I should add, though I voted “yes,” they are not my favorite band, either. Not even sure if they’d make my top ten “favorite bands.” However, as much as I could objectively rank something that is inherently subjective, the Beatles would top that list. In my mind, nobody comes close in terms of innovation, influence, and solid, colorful, idiosyncratic pop songwriting. They were always playing around with the pop form and subverting expectations. They never were content with just sitting down and writing verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-solo-chorus.
Agreed.
They had moderate talent, and musical innovation, that’s it as far as the Beatles themselves go. Where they excelled was hitting the damn jackpot in good timing. Most of their music isn’t deep, complex, or even particularly groundbreaking. Their best work, was the more drug addled songs anyway. It is good upbeat pop-rock that for it’s time was fresh and new. That combined with a powerhouse of pr, marketing and the social upheaval going on rocketed them to stardom. Now they are remembered fondly through the haze of memory and their own hype.
They were in essence the Nirvana of their day. A few damn fine songs, a lot of mediocre to good ones, some edgy experimentation and a career ended young.
Hell no. The Beatles are approximately #845,762 of musical acts I would willingly listen to. Maybe they were revolutionary at the time, but I wasn’t alive then, and in 2010 their music is boring, one step above elevator music.
However, plenty of classical music that was created years before the Beatles music is still fresh and exciting to me, imho. For instance, I just listened to Carmen on my iPod. Great music that I’ve heard a million times and I’m looking forward to hearing it another million times.
ETA: btw, my roommate my freshman year of college was a such a huge Beatles fan that she listened to them to the exclusion of almost everything else. So I am really really really REALLY familiar with their entire catalog.
I wouldn’t go that far, but I will say I’m pretty much all listened out as far as their music is concerned; i.e. I’ve already heard everything 500 times. I can’t really vote on whether they’re best or not. They were the best of all pop-rock groups that managed to maintain mass appeal while being musically innovative at the same time. There aren’t a huge number of bands that fit that description in the first place, especially once you get out the mid-1960’s era when most “pop” music was a subset of rock and roll.
From a musicology standpoint, a lot of their music actually is quite interesting and complex in terms of the pop idiom. How many bands do you know that can make a pop song with crazy time changes like 11/8 to 4/4 to 7/8 without anybody noticing? (“Here Comes the Sun”) Or the clever harmonization of the refrain of “Eight Days a Week” where the first half is in parallel fourths/fifth (giving it a kind of weird, haunting, open sound), while the second half resolves to the more usual sixths? Or the subtle changes in the drum rhythm of “Ticket to Ride” where Ringo goes from triplets against the beat in the first couple of verses to straight eights towards the end? Or that beautiful, crazy chord that opens “A Hard Day’s Night?” I mean, in almost every single original song of theirs, I can find some interesting and original that plays against the expectation of the pop songwriting idiom. And the most beautiful thing about it is that they do it so naturally, you don’t even notice.
ETA: Anyone who wants to read a musicologist’s take on the Beatles would be well served in reviewing Alan Pollack’s comprehensive “Notes On…” series, which goes through and analyzes every song in the Beatles canon.
Not even close, The beatles don’t have the number one album. They don’t show up till number 14. cite They never get radio play on rock stations like the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin do because they are hopelessly dated - this is also the reason why they are fading away as the generation that made them popular ages. As they get more and more relegated to the “oldies” category they are going to get thrown on the heap of bargain bin music like DooWop and Surf Music. The Beatles had true talent, granted, but their fans have a misplaced obsession bordering on the absurd.
The most over rated band of all time.
Where did I say number one album? I said, “records sold and number one hits.”
With the exception of The Who those are all in my top 10, but the Beatles are the best. I’m old enough to remember when they first started (although I was very young at that time), and I remember the hype and listening to each new album (or almost every one) with my teenybopper friends, and the “who is your favorite Beatle” question, and on and on . . . and for a decade or two I barely paid attention to them, but now I realize they truly have stood the test of time and that my admiration for them is not based on how popular they were when I was a kid but because they were so innovative and such great, great musicians. Oh how I love them!
(Pink Floyd is number 2. And yes, ex-husband, you were right and I was wrong–Pink Floyd is a fantastic band.)
This. Makes. No. Sense. I am hearing the Beatles more and more these days, from every generation, and less and less of it is Oldies-centric. Classic Rock stations are playing the Beatles in regular rotation and they shied away from them in the late 80s and 90s. Now I haven’t been listening to Oldies stations so I don’t know if they’re also played on Oldies. By contrast, I’ve been hearing Led Zeppelin and the Stones less than I had been 10 years ago.
Yeah, and the way they’re still constantly cited as an influence by pretty much every other pop or indie band makes it really doubtful they’re ever going to be relegated into the “bargain music heap” of history. If you appreciate pop songcraft, you appreciate the Beatles. Even seemingly unrelated music genres like hip-hop mine the Beatles for inspiration (the most extreme example being Danger Mouse’s 2004 work, The Grey Album, which took acapellas from Jay-Z’s Black Album and laid it over samples from the White Album. Truly an amazing work.)
I find it amusing that so many believe this question has a factual answer.
It’s an opinion, people. Opinions vary.
You can say ‘I disagree’, but you come off as ignorant if you say (or imply) ‘you are wrong’.
My answer? Check my username. 
mmm
I voted no. I don’t like listening to their music. I do, however, recognize that they had an enormous impact on music.
But so did a lot of other acts. Elvis beat them by half a decade. What about Chuck Berry? Frank Sinatra? Glenn Miller? These and later acts such as Michael Jackson, Black Sabbath, Nirvana, and Run DMC could, along with the Beatles, be said to have Changed Everything. Why are the Beatles always given the most credit?
One of the things that I think sets the Beatles apart is how prolific they were able to be in basically an eight-year period. Show me another band that was able to make the impact they had in such a short timespan. And almost 40 years after they broke up, take a look at the sales of the Beatles version of Rock Band. A half-million units in the first month. Bargain bin? I don’t think so.
No, and I love the Beatles.
I just started collecting Surfer Music – except for the Beach Boys, Can’t stand those posers. Dick Dale RULES!
Yes, and I don’t love the Beatles.
Because…who else? It is easy to question whether the Beatles are the best, but it is far more difficult to name a band that can top them.
It’s not that difficult - when the question is whether something is “the best”, it all comes down to personal opinion, so it should be fairly easy for everyone to just think of their favourite artist/band ever, and if that artist happens to be the Beatles then they’d be saying “yes, they’re the best” and if it isn’t then they’re saying “no” and handily have an immediate answer to the question “If not the Beatles, who?”.
If the OP asked “The Beatles are the most successful. Yes or No?” then yeah, it would be difficult to name a band that can top them. For the question as it stands I can rattle off about 6 or 7 music acts I think are better in half a second.