A little OT, but this thread reminded me of a long-standing question I’ve been carrying around: was the White Album really that revolutionary in its day? Some of it sounds pretty campy now, but Helter Skelter still raises the hairs on the back of my neck once in a while. But maybe I’m just a musical novice.
VH1 junkie–never was one. Beatles junkie maybe. I can enjoy music just fine without the distracting video. Comes from some 30 years of non-video listening.
Actually, MJ does not own the Beatles catalog anymore - he sold it to Sony for about $100 million (MJ has out-of-court settlements he needs to pay off). And even tho Paul and the Lennon estate do not control the rights to the songs anymore, they still get a big fat paycheck every so often for having been the writers. And John said in his Playboy interviews that he made sure during the dissolution of the Beatles that George and Ringo got a cut of the royalties also.
Well, I have very high standards for Lennon. He himself labeled many of his songs as not meaningful to himself anymore. In my life he seemed to have liked. McCartney I let get away with some more bubblegum types of tunes, as long as it had a good beat and you could dance to it.
The songs I like the most are the ones that sound like group efforts. Even some pretty lame lyrics, as long as they sounded like they had a good time.Some on Let it be.
I dunno, I even like Louie Louie, so I guess I want songs that don’t pretend to be deep.
One evening in a chemically induced reverie I had a pseudo-epiphany that the White Album was done as a tribute/campy satire (fine line here) of American folk and pop traditoons-- every song on the album is strongly referential of some 'Merikan musical trope.