Beach Boys vs The Beatles

[Tippy]

Tough to say really because The Beatles were more of a unit AND conversely also had more distinctive characters who brought their own personalities into the Beatles machine, creating a wider variety of sounds and emotions.

No Beach boy was truly as intense personality as John. Or as goofy/silly as Ringo. Or as new age mystical as Geoge.

On the other hand, although The Beach Boys had other songwriters who developed talent wise but they were all pretty much married to the LA beach sound aesthetic, which made their music cover less stylistic ground.

However, they did have a tremendous number of good songs and several of their albums are underrated. It's also possible that Brian Wilson pioneered a punk rock synthesizer style of music with his 'Love you' album in the 80s (though Mccartney also did this on McCartney 2).

So I don't know! Both are good but probably the individual songwriting and musical talent of the Beatles overall puts them above. You had two genius level songwriters (Lennon/McCartney) and then one truly great student one (George) and a a pleasing singer/performer in Ringo.

Beach Boys you got one genius (Wilson) one great student (Dennis) another good one (Carl) and then a decent singer/performer (Mike Love)

SO yeah Beatles take it!

 

[RedLagoon]

The problem with this sort of argument is that very few have the sort of musical palette and discernment that Rick Beato, for instance, has and so have no platform to judge intelligently from. We're not taking about musical taste, that's subjective, we're talking about musical sophistication and innovation in popular music.

America has produced some very talented musicians, no doubt about that, and they trounce the British with their list of gifted jazz musicians (my favourite genre) but in regards to popular music the Beatles are the GOAT. It's not even close. No doubt that Brian Wilson was gifted and the Beach Boys produced some innovative music, but Good Vibrations shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as say The Long and Winding Road.

The best metric for how good a song is, is the number of times it's covered by other musicians and by that metric alone the Beatles win hands down. The last time I looked the Beatles had 3 in the top 10 standards. As I said, it's not even close.

So you use the Beach Boy's most generic popular pop song instead of the ones already posted before to one of the Beatles' best (and no using covers as a merit actually goes against your argument).

Classy.

I must say I respect the Beatles a lot and I do think it comes to preferred taste as always.

 

[Tippy]

Even if just comparing ballads Beach Boys have songs on that level -

God Only Knows
Surf's Up
All I wanna Do
Forever
I just wasn't made for these times
Don't Talk Put your head on my shoulder

 

[Vas Incrementum]

So you use the Beach Boy's most generic popular pop song instead of the ones already posted before to one of the Beatles' best

Oh, OK. You had the invitation: "Give me your first Beatle busting Beach Boy melody (and there's a lot more to a great song than a great melody by the way). What you got?"

(and no using covers as a merit actually goes against your argument).

Classy.

Interesting, please explain how?

 

[RedLagoon]

Oh, OK. You had the invitation: "Give me your first Beatle busting Beach Boy melody (and there's a lot more to a great song than a great melody by the way). What you got?"


Interesting, please explain how?

Like I said they were posted before your little uni exam.

If one wants to listen to some pop songs then in my opinion the Beach Boys are better. If you want to listen to some proper music then you'll find a raft of classical composers before either of them.

 

[Thomas More]

One thing worth mentioning on the BBs vs the Bs. The Beatles played their own instruments. They were decent musicians, but there were times when they were up against the limits of their instrumental talent.

By comparison, the Beach Boys used the Wrecking Crew to do a lot of their music. This was a well known group of studio musicians who were absolutely top notch virtuosos. They could easily play anything Brian Wilson could imagine, so he was free to let his imagination and creativity go as far as he could take it.

 

[Iakobos]

The problem with this sort of argument is that very few have the sort of musical palette and discernment that Rick Beato, for instance, has and so have no platform to judge intelligently from. We're not taking about musical taste, that's subjective, we're talking about musical sophistication and innovation in popular music.

America has produced some very talented musicians, no doubt about that, and they trounce the British with their list of gifted jazz musicians (my favourite genre) but in regards to popular music the Beatles are the GOAT. It's not even close. No doubt that Brian Wilson was gifted and the Beach Boys produced some innovative music, but Good Vibrations shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as say The Long and Winding Road.

