What is your opinion on The Beatles' impact on modern popular music? Are there any other bands with similar impacts on their genre(s)? Why them and not others?
07.06.2025 05:00
Let me be a little more specific: at the time, pop music was still in its infancy. It was only about ten years since the invention of rock ’n’ roll had turned the music world upside down. Today, it’s hard to imagine the uproar that the then new musical genre had generated.
Try as they might, Big Star, Cheap Trick, and Badfinger were never as big as The Beatles, but their worldwide status owes a grea debt to the band because, let's face it, they weren't doing anything that different from what the Fab Four had done. In normal instances, if your cool new band set out to create a sound that the Beatles had already made, and better, someone might ask you why, but, as you can see, nobody has asked the question.
In the mid-sixties, the Beatles were an unparalleled innovation machine. Everything seemed possible. For the very simple reason that there was almost nothing there yet.
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The Beatles were great. I can't imagine my childhood without them, but here's the thing - they weren't actually a part of my youth. They were gone by then. It was only because there was nothing else as good that generation after generation has been fed such a steady diet of Beatles songs. Don't get me wrong, they're great songs, but, for our own good, it's time to move on.
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The Beatles transformed dull standard pop into exciting art. They incorporated unusual instruments like sitar or mellotron into their songs, recorded tracks at half speed, and even the lyrics moved away from the usual boy-meets-girl narrative.
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It also means that the discourse around pop music hasn’t really changed for almost half a century. For instance, is it really fair to say that Harry Styles ripped off the Beatles’ “Blackbird” when the song itself was inspired by Bach? Pop music, in a sense, has just become a rehashing of itself, and that is a big reason why I don’t like the Beatles. The buck always stops with them. Their cultural influence on the discourse of music stops any serious conversation from happening. And declaring that “I don’t like the Beatles” is tantamount to committing musical treason.
And another valid point:
The Beatles were an unparalleled innovation machine
The result, of course, is 50 years of music that remains stuck in the past. While Lady Gaga may be the first to work with puke as a medium, it's all smoke and mirrors, mere slight of hand meant to distract you from the fact that she's doing absolutely nothing new musically.
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After all, the band that had, in one single glorious performance, alienated every grown-up on the planet with their long hair and devil music was now penning songs like "When I'm 64" and sudenly everybody's mom and dad liked them. Well, why wouldn't they? McCartney had written the song at the age of 16 while still in his skiffle band phase. Once rock & roll came along, he rightfully left such music in the dust and the rest, as they say, is history.
That's right, they perfected it. So why is it that we can't recognize that fact and just move on from it? We should have created something in the last 50 years that would make the Beatles sound as quaint and "old timey" as a Victrola, but we haven't and THAT is a major problem.
But since things are the way they are, we have to be content with the music that still offered innovative ideas — the music of the Beatles. Therefore, I now put on “Revolver”, lean back and simply enjoy.
Thing is, it seems every generation that the Beatles are introduced to is immediately left comatose, unable to do anything but emulate the band's obvious genius instead of coming up with something of their own. Even as folks like Kanye West and Trent Reznor continue to push the envelope (or so music critics would have you believe), nobody has yet to completely stray from the pop template that the Beatles didn't so much invent as perfect.
The great advantage of the Beatles: they were simply there first. John, Paul, George and Ringo had a white sheet of paper in front of them and were given lots of crayons. So they used them to their heart’s content.
They were the first to break out of the corset of the standardized pop song. They were the first to turn to more serious subject matters. They were the first to utilize the studio as an instrument. They were the first to establish video as an art form.
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No more simple pop songs for the Beatles
Before you release a double EP — check what the Beatles have done already!
To my knowledge, this idea had never been realized before. All the more I was disappointed when a friend of mine pointed out to me that such a format already existed. Even more: It had not been published by some obscure Hurdy-Gurdy quartet from South Korea, no, it was the Beatles! Of course the Beatles! Who else?
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A pop song was 2.5 minutes long and dealt with love. Everything was gridlocked. But then it went quite well that way — at least for the industry.
How frustrating must it have been to try to break new ground as a musician starting in the 1970s (Remember: Even then, pop music was still a young phenomenon), only to find that the Beatles had long since left their footprints?
https://medium.com/the-soundboard/why-i-hate-the-beatles-and-you-should-too-09fa63cfc013
Whoever loves music must also love the Beatles. But those who love music would have to hate the Beatles just as much. For their voraciousness. Because they simply left nothing for those who came after them.Look at these articles below to further prove my point, while the titles might be misleading, it offered some valid points as to how The Beatles impacted the modern pop industry (for worse).
