Staying Power

Just a quick entry today...

I'd heard earlier in the week that The Beatles were the top selling band of the past decade. After finding this article in Rolling Stone, I see that they released the top selling album, 1, (the compilation of all their #1 hits) and were only behind Eminem (bleh) in total album sales.

Even for someone as young as me, I've already experienced a handful of little resurgences in their popularity. Every few years something comes along to remind the general public of how great The Beatles were/are. Since I've been aware of The Beatles, I've seen a Beatles-Bounce because of the Anthology, the release of 1, George Harrison's death, and now the release of "Beatles: Rock Band" and the accompanying remastered catalog. I probably even forgot a few.

The Beatles debuted in America almost 50 years ago and somehow their popularity and universal love and acclaim has barely dwindled in those five decades. I often marvel at how innovative their music is, so much so that many of the songs would be innovative now. A band could release "Happiness is a Warm Gun" this year and (seeing as how this is in some alternate universe where The Beatles didn't exist and thus people had never heard this song) critics would laud it as fresh, daring, and brilliant.

There isn't much to say about the Fab Four that hasn't already been said, though I'm sure we'll have at least fifty more decades of new generations falling in love with them and trying to find fresh words to describe their Mozart/Shakespeare-like longevity.

Speaking of which, check out the pretty hilarious video below on just that topic... (sorry about the format, double-click on the video to open it in a new window where the margins are correct)

Back in a few days.