10 reasons why The Beatles are still relevant today
What The Beatles created back in the 1960s will most likely never go out of style. Although they may have looked like a passing fad when they first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, their innovation throughout their career made fans tune in to their music to see what sonic adventure they would unleash next. Then again, what makes a band that broke up half a century ago still relevant today?
With decades of music coming and going since The Beatles’ breakup, some of their innovative approaches to music are still being felt throughout the music community. From the looks they pioneered to how they conducted their career, countless artists have taken a page out of the ‘Fab’ playbook when marketing their own careers.
Though The Beatles’ presence in the public eye may still be relevant these days, their most important contribution to the Western world has always been their music. Combing through their different songs, every sonic eccentricity has made them one of the most influential groups worldwide, as fans adopted their unique approach to the studio.
40 years after John Lennon’s death and 20 years since the death of George Harrison, musicians beyond rock and roll are still peeling back the layers of old Beatles records to see how much there is to explore. Thousands of pop groups may have sprung up in the wake of The Beatles during The British Invasion, but the amount of ground they covered as a group will never be forgotten.
10 reasons why The Beatles are still relevant today
10. Making the first music videos
The world of music videos feels like it should have been timestamped in the early ‘80s. As soon as MTV launched in the early ‘80s, the music world’s attention was focused on the television instead of the radio. Pop starlets became sensations overnight because of their hit videos. Although the TV channel didn’t launch until 1981, The Beatles were already on the cutting edge in the late ‘60s.
No longer having to go out on the road to promote their records, The Beatles made different promotional films for their material, which turned into different art forms as they branched out. Although the band would often play up their performance pieces for comedic effect during the mid-’60s in the videos for ‘Help!’ and ‘We Can Work It Out’, the films for ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ became iconic for their surrealist imagery, soon to be adopted by some of the new wave acts that came with the birth of MTV.
Even when the film crews showed up at the studio, The Beatles would never play up their looks for the camera again, infamously recording a completely different song for the cameras when they were supposed to be cutting a video for ‘Lady Madonna’. As much as The Beatles were about music, they were always acutely aware of the importance behind the camera and in their audience’s headphones.
9. Artistic honesty
Most music fans can see through any corporate facade regarding their favourite artists. Even if someone has some of the biggest hits in the world, it’s easy to tell when they aren’t being genuine, often sounding like they’re reading from a cue card that some suit wanted them to use during interviews. The Beatles were never going to go along with the program, so every album gave fans their true feelings on what the world was like.
As The Vietnam War raged on for most of their career, The Beatles were always willing to speak their minds, with John Lennon advocating for peace worldwide and Paul McCartney going after the press for demonising the group because of their drug use. That mentality also translated to the live stage, including a spat with American press tours where the band refused to play in any venue that would be segregated in the South.
That turned out to be only a hint of what would happen in each Beatle’s solo career, with George Harrison emphasising the need for spirituality in life and John Lennon going after political corruption with the help of his wife, Yoko Ono. Music might be about having a good melody for most people, but The Beatles were always concerned about what was going on once the final notes rang out.
8. They pioneered writing their own material
When The Beatles first got the ball rolling, John Lennon and Paul McCartney were looking to be more than just superstars. As opposed to their idols like Elvis Presley and Little Richard, Lennon and McCartney modelled themselves after acclaimed songwriters like Goffin/King, who were known for their brilliant melodies coming out of Tin Pan Alley. It’s one thing to be able to write amazing songs, but The Beatles were one of the first to make it a standard.
Although both Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry were known for composing their own material, The Beatles were the first band that made it expected for rock bands to write original compositions rather than recycling the same rock and roll tropes. Despite Elvis Presley being one of the kings of rock and roll, The Beatles had one up on rock and roll royalty by not relying on someone else to compose the tunes for them between massive concert tours.
Lennon and McCartney never saw it as a chore either, often celebrating that they had only a week off between touring and going into the studio because they could sit back and write songs all day. Wannabe rockers could still dip into playing cover songs all they wanted, but after The Beatles broke, people had to write songs if they wanted to be half as successful as they were.
7. Turning the album into an art form
Before The Beatles, the album format was marketed as a singles collection. Although most of the band’s first few releases stand up as brilliant pieces of music, they each have the feeling of singles that didn’t quite make it to primetime that happened to be slapped in random order. As the band started to loosen up from their touring schedule, they looked at the format completely differently.
Starting with Rubber Soul, The Beatles began turning their albums into works of art, with each song speaking to each other from back to front. Although not every album was draped in a narrative concept, fans could hear the different ways the band could use their songs as compliments to each other, like songs slowly fading into each other to make a smooth listening experience.
By the time the band made it to their final years with Abbey Road, they had begun perfecting the album sequencing process, leaving the final side of the record as a smorgasbord of different song sequences that bleed into each before a rousing finale. Despite the world now being dictated by playlists, The Beatles are still pivotal in turning the album into a complete statement that can take the listener on a journey through sound.
6. Lyrical growth
Not every Beatles song was destined to win a Pulitzer for lyrical complexity. Although some of their contemporaries like Bob Dylan made brilliant strides in the rock genre, The Beatles’ early lyrics about puppy love started off fairly tame, with Lennon and McCartney more worried about the tune’s sound than any mind-melting lyrics. When they began to workshop their tunes in the studio, every member began to see their words as an extension of themselves.
Although most of their songs tied back to love, John Lennon was one of the first to branch out into different topics, seeing the political angle in ‘Revolution’ and creating strange images in people’s minds with songs like ‘Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite’. Even when going back to love songs, the band always tried to break down the intricacies that come with pop’s favourite emotion, like the wistful sounds of ‘In My Life’ or the forlorn jilted lover at the end of ‘Yesterday’.
