Artistic presentation The Beatles introduced new methods of artistic presentation for pop musicians. They were the first band to be fully marketed through television and continued to find new ways to disseminate their music through the medium. As live performers, they pioneered the world tour and stadium concerts, as sports stadiums became the primary venues for rock tours. Gould says that, aside from their influence on pop songwriting, the Beatles played "a leading role in revolutionizing the way that popular records were made, the way that popular records were listened to ... and the role that popular music itself would play in people's lives". The band's achievements were a key factor in the music industry becoming a multi-million-dollar enterprise and one that approached Hollywood film-making in terms of worldwide influence and turnover. In 1965, the Beatles' music publishing company
Northern Songs was floated on the
London Stock Exchange, a move that was unprecedented for a band's song catalogue. The flotation defied analysts' predictions by becoming a major financial success.
Songwriting , the principal songwriters of the Beatles Through the Beatles' early success, the
Lennon–McCartney partnership revolutionised songwriting in Britain by usurping the
Denmark Street tradition of in-house songwriters. In the US, they similarly inspired changes to the music industry, as did the British Invasion songwriters they influenced, by combining the roles of writer and performer. This trend threatened the
Brill Building writers and other professional songwriters that dominated the American music industry. According to
Rolling Stones editors, the Beatles thereby "inaugurated the era of self-contained bands and forever centralized pop". Lennon and McCartney also supplied hit songs for several other artists up to 1966, including
Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer,
the Fourmost and the Rolling Stones, and they opened up opportunities in the US that were previously unavailable for non-performing British songwriters, such as
Tony Hatch. Direct collaboration between Lennon and McCartney was limited from 1964, but their songs continued to be credited to the partnership. From 1963 to 1967, the Beatles increasingly broke with established rock and pop conventions. Adding to their sophistication as composers was the application of
modal mixture, wider chord palettes, and
extended form. One of the hallmarks of the Beatles' experimental period is their use of the flattened
subtonic chord (VII). Although it was already a staple of rock 'n' roll, the Beatles further developed and popularised the chord's function in popular music. Another is their subversions of pop's standard AABA form. Few electric beat artists wrote songs with
bridge sections until the group's breakthrough, after which the practice became ubiquitous. MacDonald describes Lennon and McCartney's growing articulacy and ambition from 1962 to 1967 as "quite vertiginous" and says that, with Harrison and Starr's collaboration in the recording studio, they "led a revolution in the very ethos of songwriting which consisted in seeing the song as a part of something larger: the record". Luhrssen and Larson describe the pair's songwriting as "more melodically and harmonically unpredictable than that of their peers", and say that the Beatles' sound "struck many ears as outrageous, especially the falsetto leaps in songs such as 'She Loves You,' which might have been inspired by
Little Richard but sounded unprecedented". "
A Hard Day's Night", written primarily by Lennon, begins with a ringing chord most commonly identified as G7sus4. The specifics of its harmonic construction are often scrutinised, with many writers offering different interpretations of the chord. In 2001,
Rolling Stone referred to the "Hard Day's Night" chord as the most famous in rock history. Another chord described as among the "most famous" in history is the sustained
E major heard at the end of "
A Day in the Life" from
Sgt. Pepper. Principally through McCartney's melody writing, the Beatles created many songs that became the most widely recorded of all time, including "
And I Love Her", "Yesterday", "
Michelle", "
Eleanor Rigby", "
Here, There and Everywhere", "
The Fool on the Hill", "
Hey Jude", "
Blackbird", "
Let It Be" and "
The Long and Winding Road". According to Doggett, these mainly McCartney-written songs provided contemporary relevance for "light orchestras and crooners" in the easy listening category, persuaded adults that the new generation's musical tastes had merit, and "ensured that Lennon and McCartney would become the highest-earning composers in history". Harrison's songwriting widened the Beatles' range further, although his level of contribution remained limited by Lennon and McCartney's dominance throughout the band's career. His song "
Something" was also widely covered, and earned rare praise from Sinatra, who described it as "the greatest love song of the past fifty years".
