"How We’ll Forget John Lennon. Our culture has two types of forgetting." - thought provoking article

I wholeheartedly agree. Early on, they never really recorded a bad song. The era you mention, they recorded a lot of them. More bad than good, IMO.

 

Wrong. Four.

 

You left out this forum.

 

Always chuckled at his character's name . . . Gripweed.

 

They evolved. Some of their fans did not go along for the ride.

 

Those were my thoughts too.

 

The Beatles stop touring which probably contributed to fewer appearances than the Stones.

 

If anybody is The Beatles of this generation, it's Beyonce.

The only reason I know about Drake is because of social media and hearing about what a creep he is. I think he's the type of person who will soon be forgotten.

 

You nailed it!

 

Yeah, as someone who is fairly cynical and skeptical about most things, my reaction was also primarily along the lines of "They spent all of this time (and effectively money, as it's part of the work these folks are getting paid for) to determine that most things become less popular over time, with apparently the bulk of their data set being Wikipedia page views." Sounds like a big waste of time/money/effort to do something that doesn't amount to much, really, beyond rough conclusions that anyone could reach with a couple moments' thought via "common sense."

 

Drake was the Magellan of his generation.

 

Makes me wonder how long after Paul McCartney passes, how well the Beatles legacy will fair. Yoko is doing her best to keep the John Lennon brand going.

Thankfully kids today still enjoy their music. But I doubt they will want re-releases after re-releases, like us old pups get sucked into buying.

 

It's a given.

 

I wasn't on either ride. I didn't really start listening to pop music until summer of 1969 and went back to hear the 60s after it happened. I didn't have any societal influences, just judged the music on my tastes and its merits and to me, they were great in the earlier era and later on, not so much.

 

My wife has the same preference. Claims not to care for their "drug music," i.e. anything from about 1966 on.

 

Of course this is down to personal taste, but I just cannot agree that there were no bad songs in the early years. There are songs on every Beatles album I might skip over.

 

I think their output was fairly consistent over their 7 year recording career.

 

You mean "the really good stuff"? I know, some people just like the harmonizing mop-tops. I just can't imagine not being into the later-era Lennon stuff or most of what George Harrison got on the later albums.

 

Yes, I agree with the word "consistent" here. Never 100% (which is an unrealistic expectation), but always really good.

 

Yep. Every album has a couple/few songs that are often considered "clinkers," but all of them are still the cream of the pop crop. I don't skip them when I'm listening in "album" mode.

 

I've been aware of the same phenomenon for a while now. Actually, I first noticed it fairly recently, maybe 2002.

 

Maybe that's what Eric Clapton's trying to do! However, "Happy Xmas" sucks...

 

I never said it was easy but the payoff is far better than just doing another album, even a good B+ effort.

 

There's no stopping great music, in any era. No matter what the Pinhead of the original article says.

True lovers of music will always be Explorers.

 

Everyone will be forgotten at some point, perhaps rediscovered, etc. The one thing that always survives is the music. People hear classical and other music all the time but they don't necessarily know who the composer was. At the end of the day, it's about the music I suppose.