Are the Beatles overrated?

The Beatles were talented and influential.

And Amadeus is a great movie.

They might have been "average musicians" but they created original, unique for the time, and some sophisticated two and a half minute songs.

Average musician + great songwriting+ great production= a great band.

Lennon and McCartney heard the first stinging notes of Jumping Jack Flash and the supernatural driving riff and rhythm in June 1968, and probably knew then it was all over for the Beatles. A band that doesn't tour and was always more of a collection of talented studio musicians than a rock and roll band is simply never going to be able to respond to Jumping Jack Flash in kind.

They took a few meager shots at it ("Come Together" "Get Back"), but they didn't have the scope, the sources/inspiration, or the drive. They busted up and Lennon went on to be a milky bland singer-songwriter type (think Paul Simon) strangely distracted by his awful wife, while McCartney tried to become the world's best jingle writer. Their post-Beatles careers prove they never had the right stuff to truly rival The Rolling Stones in the heyday of rock and roll.

I’m glad that I could just down vote rather than post my disagreement. I posted anyway because votes are anonymous and peeps want to know what I’m doing.

Yes, but is sales really how knowledgeable people think about evaluating talent and performance in music? The Eagles Greatest Hits is the number one selling album ever in the US, and the Hotel California is third, and they set new standards in mundane lame.

Underrated if anything. They have so many quality songs that you don't even get to hear that their 100th and 150th best song is still leagues above what most others produce.

no, they were good, esp in their time period.

And they influenced so much of what came after. It took me a while to find appreciation for them. But I have it now. Are they my favorite band like ever ever? Well no, I was born and raised after their time, but the music that does speak to me was directly influenced by them.

The fact that there's Beatles threads on LR over 50 years after they broke up, and pretty much all ages today have at least heard of them.... answers your question.

Obviously clickbait. Rock review stuff is so tedious because it's subjective, and there's always kids reflexively contrarian for the sake of it. However obscure or crappy a band is, it's always someone's all-time favorite.

You don't know music The Beatles are phenomenal you can feel there music something that can't be said of the trash today! If you don't believe See Love in Vegas and you will understand the beauty of the Beatles!

The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

And McDonald's, and Budweiser, and Marlboro, and Levi's.

Most Popular = Best, as Einstein would have told you.

I'm 40 and love Sinatra I also like Wayne Newton!

I only know the lyrics to one Beatles song, Yellow Submarine, and that’s because we’d sing it at summer camp.

I know that they have a song called hey jude, and something about diamonds? (I’m being slightly disingenuous here) The point being that I only actually know one beatles song.

I think that many people are vastly overestimating their influence because they grew up around people who listened to them or their parents listened to them.

I’m in the same boat. I could probably only sing along with one or two Beatles songs. I’m a guitarists and I still have never felt the need to explore their music more in-depth.

Give me Zeppelin, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Rush, Van Halen, etc. So many outstanding musicians in those groups that shaped rock music for decades to come.

The Beatles were the greatest phenomenon in the history of entertainment. Sorry Barnum and Bailey, but you didn't have mass communication. Elvis was the biggest thing anyone had ever seen. Way bigger than Sinatra. The Beatles were bigger. They were on the cover of every publication. They went around the world. They generally released three singles and two albums a year. And they wrote their own material.

After the 50's rock'n'roll wave subsided a lot of record companies reverted to what they'd always done before: Find a good looking kid, prop him up behind a microphone and call tin pan alley for a song. That's fine. There are a lot of songwriters looking for the right artist to record their material.

The Beatles were the real deal and they were self contained. They'd already paid their dues and learned that whatever they were doing was working. They took an empty club in Hamburg and turned it into a happening night spot. In Liverpool they became top of the Mersey Poll as the houseband at the Cavern.

The whole phenomenon was done with basically eight people plus maybe a publicist and an engineer. By the time the Beatles played Ed Sullivan, they had everything in place. The hair, the clothes and five singles and two albums of material. All the musicians knew the game had changed. If you were already big, would you still be relevant? Most were not. The british wave that followed was endless. It would take the Americans over a year to respond to the brits who continued to develop and delight.

The Stones were never on their level. They may never have broken out if it wasn't for their first hit written by Lennon/McCartney. The songs they'd already recorded weren't going anywhere. The Stones never called themselves the greatest rock'n'roll band until the Beatles split up. I love the Stones, but to say they're as good as, I don't think so. But like the Beatles, they also had slow hits and pop hits as well as rock'n'roll. That got people to percieve they were parallel, but they weren't really a vocal group. Mick and some backups, but the whole band didn't sing.

As for the Beatles not being the best musicians in the world, that's not what it takes to be a great group. They were excellent, unique players. If speed licks and jazz chords are all that matters, musicians would be like gunslingers. There could be duals to see who's the fastest, most outrageous etc..., but that's not music.

I don't think we'll ever see their kind of all enveloping success again. Corporate radio reduces them to a handfull of their later hits, but they were a lot more. Admittedly, a lot of their innovations are better appreciated in the context of the chronology of the times that were most definately a-changin'.

I've listened to the Billboard charts from the mid 50's through the 70's and it's so easy to see how the Beatles steamrolled the planet. Their stuff was so vibrant and different. They were accomplished and seasoned musicians by the time they got to America. If pop music was a black and white movie, the Beatles came on in technicolor. They changed everything.