I was struggling to get grumpy about much this morning. A problem, when I was determined to make Monday into #grumpymonday. I read some really nice articles here and I was feeling at peace. But a quick wander around the music section in the local library soon got the juices flowing.......
The Beatles are often regarded as the greatest band of all time, and Lennon and McCartney the greatest ever songwriters. Talked about in hushed tones of reverence, and oft-discussed by even quite talented and more recent artists as their main influences, the first real boyband achieve, even until today, a greatness bestowed upon them by the adoring masses.
What a load of bollocks. They were, are and always will be, shite.
Not a real Beatles lyric, but could quite easily have been ;-)
There you go, I said it. Feel free to poke out my eyes out with a green ballpoint pen if you want. Nothing will make me change my mind.
The Beatles sold millions of records, performed in front of millions of people but was this to do with quality or popularity? The two are not mutually inclusive bedfellows.
They were simply lucky. Being in the right place at the right time to appeal to a certain very fickle demographic, being lucky enough to be born at the upper end of the physical appearance gene pool and also having a top marketing team which hyped them to the stratosphere on the back of lingering post-war austerity.
Now despite everyone howling that quality is subjective, in the same way that physical beauty is subjective, it's not. On both counts.
To prove this, let's do a straw poll.
Which is the higher quality lyric?
a) She loves ya, yeah yeah yeah, she loves ya, yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves ya, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeahhhhhhhhh.
OR
b) Libraries gave us power. Then work came and made us free. What price now for a shallow piece of dignity?
One was a line from a song which sold millions, the other from a song that sold a few thousand.
I could go on, classic examples of the Lennon and Mccartney songwriting partnership;
"I am the walrus, I am the eggman"? WTF?
"Ob-la-di, ob-la-dah, life goes on"...yes it does, but having listened to this shite, I wish it would end.
The thing that pisses me off even more, is that the Beatles aficionados (who knew that aficionados only had one 'f', other than Grammarly?) talk about them with a reverence normally only reserved for saints and football players.
If they accepted they were just a fucking pop group I could live with it. The fanatics are just so up there own arse, and have you ever listened to Paul Macartney being interviewed? He thinks he's god! Wind your bloody neck in Macca. His true faith in his own hyped-up publicity and belief in his rightful place at the head of post-war popular culture is frightening. The Australians have more culture than McCartney, and theirs only comes in bottles marked 'Penicillin'!
A more modern day equivalent of the Beatles, certainly at the level of musical quality and popularity would be the Spice Girls, but there are huge differences. The Spice Girls have a cause, they were sending out a sincere message to young women that they were important and they were strong. They never took themselves too seriously and they just looked like 5 kids out having a good time, they showed a whole generation of young women that if they could do it, anyone could. Still, no one ever says the chord shapes from 'I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want ' was used as a base for their whole musical repertoire. The Beatles are a staple of every guitar learners 5-chord songbook for god's sake.
How is that something to brag about?
To be fair, history is littered with populist over substance. Andy Warhol drew cartoons using a children's box of poster colour paint, Henry Moore bashed holes in lumps of rock and Shakespeare wrote short stories and plays padded out with absolute verbal diarrhoea, and whose only worthwhile benefit to mankind has been to give kids bachelor degrees through the dissemination of his tosh. All great because they were, or are cool and popular.
Seriously Henry, what the fuck is that supposed to be?
There is a long history of 'creative types' having heads the size of Gibraltar and a following who must all wear skis to stop them disappearing completely up their idol's arses.
Sorry then. The Beatles are shite. It's a fact. But they do have a place, because people like them, and that's OK. Just don't tell me how 'good' they are.
A bit like Steemit, there are those that are popular and there are those that are talented. Some are even talented AND popular. But not many. And so it came to pass, that the reward pool went to the popular. Those with cleavage, an autistic level of coding knowledge, or an ability to smile in all seriousness whilst cooking a fucking omelette.