Why The Beatles really did start a musical revolution
Ignore the evidence of your own ears, dismiss the comments of eyewitnesses, scorn the testament of other musicians, reject the opinions of critics and historians, science has spoken: The Beatles were not really all that significant.
There is something very pompous and disdainful about the presentation of new research from the Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College suggesting the Fab Four did not spark the musical revolution they have long been credited with. “They were good looking boys with great haircuts but as far as their music was concerned they weren’t anything new,” according to Professor Armand Leroi, senior author of the paper. Now he sounds like a lot of fun at a party.
The gist of his study of underlying chord progressions, beats, lyrics, trends and “tone” in all US hits between 1960 and 2010 seems to be that there is no such thing as a musical revolution, only incremental progression. It is surely the latest dispatch from the department of the bleeding obvious. Our human instinct to create narrative by retrospectively shaping events into manageable storylines has a tendency to focus in on big bang moments, when the direction of history seems to be suddenly and profoundly altered. More subtle analysis always reveals a convergence of underlying trends and influences. No revolution ever came out of a vacuum.
By:Neil McCormick
Source : The Telegraph
