What is it about The Beatles’ music that has such enduring appeal and will it last indefinitely?

Answer 1

probably because they were such an influential group and their music was truly good. really good music sticks around forever.

Answer 2

I don't believe it will last indefinitely but the appeal is mainly to the people who were the same age as the Beatles and everything in the world was OK at that time, as those people get older as they have and the young folk are filling the spot they were in at that time so the memory and music will fade away and in years to come they will be saying who were the Beatles

Answer 3

A combination of two of the best songwriters of all time John Lennon and Paul MacCartney, excellent live performances and records, great production from George Martin. More than any other group the Beatles produced popular and memorable tunes. Most people can name at least 1 Beatles tune, many can name several. There are over 180 Beatles lyrics, in the UK they have sold 20.8 million records (Cliff Richard is the only artist to have outsold them with 21 million) worldwide their sales are about 545 million. They continue to sell and their songs continue to be recorded 35 years after they split up.

Regards,

Tin

Answer 4

Because they were great artists, and great artists will always be remembered. The sheer breadth of work, the co-incidence with the great social change of the sixties; the fact that there were arguably two geniuses in the band with a prolific output, with the odd helping hand of quite talented George.

Witty, insightful, silly, deep. The Beatles could turn their hand to any musical style, often in parody, and surpass anything produced in that genre.

But infinitely more important was their overwhelming talent and intelligence. Great early pop songs that defined an age, highly expressive and complex albums that followed.

Ther has been a lot of snobbery written here, by the "musician and social scientist" to name one. What rubbish you spout. Just because you can name-drop the dominant and tonic does not make you a music elitist, and it belies the fact that the Beatles output was highly complex and revolutionary. Just bloody well go listen to the White Album for example, without your po-faced, snob hat on.

The Beatles will always be around, for they produced beautiful things. Amen.

Answer 5

The Beatles came from Liverpool, long regarded as one of the hotbeds of music and comedy in England and they had a dry, cutting Scouse wit. They came from grammar schools and art schools, part of the first wave of 60s creatives.

They got together in 1959 but they have said that they couldn't really crack Britain because it was so in thrall to Cliff Richard. Though the concept of the teenager had already been invented in 1950s America, Britain had not yet fully embraced youth culture (it still hasn't in many areas). Cliff himself was very much a rarity- quite a lot of middle aged singers still ruled the roost.

They went to Germany, then came back to Britain and released their first big hit Love me do in 1962. They went to America in 1964, where they were, and remain, massive stars. 1965 was a turning point when various artists began to treat pop as an artform. The Byrds in particular mixed a countryfied sound with rock paving the way for the hippy-ish mid to late 60s. Brian Wilson was also inspired by Rubber Soul and The Beatles were, in turn, inspired by Brian Wilson. The Beatles played their last concert in Candlestick Park in San Franscisco in 1966 and then concentrated on writing songs in the studio away from the increasingly loud crowds who would scream at anything they did.

The Beatles were a mix of people who had similarities, including a sense of fun, but also differences that gelled together well. Paul had an innocent choirboy look and he wrote some of the most deceptively simple songs such as When I'm 64 and anthems such as Let it be and Hey Jude as well as observational songs about everyday life such as Penny Lane and Eleanour Rigby.

John Lennon is generally regarded to have more of a caustic clever wit. 'I am the walrus' seems to be similar to the kind of absurd logic that Lewis Caroll did with Alice in wonderland and 'Strawberry Fields Forever' ' also indicates that he had a surreal, fertile childlike imagination. A song such as 'A day in the life', in which someone from the House of Lords seems oblivious to what is going on, seems to satirise the estbalishment to some extent.

George Harrison's interest in India influenced not only the band's whole outlook but the sound of many songs, particularly Lennon's. Some of his most notable Beatles songs are If I needed someone, I want to tell you, Taxman, Blue Jay Way, Something and Here comes the sun.

Ringo Starr's vocals can be heard on some Beatles songs, such as I get by with a little help from my friends and Octopus' Garden. As the drummer in the band, he seems more laid back than some of the others probably could afford to be.

The Beatles didn't neccesarily invent psychedelic or folk rock (The Byrds, or possibly some unknown San Fransisco act, have more of a claim to that, even if the Byrds did originally copy The Beatles). What The Beatles did was not only inject some excitement, humour, intelligence and style to sometimes dour Britain but the rest of the world has responded to this too. Although they will have been influenced by other acts, they marched to their own tune and seeemd to be inspired by concerns such as art, literature and philosophy that were popular in academic circles but had not necessarily touched the world at large in a way that mattered, excited and could be understood by most people. The innovations they (and other 60s groups) made rubbished the lie that classical music was necessarily an inherently more rich, subtle, varied and serious artform. The Beatles also made the first music videos as we know them today.

Answer 6

I was recently asked by a 17 year old if I knew who the Beatles were...as they were "awesome." This conveniently demonstrates their appeal to all generations. Some of their lyrics were profound or made social statements that are true today. Some of it is a throw back to more innocent times. Some of it embraced the social issues of the middle sixties decade through the early seventies.

