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The Beach Boys or The Beatles?


rjw63

Beach Boys or Beatles?  

81 members have voted

  1. 1. Beach Boys or Beatles?

    • Beach Boys
      28
    • Beatles
      53


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It was amazing because it was 95% written by Brian while the band were away on tour.

Most of it was recorded by Brian and "The Wrecking Crew" studio session musicians too. The rest of the band added vocals on their return.

Pet Sounds produced Mike Love's most infamous quote -m "Dont **** with the formula"

Although I'll admit its not my favourite BB's album

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Don't think it's been mentioned yet (apologies if it has), but Wild Honey deserves a mention. Not quite a Sunflower / Surf's Up, but very good nonetheless. It was a real change in sound as well.

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The Beatles changed the world.

The Beatles... seem to have... hoovered up and become the sixties, and everything that happened in that extraordinary decade somehow belongs to them now. Their songs have therefore become imbued with all sorts of magic that doesn't properly belong to them, and we can't see the songs as songs anymore.

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Lets go surfin now everybodys learnin how, have a surfin safari with meeeeeee

Bah bah bah bah barbara-ann

ooooweeeeeeooooohhhhhhhhwwweeeeee

Fun fun fun till her daddy took the t bird a waaaayyyy

CRAP

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It was amazing because it was 95% written by Brian while the band were away on tour.

Most of it was recorded by Brian and "The Wrecking Crew" studio session musicians too. The rest of the band added vocals on their return.

Pet Sounds produced Mike Love's most infamous quote -m "Dont **** with the formula"

Although I'll admit its not my favourite BB's album

So not really a beach boys album then? more a solo featuring vocals from...

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Lets go surfin now everybodys learnin how, have a surfin safari with meeeeeee

Bah bah bah bah barbara-ann

ooooweeeeeeooooohhhhhhhhwwweeeeee

Fun fun fun till her daddy took the t bird a waaaayyyy

CRAP

you cant just pick out parts of songs, its the whole you should be considering, otherwise i can reply with random beatle lyrics:

Ob la di ob la da life goes on bra

I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus,

goo goo g'joob, goo goo goo g'joob, goo goo g'joob, goo goo goo g'joob, goo goo

Look out helter skelter helter skelter

with the exception of ob la di, i like the other songs, but some of the lyrics IMO are just shiite

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The Beatles changed the world.

The Beatles... seem to have... hoovered up and become the sixties, and everything that happened in that extraordinary decade somehow belongs to them now. Their songs have therefore become imbued with all sorts of magic that doesn't properly belong to them, and we can't see the songs as songs anymore.

Since when has what Nick Horny thinks mattered???

He also supports Arsenal. Does that then make them a better club than Villa?

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It's not really valid at all though. He's just talking crap.

If the Beatles songs have a certain magic about them, it's only because they're bloody great, timeless songs. The millions of people born since the 60s who have bought Beatles records don't really care about the 60s or who that decade "belongs to" (whatever the hell that means).

It's the songs that people love. They do see the songs as songs. Great songs. Hornby is wrong.

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People who like the beatles can only have been brainwashed into it - more so than any child going to church is brainwashed into religion. I can't explain how it happens, but it must be so for so many people to actually think they like that stuff. Utter madness or some form of mass hysteria for the long term.

It's not as bad as liking abba, but not far off.

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Don't think it's been mentioned yet (apologies if it has), but Wild Honey deserves a mention. Not quite a Sunflower / Surf's Up, but very good nonetheless. It was a real change in sound as well.

'Wild Honey' is a very soulful album because Carl Wilson was in control for this project.

Although 'Sunflower' is my personal favourite I really like 'Friends' and '20/20' too; all albums notable for the introduction of the genius Dennis Wilson and with more Rock & Roll and charisma than the Beatles combined. Dennis Wilson was truly a one of a kind and a tragic loss to music that he died only aged 39 years!

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I agree Yuen......but he lived a fooking great life in those 39 years.......culminating in giving Mike Love a grandchild (that he has always denied is his)!!!!

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It's not really valid at all though. He's just talking crap.

If the Beatles songs have a certain magic about them, it's only because they're bloody great, timeless songs. The millions of people born since the 60s who have bought Beatles records don't really care about the 60s or who that decade "belongs to" (whatever the hell that means).

Given the tendency of a substantial portion of folks my age who like the Beatles to style themselves as/after hippies and so forth, I do think that there is a substantial undercurrent of people liking the Beatles as a sort of misguided nostalgia for the 60s. I think that the 60s aura imbues the songs with an extra nostalgic quality that causes people to feel that they're better songs.

This is amplified by the power and influence wielded by the first half of the Baby Boom generation (roughly, those born from '46 to about '55) who by their sheer numbers have essentially taken over culture (and will in due time, take over my generation's wallet...), deifying their childhoods and adolescences and everything associated with them (thus the common perception of Eisenhower America as a time of strong families and so forth, which is bullshit of the highest order, but most observers of things from that generation were viewing things through the eyes of a child... what can you expect?). Given how useless and actually harmful the Boomers (and more specifically, that first wave) have been, I sometimes think that maybe Herod had the right idea after all.

(ObDisclaimer: I'm one of the rare people, I guess, who doesn't have a single relative born in that decade, so it's not like I'd lose anybody I'm close to... my father (youngest in his family) was born in January '42 and my mother (firstborn) was born in October '56, with my oldest cousins being born in '58)

Honestly, I don't think the Beach Boys were that good, either. But when it comes to anything associated with the '60s, I have to apply compensation formulas to scale ratings down. Anything to do with the Beatles, I cut the rating in half (to compensate for the extra-strong reality distortion field surrounding those scousers). Anything to do with the rest of the 60s I cut by 30%. So a Beach Boys 10 is a 7 for the purposes of comparison with other eras. A Beatles 10 is a 5 in real life.

Duran Duran were better than the Beatles, but because they're not from when the power structure in pop culture was in their halcyon days of youth, they can never be recognized as such. I'm not going to comment on any later pop sensations, because they'd be of a time when I was young and impressionable and thus there'd be a reality distortion field surrounding them. However, due to the extent that the cultural predilections of the aforementioned half-generation have smothered succeeding generations (and will do so for decades to come), I feel fairly safe in saying that various popstars of the past couple of decades are, like Duran Duran, being unjustly perceived due to the dominance of that generation.

So if you're between 53 and 62, I guess what I'm saying is: **** off. That sums up my post in one sentence.

Further, most of the kids I know who like the Beatles got into them because their Boomer parents played it in the background constantly (echoing my Barcelonan colleague); I would argue that basically all love for the Beatles actually stems from a desire to go back to the halcyon days of youth, whether that youth be the 1960s or the 70s-90s, when you hadn't discovered the intellectual complexity of the world and when your childlike intelligence was all you needed.

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One other consequential argument from this is that the only people really qualified to judge a musical work are those who were born in the 5 years before or 10 years after its creation. Outside of this, there's too much chance of nostalgia (for the music in question or for the parental brainwashing) influencing impressions.

It'd be very interesting to see what those born between, say 1962 and 1977 (using 1967 as the midpoint of the Beatles) think of the Beatles and how that differs from the general opinion...

Accordingly, I'm really only authoritative on my judgement of music released from '72 through '87...

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