I've heard a million and one people post the Beatles copypasta "ironically" but never have I actually heard why it's supposed to not be true.
Every point he makes sounds valid, The Beatles were a generic boyband that completely sold out to become as generic and radio-friendly as possible and then proceeded to innovate nothing or accomplish anything significant.
Is the copypasta supposed to not be true or do people just post it because it pisses people off?
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Because it's funny that anyone who thinks the Beatles are talentless hacks would write a full length essay about how everybody is wrong but Scaruffi. That and he's a pedo
I disagree with Scaruffi on a lot of things (Bowie, for example) but he is definitely right in this case. If you see someone praising Beatles, he's a certified pleb.
people acting as if the Beatles were just another boyband from the ranks just as obnoxious as the people who act as if they are the be and end all of music
they are blatantly better than many other bands of that kind
Everything you say is true, but doesn't Scaruffi also claim they weren't influential? That's just empirically wrong.
> doesn't Scaruffi also claim they weren't influential? That's just empirically wrong.
This.
Always liked more The Beach Boys or The Rolling Stones, but The Beatles have more influence.
I often disagree with his opinions but I'm with him on this.
The Beatles started out making very shitty rock in their "please fuck me girls" phase, then went on to make some veeery slightly psychedelic work with zero experimentality. The little they did was already done by the Beach Boys, which weren't that good either.
The songwriting is always the same, very normal, no super-innovative chord progressions or fuckery of some sort, Paul's only voice gets monotonous as shit in their last albums.
Also, the people who say they invented metal because of Helter Skelter? Seriously?
They influenced pop culture, but they never influenced music. Actually, if you think of it their fame completely backfired in the music world - they just caused the rise of garage rock and punk bands in the late '60s and early '70s.
>they never influenced music.
this is just wrong, you started out alright but nah
>but never have I actually heard why it's supposed to not be true.
Mostly because of the historical inaccuracies and willing ignorance.
>The Beatles were a generic boyband
Not really. They weren't a created band.
>innovate nothing
They innovated many things, loop-based pop.rock for instance.
>but they never influenced music
Lots of musicians have said otherwise.
>zero experimentality
I guess you never heard Tomorrow Never knows or Revolution 9
>but never have I actually heard why it's supposed to not be true.
That's because you're on Sup Forums and no one here has the musical knowledge to prove anyone wrong, not even the meaningless self-contradicting meme text this sad excuse of a critic wrote
I wrote an article about why I disagree with nearly everything he said. I recommend you check it out .
factorysunburst.wordpress.com
wtf I hate scaruffi now
>If you see someone praising Beatles, he's a certified pleb.
Brian Wilson, Bob Dylan and members of Can and Velvet Underground are plebs?
bump
People who rag on The Beatles for not being delving in too deep psychedelically or whatever fail to really comprehend that this is a brand-new style of music. This isn't something that's been fleshed out yet or given a lot of time to develop. The Beach Boys started getting into it, but Revolver was a crazy unique album.
there's no denying Revolver's uniqueness, though i do think it's largely incoherent as an album and has a lot more duds than people are willing to acknowledge. however, by 1967, Sgt. Pepper was already a vintage album compared to psychedelic albums and singles in the musical landscape of that year and the preceding one - Freak Out!, Blonde on Blonde, TVU&N, Smiley Smile, Song Cycle, The Parable of Arable Land, Forever Changes, PATGOD, After Bathing at Baxter's, not to mention the extensive amount of avant-jazz and experimental music that was cross-pollinating with the hippie and psychedelic scenes, Sun Ra most particularly.
>Blonde on Blonde, TVU&N
>psychedelic
>Sgt. Pepper
>psychedelic
this game is easy to play, and i'm more correct than you are. besides the visual aesthetics on the album art and inserts and "Lucy" and "Mr. Kite," there is nothing psychedelic about that album.
>this game is easy to play, and i'm more correct than you are
Nah.
Yes
1/10 bait for getting me to respond
>I am out of arguments
>better call b8
Have a nice day
wikipedia also says burial is making dubstep
this article is terribly cherry picked and frankly horse shit
>w-why didn't he mention louis??
you're embarrassing yourself
also a few paragraphs down you write 'omits' instead of 'omit.'
but then why does this landfill of an article need proofing anyway?
this is a cringe thread now
Not relevant.