Growth of rock bands and expansion of pop music Music journalist
Mark Kemp credits the Beatles with leading pop music's expansion into styles such as
world music,
psychedelia,
avant-pop and
electronica, and attracting a bohemian audience that had previously focused on jazz and folk. According to Luhrssen and Larson, the Beatles affected every genre of rock music except
jazz rock. According to Gould, the Beatles served as the "archetype" of a rock band, in contrast to the vocal and harmony groups with which listeners were most familiar in 1964. In the US, thousands of bands sought to imitate the Beatles, some adopting English-sounding names to capitalise on the British Invasion. According to author Carl Caferelli, the Beatles embodied the "pop band" ideal and, while the Who have been credited for heralding the
power pop genre, "the story really begins circa 1964, with the commercial ascension of the Beatles in America." were among thousands of rock groups that formed in the wake of the Beatles' U.S. emergence While the country already had a vibrant
garage rock scene, the movement surged following the Beatles' first appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show. Commentator Bill Dean writes that the exact figures are impossible to determine, but "the anecdotal evidence suggests thousands – if not hundreds of thousands or even more – young musicians across the country" responded by forming bands. This was sometimes to the chagrin of their parents and other adults. The proliferation of new groups was evident in many other countries. Following the Beatles' concerts there on the
1964 world tour, new bands sprung up in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong, while some existing acts, such as the
Bee Gees, instantly changed their style to match the Beatles'. The
Daily Express reported in 1965 that a band known as the Candid Lads had started in the Soviet Union, with a sound and look identical to the Beatles'. Bands there were forced to play in secret due to the communist authorities' ban on rock music, and Beatles records had to be smuggled into the country, although contrary to popular conception, it was not impossible to listen to their music. Russian musician
Sasha Lipnitsky later recalled: "The Beatles brought us the idea of democracy ... For many of us, it was the first hole in the
Iron Curtain." According to music-industry executive Aki Tanaka, the Beatles' 1966 concerts in Tokyo inspired "the birth of a real Japanese rock music scene", in which local artists wrote their material rather than merely covering Western rock songs.
Competition Before the mid-1960s, competition between popular recording artists was typically measured by popularity and record sales, with artistic rivalries usually only occurring between jazz or classical musicians. Comparing its effect on 1960s popular music to
Charlie Chaplin's on 1920s filmmaking, Gould credits the Beatles' increasing ambition "to write better songs" with inspiring "intense creative rivalries" between themselves and other acts who "felt a need to validate their success by experimenting with songwriting and record-making in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years before." Author Robert Rodriguez writes that "The Beatles, Dylan, and the Rolling Stones have long been viewed as the Holy Trinity of 1960s rock, from whom every important development and innovation flowed." Author Carys Wyn Jones states that the "competition, interaction, and influence" between those acts (plus the Beach Boys) became "central to histories of rock". The Byrds also figured highly in their importance, to the extent that they were widely celebrated as the American answer to the Beatles. , 1963 Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones were symbolic of the nascent youth revolt against institutional authority, something that was not immediately recognisable within the Beatles until 1966. The Beatles' initial clean-cut personas contrasted with the Rolling Stones' "bad boy" image, and so the music press forged a rivalry between the two acts. From 1964 onwards, the Beatles and Dylan partook in a mutual dialogue and exchange of ideas. Their engagement is referred to by Chris Smith, author of
101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, as the "single phenomenon that defined the tone of 1960s popular music and the future of music in America". In August 1964, at the
Delmonico Hotel in New York City, the Beatles met Dylan in person and were introduced to
cannabis. Many commentators have referenced this meeting as a cultural turning point. Gould explains that, before then, the musicians' respective fanbases were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds": Dylan's audience of "college kids with artistic or intellectual leanings, a dawning political and social idealism, and a mildly bohemian style" contrasted with their fans, "veritable '
teenyboppers' – kids in high school or grade school whose lives were totally wrapped up in the commercialised popular culture of television, radio, pop records, fan magazines, and teen fashion. They were seen as idolaters, not idealists." He writes that within a year of the Beatles' first meeting with Dylan, "the distinctions between the folk and rock audiences would have nearly evaporated", as the Beatles' fanbase began to grow in sophistication and Dylan's audience re-engaged with adolescent concerns presented in the "newly energized and autonomous pop culture". bandleader
Brian Wilson became the Beatles' chief creative rival in the mid-1960s In July 1966, Dylan suffered a motorcycle accident and spent a period in convalescence, and principally for McCartney, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys subsequently took his place as the Beatles' chief artistic rival. The two bands inspired and endeavoured to top each other with their artistry and recording techniques, but the Beach Boys failed to maintain their career momentum after 1967. According to Jones, the interplay between the two bands during the
Pet Sounds era remains one of the most noteworthy episodes in rock history.