In many cases, their music was truly ahead of its time, providing an enduring and lasting appeal, as evidenced by Yesterday or Hey Jude. I recently revisited some of their music and remember thinking it was much better than I remembered it.

I can remember when each song was released, where I was, who I was with, and what it meant to me at the time. To me, their music is timeless. John Lennon went on to produce true works of genius, as evidenced in his song "Imagine". Paul McCartney went on to collaborate with such legendary artists as Stevie Wonder and produced "Ebony & Ivory"...a true classic. His subsequent group, the Wings produced more classics.

Who can forget George Harrison in the Traveling Wilburys? Ringo has stood out as an avante garde actor and continues to contribute to the music industry.

The Beatles invaded our country, our hearts, and changed the world of music forever...and for this, I am grateful. "What the world needs is Love...what the world needs is Love...Love, Love, Love...etc." A song with an enduring universal message. Who can deny their appeal?

Answer 7

In a genre that is ultimately false, the Beatles were no more useful than other bands of similar idiom - shall we say the Dave Clark Five, for example.

I state that the genre is false, because the promotion of 'pop' music is media-led, and this fact has remained true from the time of the Teddy Boys to today. The machinery of media, of course, has modulated since the time of skiffle. Music that was once promulgated by means of the Juke-box in certain seedy pubs is now distributed ad nauseum by radio channels, and, even worse, by excessively amplified in-car systems. What remains the same is that most of these bands, Beatles included, can hardly articulate a chord outside of Tonic and Dominant, and anything beyond a tentative poke at either the Submediant or a first inversion is heralded by the press as being an achievement not short of that of Schoenberg.

The Beatles do not compare to Beethoven, and are essentially musical pygmies. Even worse, the contemporary 'pop' scene contrives noises from what could be described, poetically, as the bubbling of overloaded and rancid sewers. If you are unable to grasp this meanunf, listen to your own farts, and record them.

Answer 8

When the Beatles arrived on the music scene in 1962 pop songs were about how people liked to think of the world. Paul Anka and Bobby Darrin and Neil Sedaka all sang about girls who were always beautiful and desirable, about men who were tenderly patient, and of course everybody had a job, lived in a nice house, and was white.
From the very first the Beatles sang about how people's lives really were. In their first record 'Love me do' the boy offers to love the girl almost out of boredom (and expects him to love him in return), with their second record 'Please please me' the boy is singing about a relationship which hasn't exactly gone wrong, but which he is finding irritating because of the girl's coldness.
In most of the songs that came out of the Brill building girls were expected to be distant and chilly - they were even praised for this - but of course no real boyfriend thinks this way.
Real people have a taste for the real truth.
The Beatles' music won't last indefinitely. It will last only about as long as the plays of William Shakespeare (which it has a lot in common with).

Answer 9

Remember (if some of you can) the period from 1945 until, say, 1963...none too knowledgeble about the U.S., but Britain was pretty dull. I was six in 1963, and so only know the time beforehand via history lessons. The Beatles' rise occurred at the same time the so-called 'swinging sixties' arrived (circa late 1963). During the fifties, the UK started to wake up and shake the 'dust' of the late forties out of our system...we were 'assisted' - if you like - by the popular music from America, along with writings by Kerouac and Burroughs. Before 1963, the popular music in the UK was fairly formulaic, with the exceptions of Cliff Richard/Shadows and others who snatched the US style to mould into a British mixture. The Beatles had spent time in Hamburg, West Germany to hone their skills - and it was said that the nights in German clubs had hardened them to what they would expect back in Liverpool. They had also mixed styles of blues/rock & roll/skiffle - and in late 1962, their sound was introduced to the ears of all of the UK, other than Liverpool. It was a new sound, and it opened the ears of other kids to pick up instruments of their own and form bands.
At first, the groups' music was simple and basically easy to listen to 'Please Please Me' and 'Love Me Do' was fairly easy to cotton on to - but come 1964, and the American take over and the Beatles has indeed arrived big time. The next two years meant experimentation - and like their early period, they were actually setting the social aura of the times, rather than 'going with the flow' - the sixties will always be remembered in media (and in books), and a large percentage who were born - up until, say, the mid-late 40's will remember what period in the sixties they were doing in one of the various periods of the Beatles, from their start as 'The Quarrymen' through to their German outing until the start of the break up in the late sixties

Answer 10

They're completely unique. No music before or since has sounded like them. They're like Elvis, or to a lesser extent Queen or Michael Jackson - my little sister can hear a song on the radio that she's never heard and still be able to identify who sang it from the style. My little sister who's 8. When you get older you can identify more subtle distinctions, but the Beatles are there from the beginning

Answer 11

Because their music trancends the masses, much like Mozart and Beetoven did in their day.
Also, they were the leaders in their field with popular music, and gave birth to a whole multitude of new groups, inspired by their wonderful, melodic and simple lyrics, which the teenagers of the day could relate too and loved.
I think their legacy will last for ever, and their music is still as popular today as it was in the 60's.