But this is:
Wagner felt the album's music reconciles the "diametrically opposed aesthetic ideals" of classical and psychedelia, achieving a "psycheclassical synthesis" of the two forms.[96]
McCartney confirms the existence of the drawing and Carroll's influence on the track, noting that although the title's apparent drug reference was unintentional, the lyrics were purposely written for a psychedelic song.[126]
According to MacDonald, "the lyric explicitly recreates the psychedelic experience".[100]
MacDonald considers "Getting Better" to contain "the most ebullient performance" on Sgt. Pepper.[132] Womack credits the track's "driving rock sound" with distinguishing it from the album's overtly psychedelic material; its lyrics inspire the listener "to usurp the past by living well and flourishing in the present".[127]
MacDonald notes that the song's inclusion amidst Sgt. Pepper's "multi-layered psychedelic textures ... provid[es] a down-to-earth interlude".[63]
Womack characterises "Lovely Rita" as a work of "full-tilt psychedelia" that contrasts sharply with the preceding track.[171]
Jones locates Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's to the beginning of art rock; Julien considers the latter a "masterpiece of British psychedelia".[286][nb 39]
PRO-TIP: all those numbers in brackets are citations, so you can verify the accuracy of the information contained on wikipedia
okay, i'll bite since you seem to be an earnest redditor instead of a kekking Sup Forumstant. it is pretty regularly seen that wikipedia's genre labels are incredibly wrong. wikipedia's editor base is IT and STEM-oriented, and they have a very bad grasp of arts and humanities subjects. their labeling of the Beatles as psychedelic is more a product of the Beatles' subsequent successful multi-decade marketing campaign of themselves as political dissidents and musical innovators than it is an expert opinion from someone who was actually well-versed in the psychedelic scene at the time. this is why you also see a lot of milquetoast neoclassicists in university departments who are afraid of atonality falling back on the Beatles and Radiohead as continuations of their preferred tradition and giving them undue social capital in the process - overlapping myopia of vision with breadth of power to influence. if you use any reasonable definition of psychedelia - atmospheric, layered production, extended instrumental segments, drug- and politically-related lyrical content, conjuring of abstract imagery, Sgt. Pepper only checks a few boxes and at that on only a couple of songs. it's not a psychedelic album. fuck, just look at it sociologically. if the Beatles were psychedelic musicians, why were they not invited to play shows with major psychedelic musicians until much later than Sgt. Pepper? why weren't the masses at Woodstock talking up the Beatles, even if they had been resistant as a band to tour? why does all of the praise of the Beatles from other musicians come in retrospect and in Beatles-focused documentaries? where were the covers of Beatles songs in Grateful Dead sets? none of these things happened because the Beatles were detached pop geniuses who had nothing to do with the psychedelic scene. they conquered one world, so give them their world and leave the psychedelic one to the musicians who made it.
>now
See
did you just use wikipedia to make a point?
you can verify that those arguments were made by certain musical critics and commentators, but that doesn't verify their positions as accurate.
kek
this is the problem with Beatles fans - they're so used to canons and gospel truths that they don't understand the dynamism of cultural and critical revolutions and re-assessments. the baby boomers are quickly dying, and so is their narrative of their time in history. later generations have continued to connect with the Beatles as a popular candy, while serious thinkers and artists without the nostalgia of the geriatrics have largely foregone them for their contemporaries
i-is this guy serious??
See >their labeling of the Beatles as psychedelic is more a product of the Beatles' subsequent successful multi-decade marketing campaign of themselves as political dissidents and musical innovators than it is an expert opinion from someone who was actually well-versed in the psychedelic scene at the time
Luckily there are citations confirming the claim.
>atmospheric, layered production, extended instrumental segments, drug- and politically-related lyrical content, conjuring of abstract imagery,
You just listed the whole album.
>why were they not invited to play shows with major psychedelic musicians until much later than Sgt. Pepper?
