What’s different about the Beatles is once they appeared it CHANGED the direction of music.
This wasn’t as overnight as people think, but it did change. For exmple it was Louis Armstrong’s “Hello Dolly” that ended the run of Beatles hits at #1.
There have been similar artists but unlike the Beatles they didn’t CHANGE the direction of music, but capitalized on that change. Madonna is the best example. The Bee Gees are another. Like Madonna, the Bee Gees, capitalized on disco, but couldn’t change over when disco died. Madonna on the other hand was able to change and capitalize on the style of music.
Also the rock era ended, though no one will admit this and Hip/Hop, R&B and Rap have become the mainstream pop, that rock & roll dominated. Before rock it was the “Tin Pan Alley” era that dominated main stream pop.
The Beatles also came along at the right time. Radio had just spent a decade of adjustment. Moving from drama/comedy programs into music full time. The 50s were a time radio was experimenting with various themes before arriving at a music/DJ format.
You can’t compare music today with music of past either. The way it’s sold, the charts are all calculated very differently making comparisons impossible.
If you look at the change from rock to R&B/Hip Hop/Rap as mainsteam you can see it was very gradual and no one had a lock on it, like the Beatles had when they started.
If you look at the early 80s you find popular black acts like Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, the Pointer Sisters who were all making mainsteam “white” pop music. Whitney Houston and the Pointer Sisters were especially pointed out as not being “black enough”
So you had a very gradual transition in the 80s, lasting into the 90s and by the beginning of the 00s, you had times when R&B/Hip Hop/Rap so dominated the pop charts, Billboard had to create a new one.
Which leads to another reason you aren’t likely to see another Beatles, as the market is SO splintered and albums aren’t selling like singles. Now poeple can buy ONLY the tracks they like. This means people that bought albums for one song and discovered other tracks they liked, don’t do this anymore, at least not in large numbers.
And that leads to the final reason, the ability to own lots of music cheaply.
This means acts of today are not only competing with themselves but OTHER acts as well. For instance, the Eagles OLD albums still sell well. CDs are largely responsible for this, as people dumped their vinyl ablums for CDs and replaced them. This lead to the “children of the 90s” discovering music from old times.
Frank Sinatra. He was the first huge pop star, he literally had teen girls screaming & fainting at concerts. Of course, without television he didn’t get the same numbers a the Beatles. The girls were called Bobby Soxers.