The best metric for how good a song is, is the number of times it's covered by other musicians and by that metric alone the Beatles win hands down. The last time I looked the Beatles had 3 in the top 10 standards. As I said, it's not even close.

Bro you really had to choose the Beach Boys' best song and the Beatles' worst song to try and demonstrate that the Beatles are better.

So you use the Beach Boy's most generic popular pop song instead of the ones already posted before to one of the Beatles' best (and no using covers as a merit actually goes against your argument).

Classy.

I must say I respect the Beatles a lot and I do think it comes to preferred taste as always.

And that's before I saw this post. Good Vibrations is in no way a generic pop song. And The Long and Winding Road is the definition of turgid. Y'all are tripping.

Anyhow I'm team Beatles all the way, used to be a superfan of them in my youth, to this day I can't help but respect their incredible songwriting skills and willingness to experiment. Musically speaking Lennon and McCartney were really perfect counterpoints to each other. Beach Boys had some quality material but they in no way matched the consistency and longevity of The Beatles' output. Though I always remember hearing that Pet Sounds was what motivated the Beatles to step up their innovation with Sgt. Pepper.

 

[scary_robot_music]

How about some surf guitar music!

This was all long before I was born, but my understanding is that this is real surf music that actual surfers were into at the time. Actual surfers didn't really listen to the Beach Boys.

The Ventures are another great surf band from the same era.

 

[scary_robot_music]

Doesn't this sort of debate belong on a forum for boomers ?!

I'm Gen X. One thing my generation doesn't like to talk about now that the Boomers are generally loathed is how much we looked up to them when we were kids. The 1960s, the music and the scene in general. It all seemed so stylish and cool. As strange as it might seem, we tended to ape their style and the things they were into when they were young, even as they generally looked down on our music and the various things we were into as somehow inferior and less pure.

I had an English teacher who went to Woodstock and also saw all the cool bands like Zeppelin and Sabbath live in the 1970s. He seemed so cool at the time. Only later in life did I realize that he was just a burned out hippie loser. It took me decades to deprogram myself from the stupid ideas he and other teachers like him put in my head when I was a teenager. It's one of the main reasons I home school my own kids.

I still like Boomer dad rock though. A lot of it's really good stuff.

 

[RedLagoon]

Pound for Dollars the Beach Boys had better songs than the Beatles being a bunch of MI6 cry babies.

Again, Bryan Wilson wasn't a boomer while the Beatles were.

 

[Tippy]

Bro you really had to choose the Beach Boys' best song and the Beatles' worst song to try and demonstrate that the Beatles are better.



And that's before I saw this post. Good Vibrations is in no way a generic pop song. And The Long and Winding Road is the definition of turgid. Y'all are tripping.

Anyhow I'm team Beatles all the way, used to be a superfan of them in my youth, to this day I can't help but respect their incredible songwriting skills and willingness to experiment. Musically speaking Lennon and McCartney were really perfect counterpoints to each other. Beach Boys had some quality material but they in no way matched the consistency and longevity of The Beatles' output. Though I always remember hearing that Pet Sounds was what motivated the Beatles to step up their innovation with Sgt. Pepper.

I would agree but with one caveat - Beatles have some very overrated albums (like Sgt Pepper and even Abbey Road) and Beach boys have at least 3 heavily underrated albums - Sunflower, Love you, Surf's Up.

I think there are a few Beatles albums which are 'great' but put in the 'untouchable genius' category wheras I think Bboys have a number which are generally seen as 'good' though they are in fact 'great.'

 

[Tippy]

Bro you really had to choose the Beach Boys' best song and the Beatles' worst song to try and demonstrate that the Beatles are better.



And that's before I saw this post. Good Vibrations is in no way a generic pop song. And The Long and Winding Road is the definition of turgid. Y'all are tripping.

Anyhow I'm team Beatles all the way, used to be a superfan of them in my youth, to this day I can't help but respect their incredible songwriting skills and willingness to experiment. Musically speaking Lennon and McCartney were really perfect counterpoints to each other. Beach Boys had some quality material but they in no way matched the consistency and longevity of The Beatles' output. Though I always remember hearing that Pet Sounds was what motivated the Beatles to step up their innovation with Sgt. Pepper.