Cultural legitimisation of pop music In Britain, music journalists started including pop and rock music in serious discussion as a direct consequence of the Beatles' 1964 breakthrough. Pop gained its first exposure in the arts section of one of the country's broadsheet newspapers when
William Mann,
The Timess
classical music critic, wrote an appreciation of the Beatles in December 1963. In the United States, the Beatles were the main beneficiaries of a new widespread appreciation for pop and rock over 1966–67 among journalists and intellectuals, coinciding with the emergence there of a dedicated rock press and serious coverage of the genre in the cultural mainstream. Music critic
Tim Riley identifies the Beatles as pop music's "first recording
artists", whose body of work represents "very intricate art". Luhrssen and Larson say the Beatles "[made] it mandatory that serious rock bands aspire to be artists, not merely entertainers". With ''
A Hard Day's Night'' in July 1964, the band became the first pop act since
Buddy Holly to issue an album consisting entirely of original compositions. The accompanying feature film endeared the Beatles to intellectuals in Britain. Lennon's artistic standing was furthered by the critical and commercial success of his book of prose
In His Own Write and its 1965 sequel,
A Spaniard in the Works. Now feted by London society, Lennon and McCartney found inspiration among a network of non-mainstream writers, poets, comedians, film-makers and other arts-related individuals. According to Doggett, their social milieu in 1964 represented "new territory for pop" and a challenge to British class delineation as the Beatles introduced an "arty middle-class" sensibility to pop music. The albums
Beatles for Sale and
Help! (issued in December 1964 and August 1965, respectively) each marked a progression in the band's development, in terms of lyrical content and recording sophistication. With
Help!, the Beatles became the first rock group to be nominated for a
Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The contemperaneous
art pop movement is often traced to the Beatles' first recording with a string quartet ("Yesterday") in conjunction with the group's mid-1960s contemporaries. Recording for
Rubber Soul took place over a four-week period uninterrupted by touring, filming or radio engagements, making its creation highly unusual for the time. By the time of the album's release in December 1965, according to author Michael Frontani, each new Beatles record was received as "an expansion of the parameters of popular music, and the [group's] image reflected and promoted notions of the Beatles' artistry and importance". Simonelli describes
Rubber Soul as "the first serious effort by a rock and roll act to produce an LP as an artistic statement", while author Christopher Bray deems it "the first long-playing pop record to really merit the term 'album'" and the LP that "turned pop music into high art". The standard of its all-original compositions was also responsible for a widespread shift in focus from singles to creating albums without the usual
filler tracks. (front row, second from left), around the time of
Revolvers release in August 1966 The Beatles incorporated influences from the English counterculture (or
London underground) more readily than any of their pop rivals. Led by McCartney's absorption in the London arts scene and interest in the work of Stockhausen and Bach, this resulted in what musicologist
Walter Everett terms a "revolution in the expressive capacity of mainstream rock music". The band's August 1966 album
Revolver was viewed as avant-garde and, in MacDonald's description, "initiated a second pop revolution ... galvanising their existing rivals and inspiring many new ones". According to music historian Simon Philo,
Revolver announced "underground London"'s arrival in pop, supplanting the sound associated with Swinging London. Released in May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' is described by Doggett as "the biggest pop happening" to take place between the Beatles' debut on American television in February 1964 and
Lennon's murder in December 1980. The album was a major critical and commercial success; through the level of attention it received from the rock press and more culturally elite publications,
Sgt. Pepper achieved full cultural legitimisation for pop music and recognition for the medium as a genuine art form. Its win in the Album of the Year category at the
1968 Grammys Awards marked the first time that a rock LP had received this award. According to author Doyle Greene, the album provided "a crucial locus in the assemblage of popular music and avant-garde/experimental music – and popular culture and
modernism". Chris Smith highlights
Sgt. Pepper as one of the most "obvious" choices for inclusion in
101 Albums That Changed Popular Music, due to its continued commercial success, the wealth of imitative works it inspired, and its ongoing recognition as "a defining moment in the history of music".
The Beatles represented a diverse collection of musical styles that one critic likened to a history of Western music, and its November 1968 release was viewed as a major cultural event. The album failed to inspire the level of creative writing that
Sgt. Pepper had introduced to rock criticism, as reviewers were unable to locate it within the Beatles' canon. Music critic
John Harris wrote of the White Album: "it was these 30 songs that decisively opened the way for musicians to extend their horizons beyond the standard LP format." ==Jangle, folk, country-rock, and rock 'n' roll revival==