Back in the 70’s some guy wrote a letter to Rolling Stone in which he claimed that we would not hear anything “new” in music because all permutations of all musical notes had by then already been used up. Remember him? He caused quite an uproar because nobody wanted to hear his message, but now it’s been 30 years, and we haven’t seen anyone on the scale of The Beatles or Elvis. So was he right after all, or have I become jaded? Also, maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges: Is it the singer or the song? I would be interested in hearing your opinions either way.
Thanks
Quasi
Well I don’t believe we’ve already exausted every single note combination but I agree with your general point.
This essay here basically summarizes it all.
Jesus. Does the self-regard of the baby boomers know NO bounds?
Certainly we’ve had acts on the scale of the Beatles and Elvis. Off the top of my head, I can think of 'NSYNCH, the Backstreet Boys, and Brittany Spears. They’re not as good as the Beatles, or ever Elvis (remember – you can’t like them exactly the same 
), but their popularity is comparable. You have to remember that the Beatles and Elvis were teen idols. They just happened to be able to write great songs, too, but that was just gravy.
If your talking about acts that are as good and lasting well, only time will tell.
Remember – quality and popularity are independent variables. (Rothman’s 1st Law).
While it is possible that we are in a slump regarding music that emphasizes melody in Rock-related works, (the emphasis having moved to rhythm at the moment), it is more likely that with the current emphasis on rhythm in the music that descended from Rock and Roll, the practitioners of melodic song-writing have simply moved to other genres.
I would take issue with the examples from the OP, in any case. Lennon and McCartney were true masters of pop music, but I wouldn’t give either of them high marks for their lyrics. Elvis was not a creator in any sense; he was a supremely talented performer (and I mean that with no irony or dismissal of what it takes to be a performer).
What scale? There are too many variables, here. The very first thing that has to be addressed is the extreme compartmentalization that has descended on youth-oriented music.
In the 1960s, the typical Rock and Roll AM station (which was the seriously dominant source of airplay until around 1969) played all sub-genres simultaneously. This means that the Beatles were played next to the Blues Magoos next to Peter, Paul, and Mary, next to Jefferson Airplane, next to Gene Pitney, AND next to Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra and next to The Sounds Orchestral doing Cast Your Fate to the Wind and next to the theme from Romeo and Juliet.
This meant that any of those artists had a naturally larger audience (as a percentage) than anyone today has. Today, the radio market is so narrow-focused that even the oldies stations select only sub-genres from small groups of years. (E.g., Cleveland is dominated by oldies stations, yet you can literally go months without hearing The Doors or The Moody Blues. No one who listened to the radio in 1968 got through a day without several cuts by those groups, yet they don’t even show up on the stations that allegedly play 60s music.) The kids who do listen to Britney or NSYNCH probably never had a chance to even hear Santana the year Carlos swept the Grammies.
How do you measure influence when the market is so fragmented that millions of potential listeners never even hear the music?
Mind you, I’m only addressing the issue of impact. To claim that there is no one doing Hip Hop or Country/Western who has done work as good as that put out by Lennon and McCartney requires a rather exhaustive examination of those genres to prove that nothing is as good. I doubt that that is a valid proposal and I am certainly not going to spend the effort.
I refer you to Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” or Jeff Beck’s “Brush With the Blues”. Both of these more recent pieces embody what modern rock music is all about.
There are levels of articulation from the artists and tonal control available in instruments today that have allowed unheard of degrees of sophistication. As a composer of both lyrics and music including classical and rock pieces, I believe there is an endless supply of novel and high quality music. Classic or timeless quality usually depends upon the determination of the performer to present true art as opposed to a fixed set of styles being any sort of limitation.