Yo Kanye. I…I’m really happy for you. Im’a let you finish but the Beatles had the best songs of all time. Of all time.
It’s been a while since the four lads from Liverpool, John, Paul, George and Ringo stormed America’s shores. In their gray suits and shaggy hair, they burst into an American music scene that was neck-deep in pablum, just emerging from years of oppressive, youth-unfriendly politics and shuddering from shady military action in nations whose motives were hard to understand at best. Those boys gave us all the escape we so desperately needed and did so with complex yet catchy, populist yet revolutionary, groundbreaking yet simple music. Sweet, sweet music.
Oh, and did I mention this was the Beatlemania of 1995?
Yeah. Christ, I was only a glimmer in my parents’ eyes back in ‘64 when those four lovable moptops turned left at Greenland. By the time I was born, John was drunkenly heckling the Smothers Brothers in L.A., Paul was in that ghastly musical carnival called Wings, George was falling drunk into swimming pools and Ringo was a coked up mess. And by the time I was settling into 1st grade, Johnny got got by a gun.
A lot of people think a lot of things about the early- to mid-nineties. There seems to be some sort of consensus that Nirvana burst in and blew away all the crap. We all sat together in harmony, listening to generation-uniting songs like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and hugged and cried under a grungy sun, caring about REAL things and eschewing the money-grubbing, materialistic ethos of the 80s.
Christ. Another 60s parallel. Apparently, we were hippies even though we hated hippies. But envied hippies. Who envied us. While they hates us. And so it goes.
Anyway. Let’s look at the amazing, life altering, firmly based in ‘alternative’ culture hits of 1995, based upon the Billboard Hot 100 for that year:
1. Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio.
What?
2. Waterfalls by TLC
Don’t you EVER go chasing them.
3. Creep by TLC
Not the Radiohead song.
4. Kiss from a Rose by Seal
Grphhh. Batman fell so far. (But I have to like him because Heidi Klum does)
5. On Bended Knee by Boyz II Men
I won’t go on but you gotta get to #41 before you find those bastions of ‘alternative’ music, Collective Soul. No Nirvana, kids. Mope on.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Well, now, Will has gone off on a missive about the 90s and has avoided his true goal of telling Kanye that the Beatles kick everyone else’s ass’.
Not true. I just had to lay the groundwork. My 90s missive will come later.
When I went up to Best Buy on the night of November 19, 1995, in order to stand in line for The Beatles Anthology One, it was because I had a little empty space in my musical gut. At midnight, I was one of many Beatle-nerds who rushed in to get ahold of those early recordings. And it reminded me that life is good.
Yeah, I had to immediately skip through the ‘new’ Beatles song “Free as a Bird” but beyond that, I had a two disc presentation that knocked my socks off.
Those four guys made music unlike anything I had heard before and anything I have heard since. How anyone could make something that seems so simple yet, upon further inspection, is really SO difficult is beyond me. Granted, this was my second Beatles revelation (I’m gonna totally freak out when I reach revelation 9) but it was still sooo fresh.
I had an instructor once explain to me that, within 100 years, the concept of the 3 Bs (Bach, Beethoven and Brahams) will become the 4 Bs (then including the Beatles).
She was probably right.
And with the release of ‘The Beatles Rock Band’, I have rediscovered the music that made me feel alive that night in 1995. And another night in 1990. And another in 1988.
Good luck, Kanye. I really hope you can make it work. But when even Michael ‘Oh Shit, Now I’m Dead’ Jackson has to borrow from the Beatles (see: Beat It riff v. Day Tripper), you gotta start thinking.
Peace out. And, really, do yourself a favor and check out ‘Beatles for Sale’.
2 months ago