How THE BEATLES Fused 2 Musical Genres To Make A New One
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2025
- When the Beatles burst onto the scene in the early 1960s, they sounded like no-one else, and took the world by storm. Their brand new sound was an unusual hybrid of two genres, two chord palettes combined. Join me to find out more...
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He’s missing the Motown/Girl Group sound that was hugely influential on the Beatles and where they got many of their devices that deviated from the Blues. Motown put some jazz in the Blues before the Beatles did.
The run of singles that Dylan praised for combining folk chord changes with rock'n'roll energy but with high vocal performances and harmonies were nothing like Motown and the Motown influence showed through, but on other slightly later songs. As for the mid-period work and later on, they were creating new ground. As Howard Goodall says, there is nothing in the years that preceded the Beatles that points to what they achieved, they had something completely unique and led to the creation of soft rock, country rock, folk rock, psychedelic rock, prog rock and more, and that doesn't even take into account their studio recording innovations. You also don't mention that Paul started off writing before Motown and Rock'n'roll existed, with Sinatra and skiffle and jazz ballads more of an influence on that stage of his development, leading to songs that were revived for the group such as I'll Follow The Sun, When I'm 64 and Michelle. They had a natural talent and a run of melodies that perhaps on Mozart can match and that comes from within them and their unique backgrounds. The influence went two ways also - Motown covered so many Beatles songs and Stevie Wonder's work was very influenced by them, as was the entire psychedelic soul genre.
I'm blown away at how well you clearly explained this. Phenomenal job! I've been into the Beatles for nearly 60 years and never considered exactly what made them so brilliant in quite this way and you have taught this old dog some new tricks.
Thanks - glad you enjoyed :)
Wow! I'm simply blown away by the educational quality of your videos! They are very accessible. I'm an English teacher (and a Beatlephile). I very much appreciate your analyses of the work from this group...You provide insights I wasn't aware of before. I do tend to lean towards their middle-era as a unit of sounds, particularly because they were able to escape the instrumental restrictions of a four-man stage show. There DOES tend to be a narrative attached to works such as Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour that you effectively identified and justified. But seeing how they figured out their sweet spot through their first five albums makes sense--even if it was research at the 'unconscious' level. Please do keep up the good work!
Much appreciated 😊🍻
I think this is a misread, history wise, 58-62 pop already combined “white” schmaltzy traditional pop and r&b. Motown also did this at the same time Beatles were doing their thing. Of course they brought their own flavor to it and were hugely influential but they exist in a context of this type of fusion.
Everly brothers also
Brilliant. I loved the music already. I love it more after hearing your analysis. Thank you.
As a Hispanic American, I have always heard the Latin beat in some of their early songs, such as If I Fell, Till There was you, and She's got the Devil in her Heart. ❤😊
And I Love Her as well has some Spanish guitar
Great video as always James. Please make a part 2 video of the Beatles later albums, mind you that could turn out being more than one video 😃
The Beatles' unique synthesis of styles and influences, combined with their songwriting and vocal talent is a stunning phenomenon.
I think part of that is the fact that 'A Hard Day's Night' contains all songs written for a film soundtrack, and so it was the first album to feature no covers. Whilst 'Beatles for Sale' went back to their standard album sound
i play guitar and recently bought a book of music by the Beatles for classical guitar which i see as just finger picking. i really like p.s. i love you. i was a Beatles fan as a boy and more than forty years later i have a revival because I'm learning these versions for acoustic or classical/nylon stringed guitar.
I don't want to spoil the party is a definite 3 for me and one of their absolute best, lots of bluesy 7ths thrown in, a very fun song to play.
This guy is a welcome genius of food for thought for us all who have had similar thoughts for years ! So worth tuning into Loved him since his Sgt Pepper meaning .....
I'm a drummer and I even understand this so good work. Thanks
Awesome, thank you!
