Why would a teenager be obsessed with The Beatles in this day and age? I honestly couldn't tell you. But when my boyfriend told me he'd been listening to them non-stop, I thought I'd give them a chance. Fast forward a few weeks, and now I'm deep in the trenches of my own Beatlemania, (albeit, I'm a bit late to the craze).
So... how did that happen?
Recently, I've been tired of just consuming whatever's algorithimically served to me on a plate by Netflix, Spotify, Youtube and the like. So, in protest, I've been going out of my way to engage with media that I find interesting, or that someone else has recommended to me. Whilst this is may seem overly deliberate, it's given me a greater appreciation for t media that I have chosen to engage with: I take my time with it, and often come away feeling more inspired.
When it comes to music, I've been applying this thought process by listening to an artist's entire discography in chronological order. And when I first started listening to The Beatles, their music sounded like typical 1960s songs I'd heard in passing. But as I kept listening, I found myself enjoying how the music evolved with each album - by the time I got to Help, I could hear that they were pushing beyond their limits with each song. I was still waiting for those big genre-bending sounds of Abbey Road and Magical Mystery Tour to emerge, however. Then I got to Rubber Soul. I think that was the moment when something clicked in my brain: suddenly every song after that point had this incredibly unique and grand quality to it. By the time I got around to Let It Be, I was truly obsessed and knee deep in Beatlemania. And as I revisited the albums again and again, each time I came away with a new gem of a song to add to my playlist.
As I got more invested, I decided to learn a bit more about the context surrounding the band. Surprisingly, I never noticed how their drug use influenced their music on my first listen. But looking back, I genuinely have no clue how I sat through Tomorrow Never Knows without the thought that drugs might have played a role in its creation crossing my mind. After I learned a bit more about their psychedelia and spiritual exploration, I think it's clear to see how it impacted their later albums - George learned the sitar. Need I say more?
I also watched A Hard Day's Night which was fantastic. Their charisma effortlessly shines through, and there's something so humanising about their amateurish, honest performances. They convey that their core, they're just these funny young men, and the fact that they're part of a world-famous band seems to fade into the background of their personalities. The Beatles movies essentially acted as the 60s equivalent of social media, giving fans an insight into what The Beatles were 'actually' like beyond their fame.
It's clear to see why The Beatles were such a huge contemporary phenomenon: they revolutionised the pop music industry and set the new status quo, as it was the first time music was successfully being made by young people for young people. But most of today's pop industry is made with young people in mind, so how is it that a 60 year old band is still able to attract a young fanbase?
Perhaps it's because of the story behind The Beatles. Personally, that's why I love them: their music evolves so much with each album, and their stardom grew to this huge unfathomable scale at the same time. There's such an interesting story woven into that which the huge volume of Beatles media takes advantage of - I noticed this most when watching '64 and Get Back back to back: you can clearly see how the pressure of fame has been slowly whittling them down, ultimately culminating in the band's end. Overall, the band's story and legacy makes it incredibly easy to fall down the rabbithole.
Another contributing factor might be how teenagers are drawn to older music in general: it feels significantly more unique compared to the generic pop music that we're expected to like. Fewer people our age like older music, although part of me thinks that that's just how it seems on the surface, and it actually gets a lot more attention than we realise. Ironically, The Beatles have almost always had a sizable following, from which people derive a great sense of community - there's undeniably something very unifying about their impact on every generation, regardless of whether we percieve their following to be smaller nowadays.
So I suppose I should end this post by encouraging you to check out the Beatles catalogue if you haven't already - I'd say start with Rubber Soul or Abbey Road, and see where it takes you. Their music only gets better the more you listen to it in my experience, and there's a wealth of other media you can also have a look at to add to the experience. Their timelessness speaks for itself - there's a reason they're still a cultural phenomenon six decades later.
JAN 02 2025