I can’t understand how the Beach Boys could possibly make it onto so many peoples’ lists. Yes, they were very good at what they did, but they only did one thing. The Beatles have plenty of songs where, if you heard them for the first time without knowing who it was, you’d say “Wait, that was the Beatles?”. But everything the Beach Boys did sounded the same. If you flip to a Beach Boys song on the radio, you’ll be able to instantly say “That’s the Beach Boys”, but it’ll take you a little while to figure out which one.
Queen is definitely up there, though. As for cross-generational appeal, consider that if you go to any sporting event even today, you’re guaranteed to hear not one but at least two Queen songs.
I’m not a big Beach Boys fan, but they were clearly innovative. The issue is that those songs are rarely played. But “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows” are excellent pieces of music. The Beach Boys are recognizable primarily due to their harmonies, but that doesn’t mean they were doing innovative things.
Yeah, “Good Vibrations” had an enormous impact when it came out. The Beach Boys famously topped the Beatles in a best-of-bands poll that year, largely because of that song.
Yeah, I am a huge fan. If they could’ve kept their band and personal health together for a couple more albums, I could see it. With the Beatles upping the ante with Pepper and then following through to the “end of the 60’s” they really were, culturally, the defining soundtrack and artistic embodiment of this critical decade in a way the BBoys weren’t.
Grateful Dead? Nah. They are a phenomenon within their tribe, but folks outside the tribe don’t give them the time of day.
Innovative in what way? When I listen to “Good Vibrations”, I hear the same things I hear when I’m listening to “California Girls”, or “Little Deuce Coup”, or “Surfin’ USA”.
All I can say is listen harder. “Good Vibrations” is a mini-suite of different rhythms and moods (Brian Wilson famously called it a “pocket symphony”), miles more sophisticated than a typical verse-chorus-verse pop song. It had a musical arrangement that combined the electrotheremin with cellos, organs and harmonica. It’s completely unpredictable and yet perfectly natural-sounding. There was nothing else like it. There still isn’t.
It was the first #1 pop song to feature “movements” to my knowledge. If you don’t think the orchestration of theremin + a heavy metal storm of cellos isn’t innovative for its time, I am not sure we’re going to agree on this.
When Brian Wilson first played Good Vibrations for the rest of the Beach Boys, they worried that it was too strange and experimental, and might even crash their collective careers. The Beatles are said to have been extremely impressed with Pet Sounds, to the point where it spurred them to up their game.
And with all that said, I wouldn’t say that the Beach Boys (or anybody else in Rock/Pop) are the equals of the Beatles, though I think you could make a case that certain individuals (I’d pick Hendrix, for instance) are as talented composers by themselves as individual Beatles were, or perhaps more so.
But with the Beatles, you had a murderers row of creative talents working in synergy, in a way that we might never see again.
Anything you care to share to state your case? I would say NWA are more like The Ramones: one significant “sound”/album that deeply influences a sub-genre of their main genre.
And where would we rank Velvet Underground? Hugely influential — there’s that old joke about how almost no one bought their first record, but everyone who did ended up starting a band — and a pretty consistent run of quality, but a rather limited palette of sound and influences.
Velvet Underground = Emily Dickenson. Known to insiders but more appreciated after the fact in any broad way. A big influence on modern poetry going forward.
The Beatles = Charles Dickens. Hugely Popular, innovated with form and language, across a wide array of works.
???
I’d argue Pink Floyd meets all five for consideration:
Charismatic: As personal performers, no, but they were the first to really be “charismatic” via stage effects and production, in the largest imaginable way that influenced every band’s production since. Inflatable pigs, giant walls, crashing aircraft into the stage…you can’t beat that.
Popularity/Cultural Impact: They belong here also. They made “art rock” mainstream. Also, if only for the mega-popular artists (Radiohead, Coldplay, Muse) that owe their whole schtick to Pink Floyd.
While XTC never approached the popularity of the Beatles, they did start out popular in the alternative scene and continued to increase that popularity over the span of their career. Their music also The music business was becoming much more fragmented in regards to styles and accessibility, and I doubt any band past the Beatles heyday could have such wide-reaching impact.
If that’s accepted as a given, then XTC still probably wasn’t influential enough, though they got close. The Clash was mentioned upthread and they belong here along with Bowie.
I don’t know, I love Pink Floyd to death (the Gilmour-led Floyd was my first-ever concert), but I don’t quite rank them as songwriters. I think a mark of classic songwriting is how malleable it is to other artists’ interpretations. Most of the highly ranked artists in this thread have inspired many classic covers of their tunes. (The Beatles most of all, naturally.) There are no noteworthy covers of Floyd songs to speak of — what makes the originals work, IMO, is the mood and atmospherics of the production and performance as much as the chords and melody. Lots of bands wrote great stuff that suited their particular strengths very well, but didn’t necessarily thrive in other artists’ hands. (I’d say the same thing about Led Zeppelin, among others.)
Not intending to derail this thread into a “name-a-good-Floyd-cover” discussion. I’ll stipulate there are some and I don’t know about them. Just trying to illustrate the point that, for me, there are bands that write well for themselves while not meeting my personal, snooty standards of “great songwriting.”
Just trying to illustrate the point that, for me, there are bands that write well for themselves while not meeting my personal, snooty standards of “great songwriting.”