Or how about The Who, versus the Who.
I maintain that “the” is part of the band’s name. It’s not Beatles and Who.
These are just two examples of I’m sure many (The Doors, The Cars), so what should the rule be?
Hmm. But you’d say, “this is a Beatles song,” not “this is a The Beatles song” so I’m going with a lowercase t.
I’ve always seen it lowercased unless it’s the first word of the sentence.
Even at The Ohio State University.
If a band choose to include “the” in their name, to my mind it’s capitalized. I don’t see that as so much of a grammar question as one of personal autonomy to choose any name for yourself or your band that you wish, coupled with the convention to capitalize proper names. Bands can choose names that clearly fall outside of any notion of grammar rules. There is a British band called “The The”!
I believe that in all of the examples that you mention, “The…” is included as part of the chosen name of the band.
There is another interesting question, I think. What happens when a band has a plural name, but does not choose to include “The…” as part of its band name? The technical expression for this is anarthrous band names with plural morphology (!). When you refer to such a band in a sentence, if you append “the” it should presumably not be capitalized. But the question is, when do you append “the”?
There appears to be a loose rule that maybe you are more likely to append “the” when the band name could plausibly refer to its members.
These seem to follow that rule:
Never take the:
Simlple Minds
Guns n Roses
Crash Test Dummies
10,000 Maniacs
Dire Straits
Always take the:
the Dixie Chicks
the Spice Girls
the Thompson Twins
But many counterexamples:
Men At Work
the Red Hot Chilli Pepperes
Believe it or not, there’s an extensive Language Log discussion of this.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4776
This is an interesting point.
The band’s chosen names is “The Beatles”, which to me argues for capitalization.
But you’ve pointed out a quirk of this situation - purely logically, perhaps we should say “This is a The Beatles song”. In the case of the British band “The The”, we probably would indeed say “This is a The The song”, because the band’s very name clearly blows normal grammar out of the water!
But obviously we don’t do that for The Beatles, we remove the “The” just as we would if it were not part of a proper name.
It’s a surprisingly interesting question.
ETA to the above:
How about The Who?
I’m not clear myself what I would say here:
This is a Who song.
or
This is a The Who song.
They both sound wrong!
Back in the 60’s, a friend of mine who had lived a while in Italy had an Italian issue Beatles album. He found it interesting that the liner notes* referred to them as Il The Beatles (“il” being Italian for “the”).
*ETA: which were in Italian.
The late Glenn Frey insisted the name of his band should just be “Eagles.” No “the” at the beginning.
What about The The?
Do you have The Beatles’ latest album?
Do you have the *Beatles *album?
Do you have a Beatles album?
Do you have The Who’s latest album?
??? Do you have a [The] Who album?
??? Do you have the [The] Who album?
Do you have The The’s latest album.
Do you have a The The album?
Do you have the The The album?
It’s interesting that, for me, the ??? ones are the only ones I’m not sure how I’d say. I’d definitely chop “The” off the formal band name of The Beatles when “the” would normally not be present in a sentence. Whereas with “The The”, because it makes no intuitive grammatical sense at all, I think I’d treat it as though it was any string of gibberish and just preserve it intact. But “The Who” seems to be somewhere in between, which creates uncertainty.
Then how about . . .
Hootie & the Blowfish?
Hootie & The Blowfish?
Hootie and the Blowfish?
Hootie and The Blowfish?
Hootie And the Blowfish?
Hootie And The Blowfish?
There’s nothing here intrinsically specific to bands. The same question is relevant to lots of names:
I read it in the New York Times.
or
I read it in The New York Times.
He works at the White House.
or
He works at The White House.
What’s wrong with Do you have the latest album by (or from) The Beatles or The Who or The The? Of course you probably wouldn’t say that in a shop (unless you are a pedant) but capital letters don’t matter in verbal communications.
Calling a band The The, gives us opportunities for sentences like: In The The the drummer is great.
Lower case T.
The name is not ‘The Beatles’ it’s the ‘Beatles’. Just like John and Cynthia and Julian were the Lennons, or Paul and Linda were the McCartneys.
About 1/3 of the albums that actually include the name on the jacket render it merely as ‘Beatles’. Only 2 of the others render the title in mixed case, and one of those (the White Album) renders it as ‘The BEATLES’, which sets the actual name off. (The other is Yellow Submarine, which renders it as The Beatles.)
Eurythmics often said that that was their name, not The Eurythmics.
On the original Star Trek run (the one starring William Shatner), the characters referred to their starship as “the Enterprise”.
The most recent version (starring Scott Bakula) was set in a different century, and had a different starship, but with the same name. But it was entirely natural for the characters to speak of the ship simply as “Enterprise”.
We refer to the famous ocean liner as “the Titanic”, but the famous space shuttle as just “Challenger”. I don’t know how relevant any of this is, but I wanted to throw it into the ring anyway.
The first sounds completely fine to my ear, and how I would say it (and have said it.)
Smashing Pumpkins is another band that’s sometimes without the definite article (first couple albums) and then switched to using the definite article in their name.
I know that when I was ripping CDs, Microsoft would put them under “The Beatles” :mad: Of course, it would file every artist with the the first letter. Example: "T"om Waites.
(Of course you can simply rename the files.)
Decades ago, working in a record store, customers would often search for various bands in the “T” section. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who. We would politely point out how the alphabet works. 
That’s not so much how the alphabet works, as how alphabetizing works–a subtly different thing. It’s not true just with music, either. I’m a librarian, and it always surprises me, when we’re training new student assistants, how many of them want to alphabetize titles which begin with “The” under T, or will include “The” when searching something in the online catalog.
Ignoring initial articles when alphabetizing is not something that’s intuitively obvious to most people, apparently. It’s something you have to be taught.
At least there’s no doubt about Talking Heads.