See: Carnival of Light
>why weren't the masses at Woodstock talking up the Beatles
Well, they were asked to play Woodstock but Lennon declined.
>why does all of the praise of the Beatles from other musicians come in retrospect
You should do more research if you believe this. There are countless examples of artists praising the Beatles at the time.
>where were the covers of Beatles songs in Grateful Dead sets?
The Grateful Dead covered Blackbird, Dear Prudence, Day Tripper, Hey Jude, it's all Too Much, Lucy In The Sky, Rain, Revolution and Tomorrow Never knows. let me know if you want performance dates as well.
>I am accurate
>if you disagree with me, you are not accurate
Not impressive
>they never influenced music
>they just caused the rise of garage rock and punk bands in the late '60s and early '70s.
Do you even listen to yourself?
i'm saying your citations need to come with an argument instead of appeals to authority
Ronald Reagan is the most influential musician of the '80s if you're taking this position
I already stated my argument. Did you read the thread?
beatles contributed nothing to experimental pop other than tomorrow never knows
>beatles contributed nothing to experimental pop
Brian Wilson seems to think they did
You're agreeing with me even if you don't realize it. Of course Ronald Reagan was influential on music and culture. He was one of history's most influential politicians. The Beatles were one of (recent) history's most influential music groups. What's your arguement?
"intellectually inadequate to be a music critic"
read more scaruffi
hes not the greatest but to deny his intelligence when reviewing music and his knowledge of a huge library of genres and albums is just wrong
Oh does he know music theory?
>the louis armstrong argument
you've missed the point. He's saying that popularity has skewed criticism of the music. he's arguing against how music criticism has discussed these artists. scaruffi doesn't like popular music, he likes ACDC for fuck sake
>you've missed the point
If he has to use historical revision and half-truths to make a point, was his point right to begin with?
Lou Reed has said multiple times The Beatles sucked
John Cale loved them
He also said anything with more than three chords is jazz
He was a grumpy buffoon
John Cale would sit in a house high out of his mind and literally play the same mandolin note for 6 hours straight
Fuck john Cale
> later rock music picked up on what the Beatles were doing (unusual harmonies, studio experimentation, serious lyrics, emotional intensity)
just a ridiculous sentence.
it denies the influence of the beach boys (unusual harmonies) , zappa (studio experimentation [far more so than beatles could even think about]), the velvet underground (same as zapp), Dylan (serious lyrics - I mean seriously you're trying to argue the beatles invented serious lyrics for fuck sake), kingsmen (emotional intensity)
you're trying to attribute so much to such to one band
yep, it wasn't a psychedelic album, it was a pop album with a few psychelic arrangements.
>it denies the influence of the beach boys (unusual harmonies)
Note they were influenced by The Beatles.
>the velvet underground (same as zapp),
What studio experimentation did VU do?
The velvet underground would like to have a word with you about punk. Garage rock and proto punk have little to do with the beatles. Did they influence someone in the genre? Sure, but it would have to be from their later albums when those two genre's were already established. Beatles didn't invent shit. They made good music, but nothing groundbreaking.
>putting baroque trumpet on a pop song is avant garde
i mean fucking christ have you heard pet sounds
>sister ray is a juvenile art gesture
it invented noise rock
it invented extreme lo-fi
it set standard for psychadelic music (far more than tame sgt peppers)
youve got absolutely no taste in rock music whatsoever
>it set standard for psychadelic music
Not really.
Don't you know that The Beatles are the best band ever? They really took the band format to the next level, their songwriting very accessible and poppy yet with a lot of subtleties for those that care for them. Not to mention all the interesting things they innovated.
Scaruffi is just some hack who only listens to each record once (maybe, since it appears he doesn't even finish a lot of them.) You're just as big a pleb for actually believing in what that guy says.
So you agree with everything else?
Cool.
>So you agree with everything else?
I'm not the guy who wrote that essay, nor have a read it.
Just going by your post: trumpets in a pop song was done before Pet Sounds (so it's a moot point), and VU&N did not "set the standard for psychedelic music" since they were a bit removed from that scene. Unless you are confusing amphetamines and opiates with psychedelics.