Don't you love it how others just think we're Animal from the Muppets? Most (guitarists) don't understand the complexities of rhythm.
Really an awesome, insightful analysis! Love your videos, and this was an outstanding one!
John and Paul probably didn't realize that they were doing this. They were just familiar with 2 different genres and didn't realize that they weren't supposed to mix. This is a good explanation, that I never really considered, although I kew thay had an original sound.
i love both 5 and 4 songs truly... love the cheesiness
Pop has its roots in European Folk.
...beautiful job!! thank your so much for this deep dive.Best wishes!
For me it was Rubber Soul that changed their direction.
Their best album! In my opinion anyway. Definitely a completely different sound from their previous albums.
@@mt9022 I'm glad it wasn't just me. Thanks!
@ not that it takes anything away from James’ brilliant video. He bloody knows his stuff and it makes perfect sense to listen to but I’m just talking from how it sounds to me personally just by ear. Songs like girl and Norwegian wood separates rubber soul from the album prior to me
Because The Beatles started to bring exotic instrumentation on Rubber Soul, for example on those two songs that you mentioned.
You can see the transition starting already on Beatles for Sale. Rubber Soul's where it's mostly complete.
Nice! Ticket To Ride is probably my fave song out of all the early ones.
Wow! I am complicatedly blown away that two other people are also blown away. also great video hehe
That thing where the 4th chord becomes a minor is amazingly effective. Ask Me Why, Nowhere Man etc
First time looking at beatle songs in this manner well explained you shed a new light on how they worked and created their music. Thank you
12:30
That ain't blues, that's %100 Rockabilly
(A la CPerkins)
Thank you so much! Brilliant exposition.
The Beatles, to put it simply, brung personality to pop music. At the time people felt like they knew the band even though, in the early days, most people only had the music and photos of them. Then there’s the music 🤌🏻
Also, the chord progression in It Won’t Be Long is pure genius
I learned a lot here, thanks for making that so clear, I’ve written down those chord structures and am going to have some fun with that now 😊
Don’t take this the wrong way but I’ve come to the conclusion your a mad genius 😂 I love this unique channel, keep it up! 😎🎸
hahaha I’ll take that!
glad you’re enjoying it 👍
Thanks! I appreciate you expressing your take on this.
Using a dominant 7th chord where the diatonic would be a minor chord is a hallmark of McCartney's songwriting, something you'll find throughout his career.
This did kinda happen when jazz and classical was fused, most famously with Rhapsody in Blue
I’m not a musician but wish I had this info 20 years ago
Or I would be a guitar player
Very well said
You make this understandable to a degree and I don’t know much
Thanks for your hard work and perspective 👌🏻🎶🐾
I really love your analysis of these albums. The ranking you did with their chord structures is brilliant, though I personally feel you were a bit generous with some of the ones *not* ranked as pure-cheeseball-pop/classical lol. Sorting them like you did really showcases how their writing influences, and where they became more themselves while crafting new songs.
A lot of cheeseball pop/classical tracks really do feel dated, though there are some standout tracks (like And I Love Her, which you mentioned) that feel more timeless. The old-school rock'n'roll songs they had feel more like genre-specific covers... or even homage, because old-school rock'n'roll is so iconic (like the Blues, as a genre, it has specific set of chords, sounds, expressions, etc).
Personally, I think their choice in material was less purposeful and more intuitive. They had a large catalogue of early rock'n'roll (as we saw with their live at the BBC sessions) to draw from, had they wanted to cover it for albums/singles. Them choosing not to was deliberate, yes, but I think it was not from a "market research" standpoint - look at the Rolling Stones during that time, for example - I think it was from a creative standpoint.
They liked writing together, liked collaboration as a band and were excited about it. They were chasing the high of having their own hit songs, their own sound, and were encouraged to do so. That feedback (from producers, friends, fans, musical peers, the world...) has a lot of sway.