Here are some of the valid points I’ve found from some sources, the links of the sources are posted below after the quotes:
No rock band should ever celebrate their 50th anniversary by actually PERFORMING. Trust me now, believe me later, but nobody really wants to see or hear a 70-year-old Keith Richards play "Satisfaction". Oh sure, we go to the shows out of some dumb sense of wanting to be near something that has such a bad-ass rock & roll swagger to it. We get to wear the t-shirt, brag on Facebook that we "saw the Stones this weekend", but all we're really doing is participating in this dull charade meant to distract us from, you now, creating our own magic.
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The Beatles also went along with this concept at the beginning. But in John, Paul, George and well, Ringo there burned a fire. The four wanted more. On “Rubber Soul” at the latest, this desire for something new broke through.
Is such a thing even possible? I don't know, but the next time you or some other musicians sets out to write a new song, it'd be nice if even just one of you asked "Has this been done before?" and if the answer is yes (be honest), then don't fucking do it because we absolutely do not fucking need it. You want to be John Lennon or Paul McCartney, then come up with your own song and make the world imitate you for 50 years like a bunch of idiots.
In short, the Beatles are everywhere. Not just in their physical presence, but in their cultural influence. While you’ve likely heard the Beatles greatest hits compilations while you were still in the womb, you probably aren’t as familiar with the music they were inspired by (or some would say ripped off). Artists like Chuck Berry and Bobby Parker, even after their deaths, haven’t really gotten their fair shake. And that’s not just unfortunate — it makes music worse.
Now, let me say that I don't disliked The Beatles, in fact, I liked some of their songs, but with all the criticisms and the deteriorating quality of the modern pop music (catchy tunes, similar sounds, repetitive lyrics, and monotonous beats), and given that half of the modern pop artists were influenced by The Beatles (Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Beyonce and other acts), we could safely say that The Beatles are to be blame for what the modern pop music had become? Of course, there's Michael Jackson, Madonna and others, but still, the root cause could be traced back in either The Beatles and Elvis Presley, and in this case, The Beatles became more influential than Elvis Presley.
https://www.horowitzwrites.com/beatles-cultural-influence/
Today’s standard pop song, on the other hand, is characterized by a relative lack of courage in terms of innovation (and yes, of course I am generalizing here): short and concise in form, with uniform structures, limited range, and typical recurring melodic patterns.
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The Beatles revolutionized the Pop Music, there's no denying in that, but given their influences, and the fact that some artists may also cash in to their success and legacy by putting their names behind The Beatles, we could safely say, again, that The Beatles were at some point, an instrumental to the decline of modern music (specifically pop).
As so often with the Beatles, this idea was born partly out of necessity (there were six songs to be released), partly out of chance or even chaos, but also out of the band’s desire to experiment.
Another one:
And yet new bands are born every day, each owing a debt to the Beatles, even as they emulate their favorite Velvet Underground or Stooges records which, at the time, were meant to be a reaction to The Beatles increasingly slick pop mastery.
https://superiorshit.blogspot.com/2014/03/your-band-sucks-and-why-beatles-are-to.html?m=1
To make my point a little clearer, I would like to tell you a little story from my completely insignificant career as a musician. When I had recorded a few songs with my band, I had the idea to release them in an unusual format — a double EP. A gatefold double album with two discs, EPs with four songs each.
The Beatles claimed everything for themselves — love it or hate it!
But at the latest when Elvis moved his hips towards the army and Chuck Berry went to jail, the rock ’n’ roll train came to a standstill. Pop music in the early sixties was characterized by well-cropped young men in suits holding their guitars too high and good girls smiling innocently into the camera.
It's time to stop emulating what has already been done better and start creating things that haven't been done by anyone before. I know that's a tall task, as there are still only 12 notes to play with and only so many ways to arrange them, but that shouldn't stop someone somewhere from creating something that changes the world that owes absolutely no debt to The Beatles.
I mean, our entire growth as human beings has been stunted by the fucking Beatles. It's laughable that we live in a world where a band as dangerous and sinister as the Stones once were is now touring in celebration of their 50th anniversary.
The Beatles are credited with the first concept album. They paved the way towards progressive rock and incidentally invented heavy metal. And even though earlier representatives may be found in some of these aspects, the Beatles were the first to gain attention in the mainstream with it.
I’ve realized this just now, really…..
So, to exaggerate, you could say: the Beatles are to blame for the boring pop music we get nowadays. If they hadn’t already claimed all the innovations for themselves, we might still be experiencing exciting new developments today. Oh, how I hate the Beatles!
Fans of the band will probably shake their heads at my ignorance at the time. Of course I am talking about “Magical Mystery Tour”. This record was packaged in the format of two EPs in a beautiful gatefold accompanied by a 24-page booklet. Only for later releases the tracklist was filled up with some non-album singles, resulting in a “real” album.