Essay+Matt+Vogin

Who hasn’t heard of songs like "I Want to Hold Your Hand," "Help!" and "Eleanor Rigby?" The truth is, we all have, and without the group that brought those songs to the world, rock and roll music would not exist as it does today. The Beatles were truly one of the most influential rock bands of the twentieth century.

The Beatles burst onto the American music scene on February 9, 1964, with a now-legendary performance on the popular variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. That night, the Beatles sang five songs: “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which was their first number one single. With their appearance on //The Ed Sullivan Show//, which was watched by over 70 million people, the Beatles single-handedly revived the long thought dead American music scene.

The Beatles soon attained mass popularity, and the term //Beatlemania// was coined. Almost everyone who lived in the 1960s was obsessed with the band consisting of John Winston Lennon, James Paul McCartney, George Harold Harrison, and Ringo Starr, who was born as Richard Starkey. Originally, Starr was not a part of the group; instead, two members named Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best rounded out the band.

The Beatles first gained popularity in the United Kingdom with their first single “Love Me Do” on October 5, 1962. During eight years, from 1962 to 1970, the Beatles would release thirty-three singles in the United States and twenty-two in the United Kingdom. Coincidentally, their first single to reach number one on the charts in the United States, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” made it to number one just eight days before the Beatles’ performance on //The Ed Sullivan Show//.

The Beatles still hold the record for the most number one songs on the Billboard chart, with twenty-one number ones. A major reason for this is that the Beatles had the amazing songwriting duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. No other songwriting team can begin to compare to Lennon and McCartney, who helped the Beatles achieve success other bands could only dream of.

The songs on the Beatles’ first five British albums, //Please Please Me, With the Beatles,//A Hard Days Night, Beatles for Sale, and Help, were admittedly not all that earth-shattering in their originality. The songs all had a common theme: love. Finally, John Lennon wrote “Nowhere Man,” about the frustration he felt with himself, which appeared on their Rubber Soul album. With their 1966 album Revolver, the Beatles finally had the freedom to choose the sounds they wanted for each song. This album contained the song “Yellow Submarine,” which would be the inspiration for the Beatles’ third film.

The Beatles continued to experience astounding success, with the public willing to buy anything with the Beatles name on it. In addition to creating musical masterpieces like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The White Album, the Beatles made no less than five films:A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Yellow Submarine, Magical Mystery Tour, and Let It Be.

The Beatles made music history with their seemingly innocuous lyrics, many of which are actually about taboo subjects like drugs, and their music, which was unlike anything people had heard before. On April 4th, 1964, the Beatles accomplished something that no group had accomplished or can even hope to today. The Beatles were so popular that they managed to not only have nineteen songs in the top 100, but they also held the top five spots on the charts, with “Can’t Buy Me Love” at number one, “Twist and Shout” at two, “She Loves You” at three, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” at four, and “Please Please Me” at number five. This total domination of the music industry will almost certainly never occur again.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and the Beatles officially broke up in 1970. Many of the group’s fans blame John Lennon’s wife, Yoko Ono, for the breakup, but creative differences among the group members were really to blame for the dissolution of this most successful band. After the breakup, each Beatle embarked on his own solo career, but Lennon’s was cut short when Mark David Chapman, a crazed fan, shot him down in front of the Dakota building in New York on December 8, 1980. George Harrison has since passed, losing his battle with cancer on November 29, 2001.

Although only two Beatles survive today and no new Beatles album has been released for over thirty years, the Beatles still remain probably the most influential group in music history. They set records which will never be equaled and revitalized rock music.


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 * Introduction || makes you read on ||
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