I also question your assertion that they "created extreme lo-fi". What does that even mean?
A few good points and reasonable objections, but also several dumb statements.
On the whole, your article doesn't scratch the essence of what Scaruffi wrote in his essay (the Beatles are not nearly as groundbreaking or outstanding as they're credited for, which is pretty much indisputable).
the beatles were heavily influenced by the beach boys as well (more than the other way around)
>(more than the other way around)
Not really. It was about equal.
not in harmony dipshit in the idea of an album that sounds coherent
note that rubber soul has aged awfully
>What studio experimentation did VU do?
in recording in a room with shitty microphones, the velvet underground influenced and inspired far more in production terms than anything the beatles did. refusing to use a studio is still studio experimentation
>proceeded to innovate nothing or accomplish anything significant.
now youve done it
Big if true
>trumpets in a pop song was done before Pet Sounds
right, so it wasnt avant garde. (The essay implied it was)
>"created extreme lo-fi". What does that even mean?
you've heard sister ray right?
so john cale invented in 66 with 'Loop' the concept of noise music. Extreme distortion to create textural music rather than tonal or melodic music. It was then applied to rock music with white light white heat. So in wl/wh (and most apparent in sister ray) is deliberately piss poor production to create distortion texture in drum, voice, guitar and piano, as well as guitars distorted as much as was possible in 68.
no band were as lo-fidelity in production and guitar sound in 68.
arguably the kingsmen were the first to do the first extreme lo-fi production sort of by accident, but it wasn't as considered and intentional as it is in white light white heat
>not in harmony dipshit in the idea of an album that sounds coherent
By that rubric, The Beatles were not influenced by The beach Boys either; they were influenced by The Isley Brothers.
>note that rubber soul has aged awfully
It sounds fine. What's wrong with it?
>in recording in a room with shitty microphones
Not experimental. Try again
>refusing to use a studio is still studio experimentation
When did they refuse to use a studio? Note that VU&N was recorded at Scepter Studios, Manhattan, T.T.G. Studios, Hollywood, Mayfair Recording Studios, Manhattan, produced by one of the top New York producers at the time.
If you are referencing music made not in a pro-studio, "louie Louie" was literally recorded in a garage, a decade before the VU existed. .
People who think Scaruffi is an intellectual with art and especially music know nothing about art themselves.
People tend to forget that the Beatles were millionaire rockstars who could have done pretty much everything they wanted, even jerking around in state-of-the-art recording studios for months.
Many other musicians of the era were instead piss poor and they had to record their albums in a hurry because renting a studio was expensive.
>All members of The Velvet Underground are Lou Reed
Good argument :^)
The logical conclusion to intellectual music discussion is actual music theory.
He was talking about sister ray not velvet underground and nico
>what studio experimentation did VU do?
Is this a joke?
Recorded at the same studio. The point still stands.
They used minimal overdubs and studio experimentation. You are basically hearing the band play live in the studio.
Are you a joke?
It doesn't matter if they were innovative or not, it doesn't matter if they transcended genres or not, it doesn't matter if their arrangements were complex or not, what matters is that by the late 60s they were at the top of the game and pretty much unrivaled as a band. Every single one of their later albums is solid and unique. Maybe they're not your favorites, I personally like Odessey & Oracle or Pet Sounds more than any Beatles album, but there's no denying that the Beatles carved their unique place in their time, and they're universally, and rightfully, praised for it. No other pop or rock band at that time, save for maybe The Rolling Stones or The Kinks, had that kind of track record or influence.
And anyone that listens to A Day in the Life or She's So Heavy or even In My Life and thinks "just another generic boy band" doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about.
>I personally like Odessey & Oracle or Pet Sounds more than any Beatles album
Not to mention, both of these albums were heavily influenced by The Beatles.
I was listening to White Album yesterday, and honestly you have to think of it like this
these guys were literally the biggest band in the world, and they put out a double album with an 8 minute ambient sound collage on it
they might not have been the most experimental ever, but fuck if they didnt have some balls
>The Beatles proceeded to innovate nothing or accomplish anything significant
could this be a bait about copypastas
memeception?
or are you just a fucking moron