The Beatles

The Beatles have been phenomenal in the music industry. Simply put, rock ‘n’ roll, as we

know it today, was pioneered by the Beatles. Special credit should be given to Elvis and all other

stakeholders involved in planting the seeds of this music genre. Arguably, every rock artists of

the past fifty years should heap praise to these four fabulous artists for setting the popular

music’s template. Beatles first album “Please Please Me, which they released in 1963 inspired by

American pop culture but rooted in British determination. By the time they were making their

sixth album, “Rubber Soul,” they were making their script and most importantly shaped the rock

and pop music landscape that would be unimaginably explored and expanded on for decades.

“Love Me Do"(1962) to Revolution (1968) are some of the Beatles masterpieces, but to each of

the Beatles 12 albums, they are all classic. No other group in rock music history can claim the

throne (Everett & Walter, pp. 26).

In their initial personification as wisecracking and cheerful, The Beatles revolutionized

the style, sound, and attitude of the popular music and opened doors to rock and roll of the

British rock acts. Their impact was enough to establish the Beatles as one of their most

influential cultural forces eras, but they did not stop while they showed creativity and innovation

in their music composition.

Although the initial style was very original, irresistibly catchy synthesis of R & B and

early American rock, the Beatles spent the better years of their careers expanding the range of

rock music style, consistently staking out a brand new musical territory with each album release.

The musical band’s increasingly stylish experimentation included a variety of genre

covering folk-rock, baroque pop, Hindustani music and avant-garde music. Coming out as a

skiffle group, the group first embraced the 1950s rock and roll and helped them pioneer the
Merseybeat genre and their music style eventually started to expand to include a broad variety of

pop music.

Although the song “Yesterday” was not the first pop record to use orchestral strings, it

arguably marked the group’s first recorded use of classical elements. The group continued to

experiment on a series of arrangements to various effects. For instance, “She is Leaving Home”

its word and music are filled with recorded musical melodrama. The innovativeness never

seemed to stop for the Beatles. For instance, the songs “I Am the Walrus” and “Lucy in the Sky

with Diamonds: which has much influence of Indian classical music (Everett & Walter, pp. 45).

The introduction of the recorded music from the various instrument and the change of the

fast beats to rather something sensational brought the change to the dancing style of the pop

music. It became rather a piece of music to be listened to rather than be danced to. These are

some of the variations of the music that was as a result of the Beatles constant innovation with

experimentation using various ways of doing pop music.

Most of the live performances were also part of the factor that led to the change of the

music style. The Fab Four, while doing some of the concerts with their new genre of music such

as “Revolver” which they did in 1966 adopted a different way of singing and dancing. It was

rather a music to be listened to with the group firmly on the microphones trying different vocal

combinations.

Work Cited:

Everett, Walter. The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver through the Anthology. Oxford University

Press, USA, 2009.