Out of all the main songwriters, George Harrison grew into the most advanced songwriter, talking about the meaning of life in ‘Within You Without You’ before writing some of the most honest love songs ever created, like ‘Something’. Whereas most artists might write the song first and finish the lyrics later, every Beatle knew that the words they would be singing had to be an extension of themselves to be taken seriously.
5. Creating the rock band model
The Beatles have always had the reputation of being one of history’s favourite rock bands. As soon as the British Invasion kicked into high gear, boys and girls alike were fawning over the lovable lads behind those moptops whenever they played a show. When talking about the evolution of rock and roll, though, The Beatles’ dynamic was a bit of a rare breed at the time.
Talking about some of the biggest acts to come before The Beatles usually comes down to artists with a backing behind them, like Buddy Holly and The Crickets or Elvis Presley and…whoever was playing with him at the time. Out of all their heroes, The Beatles had four identifiable personalities with ‘The Cute One’ McCartney, ‘The Quiet One’ Harrison, ‘The Smart One’ Lennon, and ‘The Lovable One’ Starr.
Even their producer George Martin thought their dynamic was strange in the early days, trying to narrow down who the lead singer was in the early days before deciding to market them as a group rather than differentiate. Whereas most bands tend to have the group’s main leader, The Beatles made the rock and roll outfit a democracy rather than a musical monarchy.
4. Genre-hopping
Most artists can only hope to find their voice in music and stick with it. It’s hard enough finding a style of music to pull off effectively, so artists usually find their niche and keep pumping out the same music, knowing that their loyal fanbase will always be waiting for them. For The Beatles, though, repeating themselves became boring, so they decided to keep things interesting on every album.
From 1965 onward, The Beatles always dipped their toes into different genres, from Paul McCartney making ballads set to classical music to the experimental rock that came with their psychedelic period, including hard rock and acid rock seeping their way into the mix. The band always had that eclectic mix at heart, often covering soul tunes on their early records and bringing music hall into the mix with their jazz-flavoured cover of ‘Til There Was You’ from The Music Man.
In their innovations, The Beatles almost accidentally created new genres, like the heavy metal clangour of ‘Helter Skelter’ or the sounds of progressive music that artists like Genesis and Pink Floyd would be pulling from a few years after them. The Beatles have always prided themselves on diversity throughout their career, and there was no way they would let themselves be pigeonholed into just one genre.
3. Introducing new instruments
There are always a few rock bands that never like to stray from the typical lineup of instrumentalists. Even though rock bands like to include a piano on their songs here and there to be fancy, their lack of confidence in other instruments leaves most artists wanting to get things done with guitar, bass, drums and vocals for the most part. Although The Beatles started in the same way, their willingness to experiment led them to work with different instruments most fans would have never heard of.
Outside of George Martin adding the occasional piano or organ part to a song, things started to change when George Harrison first bought a sitar, exposing the Western world to the sounds of Indian music on songs like ‘Within You Without You’ and ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’. Since they spent their days working away in the studio, each member also started to comb through different instruments, like the different handbells used on ‘Penny Lane’ or the early introduction of the synthesiser on Abbey Road, which would go on to soundtrack future generations once the ‘80s kicked in.
Outside of the different classical and non-rock and roll instruments, The Beatles even tried using their usual instruments in a different way, like the percussive slaps on the back of a guitar on ‘I Will’ or Ringo Starr slapping his knees to get the intimate feel on their cover of Buddy Holly’s ‘Words of Love’. The guitar, bass and drums setup might be tried and true, but The Beatles knew there were more interesting avenues to explore once creativity was brought into the mix.
2. Innovative production techniques
Midway through the ‘60s, it felt like the pressure of Beatlemania had finally swallowed The Beatles as a touring entity. At the end of 1966, the massive screams coming from the fans had become too much for all of them, quitting the road for good and never headlining a tour together again. Since they couldn’t deliver their music to the people directly, the band set up shop at Abbey Road Studios and used the studio as their playground.
With the help of their producer George Martin, The Beatles pioneered different musical techniques that most people have taken for granted, like introducing the world to the sound of the backward guitar on their lead single ‘Rain’. As the psychedelic movement kicked in, the band’s experimentation with tape loops made for some of the strangest songs a mainstream rock band ever released, from the splice in the middle of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ to the sonic fever dream happening in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’.
Although not every sonic experiment was beloved (‘Revolution 9’ exists, after all), The Beatles’ need to go outside the box for most of their songs made them innovators of studio technology, eventually dictating where the music world was going to go after the decade had ended. While even The Beatles might admit that not everything they experimented with was a success, some of the subpar elements of their productions make people appreciate the perfect elements of songs like ‘A Day in the Life’.
1. Their songs
It’s easy to chalk up everything The Beatles did to having lightning in a bottle. After the band blew up in the early ‘60s, some of their greatest music could have easily come from being in the right place at the right time. No one gets in that position by accident, though. While The Beatles may have had luck on their side, they stuck around because of how skilled they were as songwriters.
Throughout their career, the Lennon and McCartney songwriting team blossomed into one of the greatest forces in music, working off each other and often filling in different pieces of their separate masterpieces like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘A Day in the Life’. Even when they were writing songs separately towards the end of their career, both men had established themselves as some of the greatest songwriters of their generation, from Lennon’s blend of artistry and commentary on ‘Across the Universe’ or Paul McCartney becoming a master of melody on tunes like ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Hey Jude’.
And while George Harrison never had another creative partner to bounce off of, his contributions to some of The Beatles’ later records became some of the most interesting moments in their career, like the folk-rock beauty in ‘Here Comes the Sun’ or the sad lament of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. Anyone can make it to the top of the musical food chain by being in the right place at the right time, but to leave a last impact on listeners’ hearts, The Beatles wrote the songs that made the entire world want to sing along with them.
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