as a rock guitarist gets and can parrot most other guitarists, has made these comments about May:
“He has real quality, integrity, rock sensibilities – he has a phenomenal ear for the actual music, you know? His inner ear constructed that amazing tone that he has, and it always sounded great. And just the fact that he was able to build that guitar when he was young… that Red Special was hand-built by him, so it has a myriad of tones to it. “But all these tones and everything in his guitar, in his amp, are just one dimension. It all comes from his fingers and his mind.”
“And I’ll never forget that day, perhaps a few days after I moved out to Los Angeles when I was 20 years old, when I walked into the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset Blvd and there was Brian standing at the bar. It was surreal.
I went up and just started talking to him and he was so so kind. He was interested and interesting, and I could not even believe I was talking to my guitar hero. He even invited me to a Queen rehearsal the next day. Of course I went and got to meet and see the whole band. It was kind of unbelievable to me. And there it was, The Red Special plugged into his Vox Rig. It was so odd to see this guitar in real time. And then Brian said, 'You’re welcome to try it.' It was just a few years prior that I was still ogling this guitar from my Long Island teenage bedroom, and now it was in my hands. Of course I played it, but to my chagrin it didn’t sound anything like Brian. All that magnificent tone is in his fingers.”
“… When I heard Queen, and all that great music of the ’70s… it held a special place that never goes away. “And lucky for me, they were all absolutely brilliant musicians. There’s nothing like that, nothing even remotely like it. It was like a paradigm shift, and what Brian was doing, and the way the stars came together with him and the band. And Brian’s whole overview of sound and guitar parts, there was just nothing like it."
Lol, you’ve got me down to a tee.I always got the impression that those who don’t like queen tend to be a bit on the grumpy side in general so I’m not overly surprised to see them not getting much love on BM! Haha!
It might be an unpopular opinion but does anyone else think Beatles and Queen are both overrated?