If it matters, I think Bob Dylan was far superior to Beatles as a songwriter. However, he has a terrible singing voice.
I hate Bob Dylan (with the exception of Hurricane only because it was used awesomely in Dazed and Confused) but, yeah, there’s no denying it.
BS, I have an invite to what.cd. You should join. Start a discussion in their forums about The Beatles not being good musicians. It would be…entertaining.
Edit: I’m having major typing issues today.
My argument was simply that success doesn’t indicate songwriting ability. Do you think the songwriters behind the Britney Spears and BSB catalogues deserves spots in history for songwriting above legit artists they beat in sales? And if musical impact has much more to do with timing than talent. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t among the greatest songwriters of all time, but he was hands down no quesiton one of the top 2 or 3 impactful musicians of the modern era. But I don’t think he necessarily deserves consideration as a songwriter. As I said, music, art, and literature become much more about objective understanding of the techniques and devices used than about “subjective tastes” as you begin dealing with the views legit musicians and songwriters. Saying “I like X” is not the same as saying “X is a better songwriter / musician”. I’ll admit I jam to Ke$ha, but you’ll never see me calling her either of those things. Similarly, when I walk into MoMA, I look at paintings and say “I like that”, but I don’t know sh*t about art. I still understand that objectively to an expert that peice may be bad (not likely because it’s in MoMA, so that’s a bad example), but you get what I’m trying to say.
And I don’t think popularity or reader votes necessarily makes it true.
As MUSICIANS you think they were better than modern bands like say, RHCP?
Hey BS, fair enough. But if you ever want to discuss, let me know. I’m not in my 60s (ie I wouldn’t be biased from being caught up in the moment), and I do have a formal music background.
I think when discussing the overall talent a musician represents the toal package matters. So, being that The Beatles wrote and played their own stuff gives them higher marks than most of the pop acts today.
And, of course, it’s all subjective so there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer but there most certainly is consensus; and, the consensus says The Beatles are among the greatest of all time. It’s also worth noting that it’s hard to find modern musicians (outside of country and rap) that don’t readily admit they were influenced by The Beatles. Again, I don’t think you’ll find many artists a half century from now saying they got into the business because of Vanilla Ice. Just another thing to consider when discussing the greats.
I’m serious about the What.CD invite. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend it.
But my problem with that is that, as I said,sales is a garbage indicator. It’s kind of like saying Chris Webber is better than MJ because he earned roughly twice the NBA salary over the course of his career. I also think there’s a lot more objectivity to it than you’re suggesting, and I’ve never had discussions with legit band members that didn’t also feel there was a large objective component to it. Jimi Hendrix impacted virtually every musician since, whether they admit it or not since he more or less invented and championed the use of distortion on guitars. But it doesn’t really make him a better songwriter or a musician. Although he was in fact a sick guitarist. Today you have the issue that virtually every legitimately talented musician and songwriter is entrenched in the indie scene, combined with the impacts of digital media on sales. This means less widespread familiarity with today’s top singer/songwriters, so less presence in voting polls, sales comparisons, etc. In other words, the comparison more or less has to take place at the level of fundamentals. Anywho, I don’t bother with what.cd because it’s blocked at work and I don’t mess with the web much at home.
Anyhoo, django did remind me that I don’t want to get dragged down into this. I think I’ve stated my views on the topic pretty well, so I’ll leave it at that.
It’s funny, we’re coming full circle. You’re stating here that comparisons have to take place at the fundamental level, which I take to mean the only opinions that matter in the debate of who’s great are those of other musicians. This is just like the gun control thread where you said only those that grew up with guns really understand gun ownership.
Very interesting. Oh well, since you’re done I guess we’ll just leave it at that.
For the record, the alligator died. Unless, of course, he faked his own death…
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Alligator-Used-to-Guard-Drugs-Dies-186342392.html
Since this is more of a general observation and I can address it without mentioning the prior topic, I will.
It’s true, I have no problem acknowledging that I strongly believe much greater weight should be assigned to the opions of people with direct experience. If I want an investment opinion, I’d rather hear from a HF manager than a guy who’s never worked in finance. If I want a medical opinion, I’d rather hear from an MD than someone who’s never worked in the field. Some people think it’s elitist, that’s fine. I think not all opinions are equal despite populist ideas, and people should earn the right throughout their lives by experiencing and undertaking a wide variety of pursuits. This is largely why adults are given sway in society. Some professionals really despise my stance because they recognize that they’re intelligent, but long hours or whatever prevent them from experiencing a lot of things. But I don’t think it’s a novel concept that many hard working professionals are somewhat inexperienced in things beyond their field. And just to be clear, none of this was written or intended to be directed at you STL, just filling out / agreeing with your observation and saying I see nothing wrong with that.
The major problem with that is when you debate someone on an internet forum and you say your opinion is more valid than theirs because you have the applicable experience. Since it’s impossible to disprove your qualifications (and, btw, you have no idea what theirs are either) it doesn’t make any sense to hold anyone to that standard online.
Yeah, you’re right to an extent.
Mr. Teeth! Nooooooo!
Interestingly, Mr. Teeth was misidentified as an alligator. He is actually a “dwarf caiman”, which is a kind of crocodile…
How I feel making BS concede a point:
Britney’s sales record, when compared to the Beatles, needs to be adjusted for world population inflation and also scaled down with a time-dependent technological constant that captures the accessibility of music media in the digital age vs. other historical periods. Longevity of sales needs to be another factor in the quantitative comparison, apart from aggregate volume, and depending on how you adjust the weighting of these components you may see some surprising underdogs creeping up in the top 5 rankings, such as Mozart.
On the other hand, higher variety of music dilutes the share of any particular modern music producer. Back in Mozart’s day, there were maybe a couple hundred (?) “mainstream” popular composers. Not sure the exact number, but definitely a tiny fraction of today’s variety. So, compared to today, it was statistically easier for Mozart to be the dominant music producer, and then become famous throughout history.
I’m not saying Britney Spears should be compared to Mozart in terms of quality, but music is definitely a more competitive industry nowadays.
When large numbers of people still choose to buy and listen to your music 43 years after you released your last album, it’s kind of hard to say you were average.
in response to ohai’s concerns, my time-dependent technological constant would include a resistance factor to address the density of musical competitors, in addition to the diffusion component which captures the permeability of musical media
Everybody listens to the music of their youth when they get older. Beatles just happen to have the the baby boomer generation.
With the Beatles, I’ve always just argued that they were culturally very significant, although mediocre as musicians. I would never argue against their cultural impact, I just think people considering them as the best “band” are confusing the two.