Frankly, the entire British invasion could have stayed over there, with the exceptions of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. The Beatles were a pop group every bit as vacuous as Elvis and the Spice Girls—insipid songs with a tiresome hook, minimal musical innovation or creativity, and lots and lots of media powering the whole thing. They didn’t change music. Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and Elmore James changed music—and the Beatles tried to copy them. They were the British version of Pat Boone, recording Little Richard’s “Tooti-Fruity” for a white audience and thinking he was going to get away with that. The attraction to this band was more about their looks and their cultural zietgeist than their actual talent or musicianship. Worse, as the idiotic legend has been foisted on the next two generations, the Beatles are now a cultural shibboleth for millennials and Gen-Yers: you show your musical bona fides to one another by showing how “retro” you are in digging the Beatles. The writing was overwrought, the music was sub-par, and the path of musical creation in general was completely unaffected by these guys. While they were a “thing,” Coltrane was moving jazz from modal to free, Hendrix was transforming blues from the country to the arena, Kris Kristofferson was beginning to write actual lyrics that would help rescue country music from itself, Glen Campbell was reminding everyone that country music could have actual musical geniuses in it, and Pink Floyd was developing the idea of the full-length concept album. Actual music was in full flower, and the Beatles were no part of it. The only thing worse than their tiresome Ed Sullivan years was the post-TM years, in which they tried to reinvent themselves as “artistes” who could get high and write esoteric eastern stuff. Because they barely knew their three chords to begin with, Sgt Pepper was just awful. Period. It’s time someone finally said it. OVERRATED.
Overratedness Rating: 7/5 John Mayers
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