MontanaHatchet said:
Yes, obviously. I was never arguing that 1965 forward wasn't considerably better. ARGH!!!!!!!!! Nobody ever listens. You argue albums, but you forget to argue songs. There's no question that Beatles songs like Can't Buy Me Love, Yesterday, Hard Day's Night, and other early songs are still among their classics. Sure, their later albums are much better and much more influential, but the early Beatles weren't forgettable or mediocre or even average. Maybe you just shouldn't have used such a poorly chosen word in the first place (I dunno). And top lists mean nothing, ESPECIALLY BY ROLLING STONE. That is, unless you believe that Aretha Franklin is the greatest singer ever, and Frank Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti aren't even in the Top 100. Opinion pieces on music mean very little to me. |
Woah! Sorry for making you angry (Caps lock typing, I assume I upset you). My appologies...
Maybe I did just use a poorly chosen word (see my edit in my last post).
In my last argument I guess I was trying to say that compared to their music 1965 onwards, their early stuff was not as good. But again as I said it is opinion based and completely subjective to the user.
I understand you were never arguing that 1965 onwards was a worse period, but I was trying to give some justification to why I think that is the period that defined them more than their earlier work.
I'm not going to argue that they have no classics in their early work, they have many (I personally love Dizzy Miss Lizzy).
...
Now to the latter half of your rebuttal, which seems a bit pointless to argue now to be honest, but I want to clear up my research you criticised.
You had a problem with the lists as they are opinion peices. However, I think you missed the point I was trying to make; the same albums feature over and over again, throughout countless opinion based lists, I only provided four examples, but I could have very well provided dozens. I would say that I could happily provide a sufficient sample size that justifies the use of this data.
I think posting opinion based lists of top albums and showing the trend is an acceptable way to demonstrate my point. As the later albums frequently appear in these top lists of greatest/most influential albums, it demonstrates that this period of the Beatles was certainly the era that people think they were at their best.
I guess that to remedy this I could provide album sale data also. However, for some reason Sgt pepper seems to be the only valid Beatles album in the list of top selling albums (source). For some reason worldwide Beatles album sales figures are hard to get hold of (source), perhaps you can.
As for singles I can provide this chart of top 100 singles lists which is an amalgamation of other lists (source) and the later singles charted better than the early ones. #4 Hey Jude, #11 Penny lane, #21 Yesterday, #22 A day in the life, #40 Let it be, #72 In my life, #87 Help.
But again, as you said, opinion based lists mean very little to you.