I also used to be a 'Beatlesologist' but did you ever read Al Goldman's book about Lennon? If you read it as fiction it's one of the best rock biogs ever and it's fascinating cos he clearly hated JL. But one part in that book he says basically all of Lennon's piano melodies are reworking of 3 blind mice. I'm thinking Imagine, Instant Karma....after I read that I couldn't unhear it. Lennon masks his musical simplicity in strength of emotional expression and cryptic lyricism. Ironically, McCartney had the opposite - ability to express more complex harmonies but often lacked the emotional expression or lyircal depth. So yeah they were real yings and yangs.

 

[Dusty]

The Beatles didn’t hold up over time. “You had to be there”. A nostalgia act since the 70s.

I went to HS in the 80s and I didn’t know a single Beatles fan. By then, their music seemed outdated and twee. Some other 60s acts then were still popular or considered cool: the Doors, Hendrix, Zeppelin (first album was in 60s). The Beatles were very uncool by then, but we had to put up with all the boomers saying they were great.

Don’t even get me started on Beach Boys. If you liked them when I was in HS, you’d be considered a gay loser.

I reckon if I was born 10-15 years earlier I’d be a Beatles and Beach Boy fan, but to me, they’re twee boomer acts.

 

[FrostBITE]

I'm Gen X. One thing my generation doesn't like to talk about now that the Boomers are generally loathed is how much we looked up to them when we were kids. The 1960s, the music and the scene in general. It all seemed so stylish and cool. As strange as it might seem, we tended to ape their style and the things they were into when they were young, even as they generally looked down on our music and the various things we were into as somehow inferior and less pure.

I had an English teacher who went to Woodstock and also saw all the cool bands like Zeppelin and Sabbath live in the 1970s. He seemed so cool at the time. Only later in life did I realize that he was just a burned out hippie loser. It took me decades to deprogram myself from the stupid ideas he and other teachers like him put in my head when I was a teenager. It's one of the main reasons I home school my own kids.

I still like Boomer dad rock though. A lot of it's really good stuff.

It doesn't help matters that until recently, Joomers have been in charge of most cultural production (not that Gen X or Millennials have been any better since taking over). Growing up, Gen X and Millennials got romanticized accounts of boomer youth (Across the Universe, Forrest Gump, The Wonder Years, Almost Famous).

 

[Iakobos]

The Beatles didn’t hold up over time. “You had to be there”. A nostalgia act since the 70s.

I went to HS in the 80s and I didn’t know a single Beatles fan. By then, their music seemed outdated and twee. Some other 60s acts then were still popular or considered cool: the Doors, Hendrix, Zeppelin (first album was in 60s). The Beatles were very uncool by then, but we had to put up with all the boomers saying they were great.

Don’t even get me started on Beach Boys. If you liked them when I was in HS, you’d be considered a gay loser.

I reckon if I was born 10-15 years earlier I’d be a Beatles and Beach Boy fan, but to me, they’re twee boomer acts.

That's funny to hear, I can definitely see how that would be the perception of high school kids at the time. Though as a millennial to whom all these bands seemed equally ancient growing up, I can tell you that questions of musical talent aside, all the acts you named sound way more dated to the ears of my generation than any Beatles releases from Rubber Soul onward which have a strikingly timeless quality.

 

[Cooper]

The Beatles were pretty good overall, but really grossly overrated. They were to some extent astroturfed, with for instance paid screaming groupie teenage girls and built up like boy bands are.

There is a darker side to the Beatles that should be covered, as part of the wildly successful wider movement to socially engineer the Boomer generation. Their name for example references the Egyptian occult, where the scarab beatle is their god of rebirth, as in departure from Christianity towards the "new age". Their ties with Frankfurt School headliner Theodor Adorno, British masonry and their worship of Alistair Crowley suggest they were a lot more than just an organic phenomenon. More on that later.

