Why are the Beatles considered so good and how did they impact music? What innovations?

Why are the Beatles considered so good and how did they impact music? What innovations?

They codified psychedelic rock

They replaced lusty negro attitudes with cute white-kid smiles.

They almost singlehandedly legitimized and normalized rock music in the mainstream and opened the doors for more innovators to reach a wide audience via the british invasion.

All good answers.

I'd also add that they, whether they intended to or not, set the precedent for mainstream song structure and emphasized the value of production in relation to success.

perfect synthesis of pop and art

This is also true. I'd say George Martin himself also helped define the producer's role in artist-driven pop music for years.

It also pisses me off when scaruffi compares the beatles unfavorably to other british invasion acts - so as to imply that those bands could've been more successful if not for the beatles - without realizing that the beatles were practically responsible for the british invasion that set so much of rock music innovation into motion.

They completely changed pop music forever, from their first album to sgt pepper. After that they were still good but not at as innovative

...

Here are the innovations and impacts they were responsible other than having the biggest hype train the world has ever seen:

1) First reverse guitar solo and first reversed vocals.
2) First use of tape loops on a pop record.
3) First use of a sitar.
4) First intentional use of feedback.
5) First fade in on a pop song.
6) First use of 12 stringed guitar in a pop song.

And that's about it. There are more things you can credit them for but it's all stuff that other pop bands did before, just often less successfully or to a lesser artistic effect (e.g. raga/psych rock, singing through a leslie cabinet, using the studio as an instrument).

Beatles fans, annoyingly, give them too much credit and detractors give them, criminally, too little. Best to stay right in the middle; acknowledge their innovations and their highest artistic contributions to pop music, acknowledge their influence which other bands could have had if they were given all of the fortunate the Beatles had, and acknowledge that they were not perfect, and you're a nice level headed fella when it comes to the Beatles.

Favourite Beatles album, friend?

>all of the fortunate

I corrected myself on this three times and still ended up typing the wrong thing. "Fortune", not "fortunate".

Seriously, set Ray Davis up with George Martin and a manager like Brian Epstein and he'd be able to do exactly what the Beatles did on his own. Same with Brian Wilson. The Beatles' greatest strength was in numbers; every member contributed something forward thinking to the band (except Ringo), the producer contributed something forward thinking, and the manager just gave the band every opportunity to get their music to the widest audience possible. Most other songwriters would have done the same thing the Beatles did if all of that was handed to them.

Revolver has the best collection of songs, but I'd say my favorite "album experience" is A Hard Day's Night.

Completely agree with you here. The Beatles were the best band ever, not the best artists. There are many better artists, but no band utilized the band structure so well and brought so much to the table that each individual would not have been capable of accomplishing without the other band members as compared to the Beatles.

To be fair about Ringo though, he did contribute. He was a hell of a drummer. Though not flashy, he was a master of keeping time (you'd be surprised how many drummers actually aren't) this allowed the beatles to record without metronomes making things sound much more natural and free without deviating from the time signiture.

I agree that all the events lined up perfectly to ensure their success, but they didn't exactly get everything handed to them. they worked their asses off in total poverty for 5 years before getting Brian Epstein and then becoming famous

Also that slowed down drum sound he used on sgt pepper onwards was pretty innovative

they were experimental without stop being mainstream radio hit pop-rock and they can be enjoyed for any classical music enthuasiast as any Jonas Brothers lover teenage girl (Sory for bad Aenglish)

I don't know about this, can you give a couple examples of where it appears in songs?

They weren't Experimental, they weren't Avant-Garde.
What they did was bring elements from the real Avant-Garde into pop music. Not innovation, but influence via popularization.
They set two ways for rock musicians: how to compose commercially successful, mass-pleasing pop; and how to drift away from the mainstream into the Avant-Garde.

>To be fair about Ringo though, he did contribute. He was a hell of a drummer. Though not flashy, he was a master of keeping time (you'd be surprised how many drummers actually aren't) this allowed the beatles to record without metronomes making things sound much more natural and free without deviating from the time signiture.

Oh, for sure. He was a great drummer. I omitted him from that credit because he didn't innovate anything like everyone else did. George had the 12 string, the sitar, and fusion of western pop and indian classical, Paul had tape loops and baroque pop (thanks George!), John had lyricism and Revolution 9. Ringo didn't really do anything experimental within the band or even within the rock climate. He just went with the flow and played some killer drums.

Yeah, they were a hard working bunch. Didn't mean to make it sound like they didn't deserve their success or they got carried or anything. They were just the luckiest band probably ever, in spite of the occasional rocky circumstance (like Epstein's very premature death). I don't mind the fact that they were lucky too much but too few people give credit to their circumstances and producers and manager. It's no coincidence that they started to fall apart when Epstein died and made one of their worst albums when they let a producer other than Martin take the reins.

I feel like they were able to make a pop song out of essentially any genre of music (at the time). I mean within realistic boundaries of genre restricted by the era in which they existed. Which to me, is inspiring.

In my opinion they didn't really "invent" any genre perhaps other than being one of the original bands to use "psychedelic" or innovative recording techniques.

They're considered "good" in mainstream society b/c of album sales and hits and number one singles. Beatlemania. Their overall brand. Seems like 94% of their songs are in the very least catchy; catchy in terms as like repetitive "easy" melodies, sometimes in three-part harmonies. We all like harmonies.

Somebody early listed "firsts" of theirs in terms of recording/songwriting techniques. I don't think that's what makes them good. I feel the way in which they implemented most of these techniques took the songs they were creating to another level. Or in other pretentious-ish words: enhanced audio experience.

I love the Beatles personally, this is my personal opinion on why they're so revered, etc. blah blah blah. So you know... Also, fuck the Beatles.

feedback was firstly exercised by Jimi Hendrix though

I Feel Fine was way, way before any Hendrix recording, fampai.

>The White Album
>Not the most innovative thing they ever did

you got me there

(not true, by the way)

It just baffles me how many rock band tropes the Beatles executed, created or helped popularize. Anything you name: the backward stuff, the weird eastern songs, the songs that are just one member really, the double album filled with random songs, concept albums, drummers having one vocal spot per album, big orchestras, playing on the roof, having songs for just about every genre in pop music, animal noises, (reprises), long fade outs, three kinds of band movies: the fake documentary, the pure fiction and the real documentary of making an album, the medley connecting short songs, the girlfriend that interferes with the band, they simply shaped what it is to be a rock band in those 7 years. Everything that came later was just adding and perfecting what they had already made.

exactly

just like watching the seven samurai you might go 'these plot structures and characters are pretty recognizable, what's the big deal' but then you realize the past fifty years have been all about plundering and remaking that film to various degrees

Half of that is either not a real rock trope or wasn't a thing the people popularized/created. You're giving them too much credit.