Never has an album been so popular on the mp3 thread, so say what you want Beatles still rule the roost.

Get your copy now folks before i's gone forever..

It's like the Spice Girls at 60 going on tour. Everyone knows they're wringing the last bit of cash from their glory days, but nostalgia is big bucks these days £££

(I have no idea if the Spice girls are doing a tour in 2036)

"The facts have changed", Rishi Sunak

At least you put "in my opinion".

I think one's take on The Beatles partly depends, to some extent, upon one's age.

The very first time I heard the Beatles I was 9 years old.My father had taken me and a friend on a visit to the Natural History Museum in London in January 1963. A member of staff had left the door of a side room open and a radio was playing. Suddenly a song came on, the like of which I'd never heard before. At the time I didn't know it was The Beatles, but very quickly found out I had been listening to Please Please Me! I fell in love with their music immediately.

Personally I don't think it is possible to overrate them. That's not to say that everyone should like all of their music, although given their huge and varied output I would find it odd for someone not to like some of their music.

Perhaps one needs to have been around at the time when The Beatles first emerged to appreciate just what an impact they had on popular music. Take a look at the charts of 1962, the year before the Fab Four came to public attention .. ballads, watered down rock & roll, novelty records and a lot of very anodyne stuff.

The sound of the Beatles was fresh and exciting and put paid, in one fell swoop, to the pop careers of many of those pre-63 acts. In fact, before 1963 groups who sang and also played instruments were few and far between. They also led the way by writing their own songs. Yes they did covers on their early albums, but all of their singles were self-penned.

I always think one of the admirable things about them was that they never sat on their laurels. They could have easily played it safe and gone on producing simple poppy stuff like She Loves You. But they didn't. With the help of George Martin they explored new sounds using different instruments and ground breaking production techniques - think of numbers like Tomorrow Never Knows, Day in the Life, Strawberry Field, Within You Without You. The lyrics to their songs also went into new imaginative territories - fantasy, mysticism, nostalgia and introspection .. The Inner Light, In My Life, Penny Lane, Eleanor Rigby.

Perhaps toward the end when relationships in the band began to fracture and they became more self-indulgent, they did produce some iffy stuff, but given what went before I think they can be forgiven for that.

Edited by Pete53 (08 Nov 2022 4.05pm)

I hate to be a pedant but Yellow Submarine was actually written by Paul McCartney (although credited to Lennon/McCartney.

I think the only Ringo-penned track that ever made it onto an official Beatles album was Octopus's Garden and even that was with significant input from others.

I'm a big fan of the Beatles but I agree about Hey Jude. It's bollocks.

Best Beatles album imo: Revolver or Rubber Soul. Pepper overrated.

Edited by Cucking Funt (09 Nov 2022 4.52pm)

That's very unfair as that was one of their first records and they evolved a lot from there.

I suppose that Pink Floyd were rubbish too as they recorded Arnold Layne and See Emily Play

Is it your view that those lyrics sum up their whole output?