Well, we hear a lot about Shakespeare, but not a lot about Ben Jonson. Unfortunately that's the way things work out...

In terms of influencing bands decades on later, they are in a class of their own. The vocal melodies and harmonies of the Beatles is one of the biggest aspects of making them the top of that class. They continued to evolve and create along the way.

I hate that I'm sitting here defending the Beatles cause like many...I don't ever need to hear them again in my lifetime. Still....they're treated and rated just as they should be. We can take the others like Animals, Stones, Dave Clark Five, Moody Blues, Manfred Mann, and the Kinks....they just don't have the body of work and impact as the Beatles did. The Stones MIGHT be close and I prefer them to the Beatles, but it's a really tough sale arguing they influenced more bands than the Beatles.

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That would be going Boyd on Boyd and I know better than that.

A big step in being a huge fan of a musician is understanding how what you love about them can inspire hatred in equal measure. Of course Paul is, on some level, a cornball who would have been perfectly comfortable writing hokey vaudeville music in a previous generation. But sometimes those cornball fundamentals (band names thread) get focused into great music. And I don't have to go into the inherent divisiveness of Frank Zappa or Lou Reed or John Darnielle or Kate Bush. I just hope I can someday have as wide-ranging an album library as Brick.

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He’s eclectic enough to not only own every year of Now That’s What I Call Music, but every Now That’s category out there.

So all those guys just instead sell insurance or something?

That's a perfect example of overstating their importance and acting like no British band would exist if they hadn't flown across the ocean and played in America for 2 weeks.

Of course The Beatles were influential. They were the most notable of a very big British music scene at the time. If they hadn't existed there would have been another group to play in America for 2 weeks instead from Britain.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

they would've probably been selling out in europe and the UK. but they got their shot here *because* of the beatles. that's just a fact, as i said. whether you think any of those other bands could've started the british invasion is just retcon fiction.

So the Rolling Stones and The Who weren't good enough to even get noticed in America? However, a two week visit by another band gave them decades of success here?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It is always interesting to me as a Beatles fan how the timeline of 60s rock went. There is not a lot of time from the start of Beatles and Beach Boys to Stones/Who/Kinks to Doors/Deep Purple/Led Zep. It happened really fast and nearly all synched up.

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Elections have consequences.

The Beatles were massive because they had the look but more importantly they had the songs. They were already #1 before they even came over. I think you are minimizing how difficult it is to write great songs. Nobody could touch Lennon and McCartney and then later Harrison who also contributed some bangers. Their output from '63 to '69 will never be matched.

My favorite band from that period was The Who. I heard someone say The Beatles made me pick up an instrument but it was The Who that made me join a band. I think The Who and also the Stones show how The Beatles were different. With the Who it was Townshend that did the writing and turned up with amazing demos and the Stones would rent a studio for a couple weeks and hope Richards could come up with some riffs. The Beatles were like having peak Tom Petty and Prince in the same band.

Brick laying the brick again lol.

Is that not what you said?

If The Beatles didn't exist, do you think the Rolling Stones or The Who would have ever made it to America?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

It doesn’t matter is what I said. What happened happened. Personally I love all those bands but the fact is they flourished here after the Beatlemania was already started. It’s a moot point.

You’re just doing your Brick thing now.

No one doubts that The Beatles came to America first. It just makes no sense that the Rolling Stones and The Who that are also really great bands would have not found a way to America if not for The Beatles. It's like saying that no one human would have ever landed on the moon if Neil Armstrong hadn't done it.

The Beatles would always have been a great band. They were extremely talented. The idea that are unquestionably the greatest band of all time is more about timing than it was something that truly differentiates them from every other great musical group of all time. If The Beatles were all born in the 90s they'd basically be One Direction.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

This legitimately almost made me spit the food out of my mouth. Well done.

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I did mean to say what "differentiates them from every great musical group of all time".

The way I wrote it sounds like timing was the only thing that differentiated them from The Hanson Brothers.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I know, I know, such mawkishness.

Harry Styles is making great music. Sure, they could be one direction, if one direction made genre defining music after that for another 5-6 years. Some of it is timing....would someone else make Mozart like music if Mozart didn't exist? Probably?

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

When Purdue Rick does, "It's like saying" and "it seems like you're saying", it's a tell that he's a little flustered.

It's a funny game.

That's a pretty common argument tactic. I'm certainly not flustered in a Beatles argument about whether British music would have ever come to America if not for them.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Yeah, I heard you the first three times.

this annihilated me

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