The Beach Boys were the epitome of early 60s SoCal youth beach culture, an organic phenomenon. They became gradually marginalized in the late 60s with the rise of astroturfed counterculture and the Laurel Canyon music scene with acts like the Byrds, the Doors etc. That scene was heavily promoted as a movement to replace traditional European Christian culture with new age eastern cults and individualistic narcissism/hedonism sold to the Boomers as "spirituality", through the use of sex, drugs and pop music.

So the BB found themselves a bit out of favor in the late 60s, and to their credit, stuck through their conservative Orange County leanings, headlining several years the July 4th concerts at the DC Mall.

 

[tikkasakko]

Beach Boys. All day.

 

[Iakobos]

The Beatles were pretty good overall, but really grossly overrated. They were to some extent astroturfed, with for instance paid screaming groupie teenage girls and built up like boy bands are.

There is a darker side to the Beatles that should be covered, as part of the wildly successful wider movement to socially engineer the Boomer generation. Their name for example references Egyptian occult, where the scarab beatle is their god of rebirth, as in departure from Christianity towards the "new age". Their ties with Frankfurt School headliner Theodor Adorno, British masonry and their worship of Alistair Crowley suggest they were a lot more than just an organic phenomenon. More on that later.

The Beach Boys were the epitome of early 60s SoCal youth beach culture, an organic phenomenon. They became gradually marginalized in the late 60s with the rise of astroturfed counterculture and the Laurel Canyon music scene with acts like the Byrds, the Doors etc. That scene was heavily promoted as a movement to replace traditional European Christian culture with new age eastern cults and individualistic narcissism/hedonism sold to the Boomers as "spirituality", through the use of sex, drugs and pop music.

So the BB found themselves a bit out of favor in the late 60s, and to their credit, stuck through their conservative Orange County leanings, headlining several years the July 4th concerts at the DC Mall.

Beach Boys were tight with Manson & co, used the same producer as the Byrds, etc... how you gonna say they're not associated with the Laurel Canyon/subversive new age shenanigans?

Agreed with your points otherwise.

 

[Dusty]

That's funny to hear, I can definitely see how that would be the perception of high school kids at the time. Though as a millennial to whom all these bands seemed equally ancient growing up, I can tell you that questions of musical talent aside, all the acts you named sound way more dated to the ears of my generation than any Beatles releases from Rubber Soul onward which have a strikingly timeless quality.

The funny thing is, part of the appeal of the Doors and similar acts for kids in the 80s, was their oldness. Like, they represented a cooler time in the past.

The Doors had a revival of interest in the early 80s because a popular biography on Jim Morrison came out, and there was a mystique.

Led Zeppelin were wrapping things up by 1980, but they were still perhaps the most popular rock band in the early 80s, and “the kids” liked their work going all the way back to the 60s.

But the Beatles and Beach Boys? Considered old fashioned and uncool at the time. Maybe because they had a lot of “granny tunes” (Lennon’s critique of McCartney songs). They were pop bands not rock bands. I dunno, they just didn’t hit with my generation.

 

[Tippy]

The Beatles didn’t hold up over time. “You had to be there”. A nostalgia act since the 70s.

I went to HS in the 80s and I didn’t know a single Beatles fan. By then, their music seemed outdated and twee. Some other 60s acts then were still popular or considered cool: the Doors, Hendrix, Zeppelin (first album was in 60s). The Beatles were very uncool by then, but we had to put up with all the boomers saying they were great.

Don’t even get me started on Beach Boys. If you liked them when I was in HS, you’d be considered a gay loser.

I reckon if I was born 10-15 years earlier I’d be a Beatles and Beach Boy fan, but to me, they’re twee boomer acts.

Beatles tried to appeal to a broad demographic - kids, teens, even parents. It was the people's music. And cock rock posturing or whatever really became the norm post Beatles in the 70s. This music was more a dulling of the senses through head bludgeoning guitar riffs and pounding drums. It had a certain power (which the Beatles toyed with on 'Helter Skelter) but it lacked the nuance and senstivity of Beatles songs - which were far more driven by harmony and melody than head clobbering repetitive riffs.