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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   26704 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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but it's 4/4 pop-rock

That's such a mischaracterization of the Beatles. If you think that, then you simply haven't listened to the full span of their music, and I'll guess you're missing out on both middle and mid-late Beatles.

Quantitatively, they did so much stuff besides sticking to common time all the time. For examples of well-known Beatles tunes that do weird things from a metric perspective: She Said, Good Morning, All You Need is Love, Two of Us, Rain, We Can Work it Out, Revolution, Across the Universe. Even Here Comes the Sun, which you mention, is not just 4/4, listen to the part that goes "Sun, sun, sun, here it comes".

As far as it being "easy listening" is concerned, my god, some of their stuff is so experimental, it's even barely listenable to! Revolution 9 comes to mind. And there's every point in-between, as well. Listen to Sgt Pepper, and tell me that's easy listening. Mr Kite is haunting with eerie sound experiments. Sgt Pepper and Reprise really rock. Fixing A Hole is wistful and thought provoking. A Day in the Life is downright depressing.

Seconding your point on "Here Comes the Sun". My sister asked me and my brother to play it at her wedding, and I had to notate the entire melody on sheet music for my brother to play on the cello. Notating all of those time signature changes in the bridge was a nightmare, it's practically math rock.

That's such a mischaracterization of the Beatles. If you think that, then you simply haven't listened to the full span of their music, and I'll guess you're missing out on both middle and mid-late Beatles.

You're right, like I said I've barely listened to The Beatles, so I only had a shallow, pop-culture understanding of their music and some knowledge of their greatest hits. I gave a lot of what you mentioned a listen and some of it really stood out to me.

Sgt Pepper and the reprise are absolute jams. Sounds like Jimi Hendrix on guitar. I hate the rest of the album, it's musically impressive but just not for me. No accounting for taste.

Revolution 9 is super cool. I'm surprised I had never listened to this before. It's like an amalgamation of sounds from every odd, experimental song I've ever heard.

I'll leave the original comment unedited for posterity, but you're right, The Beatles are a lot more than what I knew of. Thanks!

Oh yeah, you should also check out I am the Walrus and Tomorrow Never Knows. Those would be like if Revolution 9 tried to be a little more like music.

Cool, I'm glad you gave them a listen!

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