Do you like The Beatles?

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

love em

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Of course

[T'Chenka]

It's normal for people to not LOVE The Beatles, but people that don't even like them a little bit have bad taste IMO. I know there's the whole "art is subjective" thing, but... it's The Beatles. If you don't find them at least mediocre, at a bare minimum, then there might be something wrong with you.

[Lambsbread]

I'm a world-renowned Beatles hater. I make it known how much I hate them at every opportunity.

[HisGrace]

It's normal for people to not LOVE The Beatles, but people that don't even like them a little bit have bad taste IMO. I know there's the whole "art is subjective" thing, but... it's The Beatles. If you don't find them at least mediocre, at a bare minimum, then there might be something wrong with you.

People who say they don't like The Beatles are just trying to be cool, same deal with Spielberg for movies.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

[TDAS04]

Yes.

[John Dule]

It's normal for people to not LOVE The Beatles, but people that don't even like them a little bit have bad taste IMO. I know there's the whole "art is subjective" thing, but... it's The Beatles. If you don't find them at least mediocre, at a bare minimum, then there might be something wrong with you.

People who say they don't like The Beatles are just trying to be cool, same deal with Spielberg for movies.

The Beatles are much more innovative in their craft than Spielberg is with his, though. I can understand someone who generally dislikes Spielberg's style since it's pretty safe and formulaic a lot of the time. But even if someone dislikes the Beatles' music (for example, if pop rock just isn't their thing), they should at least be able to appreciate their chord structures from a music theory perspective. Dismissing their songwriting abilities is proof positive that a person knows literally nothing about music (see above in this thread as evidence).

[wnwnwn]

Yes, but song of those songs are overrated.

Hey Jude is good, but not an all time great song.

Hard's Day Night (the album) is underrated.

Meet The Beatles is just a little better version of With The Beatles (UK), not a great album by any means.


(This post is more of a rant agaisnt RS/R&RHOF (arent they the same), more than anything else)

[dead0man]

I don't love them, but I 100% respect them.  A bunch of super catchy, fun to listen to songs.  It might not be your thing, it's not mine most of the time*, but they were very talented in their genre and HUGELY influential.  Possibly the most influential group of all time (though none are individually as influential as say, Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry or Robert Zimmerman).


*UK entities I've listened to more than The Beateles:The Who, LZ, Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, the Animals, Black Sabbath, maybe Donovan possibly others)

[SWE]

Their discography is wide enough and they experimented with enough different sounds that most people should be able to find something from them they like even if the Beatles overall isn't really their thing. This is one of those things that's basic for a reason - because they're good

[GeorgiaModerate]

Very much so.  I grew up listening to them.

[Goldwater]

Yes (not an edgelord)

[Blow by blow, the passion dies]

Yeah

[Mr. Smith]

Yes.

[Rand]

I love them, yeah yeah yeah!

I love them, yeah yeah yeah!

I love them, yeah, yeah, yeah, YEAHHH!

[Progressive Pessimist]

Of course.

That said, after finding the 'Get Back' documentary a bit uninteresting, I learned that I am probably not as big of a fan as I think.

[DaleCooper]

I don't want to be harsh on anybody for something as dumb as not liking a band, but I have noticed that people who say they don't like the Beatles seem to have universally terrible taste in music. I've never met somebody who vocally disliked the Beatles that listened to anything worth listening to, so I'm sure there's a correlation there.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Fun fact: Beatles for Sale was the first emo album

[MasterJedi]

They’re not bad but heavily, heavily overrated. Their modern equivalent would be Maroon 5.

[Lambsbread]

They’re not bad but heavily, heavily overrated. Their modern equivalent would be Maroon 5.

Even I would balk at this. It's undoubtable that the Beatles laid the groundwork for pretty much all modern pop and rock music. That's no small feat and even though their music is boring to me, they're waaaaaay more important than Maroon 5. A better parallel would be Blink-182 because they at least broke pop punk into the mainstream and have influenced pretty much every pop punk band to come after them. But even then, Blink can't compare to the sheer world domination that the Beatles achieved in their day.

[DaleCooper]

They’re not bad but heavily, heavily overrated. Their modern equivalent would be Maroon 5.

This is the kind of thing I was thinking of when I said that lame Beatles criticism is always followed up with incoherent nonsense. It's impossible to make good Beatles comparisons to any other artist (that alone pretty much dispels any claims about their influence being overrated), but I feel like this statement is about as logical as saying something like "Alfred Hitchcock was heavily, heavily overrated. His modern equivalent would be J.J. Abrams." You're just taking two acts from the same industry that you presumably dislike and saying they're the same for no discernible reason other than that they're successful and you don't like them. I'm not saying the opinion is wrong, I'm saying the commentary and criticism indicates complete and total ignorance on the subject.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Fun fact: Beatles for Sale was the first emo album

It was not the Rites of Spring LP in 1985, so no, it was not.

[Independents for Nihilism]

The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worthy of being saved. In a sense, the Beatles are emblematic of the status of rock criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena (be it grunge or U2) and too little to the merits of real musicians. If somebody composes the most divine music but no major label picks him up and sells him around the world, a lot of rock critics will ignore him. If a major label picks up a musician who is as stereotyped as can be but launches her or him worldwide, your average critic will waste rivers of ink on her or him. This is the sad status of rock criticism: rock critics are basically publicists working for major labels, distributors and record stores. They simply highlight what product the music business wants to make money from.

Hopefully, one not-too-distant day, there will be a clear demarcation between a great musician like Tim Buckley, who never sold much, and commercial products like the Beatles. At such a time, rock critics will study their rock history and understand which artists accomplished which musical feat, and which simply exploited it commercially.

Seriously though, I like the Beatles even though I think they're overrated and their influence is overstated compared to say, at the risk of being trite, The Velvet Underground. They were creative enough to stand out from their peers but in retrospect they were more of a singles band than an albums band. Too much McCartney granny music or Lennon joke songs taking up space for me to rank their albums among my favourites, but stuff like A Day in the Life or While My Guitar Gently Weeps is still some of the best pop-rock out there, and their early Beatlemania stuff is always fun too.

[emailking]

Beatles mp3's I own.

Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
Beatles - Let It Be

I also own Imagine.

Voted no because most of their music I don't like at all.