Stop Caring About The Beatles

What have The Beatles ever done for you? Nothing, that's what!

I own a Beatles t-shirt.  It’s green, has a fuzzy cut out of the band circa the Let It Be sessions on the front, and has some questionable brown patches near the armpits on the inside on account of how my deodorant hasn’t washed out well, because I bought it at Target and therefore it’s made pretty shittily.  I don’t wear it anymore.  This isn’t because I don’t like the way it hangs on me, or because I’ve stopped liking the band, but because of one thing: I don’t need to point out that I like them anymore.  I’ve moved on.

The thing about proclaiming your favorite band, whether it’s through wearing a t-shirt or updating your Facebook profile, is that you want people to know who you’re talking about; you want them to recognize your taste as being good, your interests as being relevant, your cultural palate as being sophisticated.  A lot of the time it’s just because you really like that band a lot and are just! so! happy! about talking about your love.  When you proclaim to like something, you are looking for someone to recognize it and feel an artificial kindred spirit with you; if I wear this Smiths shirt to class, maybe the cute girl in the back of the room will see and talk to me afterwards, then I can make her my girlfriend and we can giggle in between spins of The Queen is Dead (this is the worst sentence I’ve ever written).  This kind of thinking motivates a lot of aesthetic choices, I’m willing to bet.

But the Beatles, man, they should transcend all of that bullshit.  Look, it’s a given and a gimme and a go-ahead that they’re the Greatest band of all-time not because they made the best music, because even I”m getting fucking sick of Sgt. Pepper’s and “Hey Jude,” but because they meant the most and were the most popular and signalled that era of music and all of that shit you’ve heard a million times.  Knowing a song by them, if you’re in a place of privilege (i.e. attending college, having a job, having a family), is like knowing left and right and up and down; I have literally never met a person in my life who hadn’t heard a song by the band, or at least heard of them, when the subject was somehow broached.  There are things everyone knows: There were four of them, Paul was the cute one, the artistic breakthrough is Revolver, the typical “best” song they ever did is usually split between “A Day In The Life” and “Strawberry Fields Forever,” they had a too-sexy drummer named Pete Best, etc.  These are all things we know, and things that people never cease to remind us about.

Another fact that no one wants to admit: The Beatles are dated.  You hear this shit all the time about certain music being “timeless,” and that’s true, because nostalgia peddlers and aggro-Woodstock-enthusiasts have been making damn well sure that music has been shoved at us enough to make it dubiously unforgettable; the fact is, if the Beatles released their first single today, they would be blown off as a derivative of The Click Five.  The Beatles, like most inactive bands, are things of the past.  They could not exist today, they would be entirely different, and when we listen to their music we’re not bringing it into the present day, we’re ensconcing ourselves in the previous one.  This can be applied to all classic rock in general, but The Beatles are the only band from that era that really seem to transcend mere popularity; The Rolling Stones are old and have ruined any age or timelessness their music could have had, Led Zeppelin is primarily a male/lesbian musical exercise, and Bob Dylan is too weird.  Liking The Beatles has become this weird unifier, a common denominator of “taste.”

Do you know what the problem with this is?  It’s fucking 2009!  There is so much good, new music being made today that to ignore it for, I’m sorry, a bunch of old dated shit, is woefully ignorant and just really annoying.  It’s important to know the past.  It’s important to like things.  But really, in the 21st century, The Beatles don’t have a place as the pinnacle of art or music or melody.  The Beatles are the one band I think everyone knows and loves, which is important because it’s exactly why we need to all stop talking about them; if we have to let go of one of the foundations of music, then we can be free to try new stuff.  And isn’t that the point of life?  To try new stuff?

To recap, five reasons to stop caring about The Beatles:

1. Everyone knows and likes them already.  You don’t need to aggressively rationalize your taste.
2. You will never meet new people talking about them.
3. They’re dated.
4. It’s 2009 and you should be caring about new media.
5. Ringo Starr has never been  endearing, except when he was on Thomas the Tank Engine.

Listen, just let them go.  You are validating nothing by being an aggressive fan of the most popular band of all-time; it’s like being a really big fan of corn.  Guess what?  So is everyone; everyone fucking loves corn!  Eat it on the cob!  Put butter on it!  Mash it up and eat it like a baby!  Put it in your tacos!  Sometimes you just need to try new shit besides corn; you can always come back if you want.  It’s just a vegetable.