Again, your analysis is fantastic and it's got me thinking a lot about their early days, makes me want to dig into the big Anthology book which I've been avoiding reading lol. I hope you are able to think about the other albums in this way, or maybe just the white album (but with a scale of influences per-person, rather than as a whole). Cheers, this was great.
Very good analysis which explains a lot, especially when it comes to how some of their best songs fit within this scheme.
Part II...please!
(take your time)
Cool thanks. This helps a lot. Great content 💯. Fluffy love
I love Beatles for Sale. The original songs there are definitely a step up in terms of storytelling and show that the Beatles had listened to Dylan throughout '64 (and met him and smoked pot with him) and wanted to be more interesting or unexpected lyrically. The covers don't bother me on BFS, in fact some are among their best (Kansas City, Rock n Roll Music and Words of Love are all amazing), and I think just speak to the culture at the time of bands wanting to give the fans what they wanted (songs they'd heard in their live show) and to put their stamp on songs that were meaningful to them. I think if the Beatles wanted to make Beatles for Sale completely original like AHDN, they could have. Obviously I Feel Fine and She's a Woman are two songs that could have been on it, also George's unreleased You Know What To Do....But having lots of covers on an LP wasn't a big deal back then. It was fun.
Beatles For Sale is a GREAT album!!! It's only that their management organised SO many tours/concerts/TV appearances in this period that they were left with only a handful of free days to write & record the album. Even another 2 or 3 weeks would have given them time to write another 6 songs.
@@TigerRogers0660 Fully agree. Their schedule was packed and they were understandably tired at the end of '64. Still cranked out a beautiful album and single!
Very cool take James! I've always focused on the chord subs/mini-modulations, thinking the 'formula' lay in that dept, but this seems likely to be the building blocks on how they next got to my fav era Rubber Soul & Revolver....**for a future vid.....would you ever consider applying your sensibilities to those two albums, using your composition theory, plus how the advancement of recording techniques may have allowed for an even further expansion of your theory??....Song example perhaps being 'RAIN' (a more simple composition, yet another brand new sound).....as always, phenomenal insight & the BEST TH-cam CHANNEL GOING!!!
Excellent analysis !! Thank You !
You are welcome!
You forgot to mention "Shes A Woman" as a B side single during The Beatles For Sale sessions. Nevertheless, great job on this video! God bless
Love theories like this that sum up things of the past after over analysing them. I noticed the Beatles used tight tried & true song structures but leaning on the unique ways of music that other cultures brought.
I think it started with pulling from black music(rock n roll, blues, & jazz) & later saw them doing it using other stuff from country(slide guitar) to indian stuff (sitar) with everything in between(odd european folk song elements & time signatures).
I think the idea came naturally when the classical & traditional western world of music was very much in a jazz phase all the while pop songs were establishing solid song structures fusing everything popular. Rock n roll was clearly trying to be mainstream & pop so artists doing it wrote with mainstream pop stenciles.
John & Paul were just clever enough to notice it all....like the pet cat who stops looking at the laser as to notice the laser pen. The Beatles loved Brian Wilson's Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds, because it uniquely leaned heavily fusing a cinematic film score style with pop & rock(while borrowing the magical wall of sound mix of Phil Spector).
When you know the formula, you start to long to mix other things in to see what you end up with. Many people didnt like the indian influences due to George overly leaning towards them without being clever enough to fuse it with something popular for western palettes. Yet we find the bands who copied said formula & used it better ended up being hailed for their use of sitar(think Paint it Black by the Stones & the common use of sitar in r&b music such as *You Make Me Feel Brand New by the Stylistics).
In a way, the whole world of popular music subconsciously learned this however as time progressed i think artists would copy artists using the formula without themselves knowing the formula, hence today we speak of a Beatles sound where as the ingredients of said sound at its best isnt very well hidden & often speaks for themselves(revealing a formula for good music). I take things a bit further to point out 90s japanese music was epic because it contrasted 90s american music greatly via j-pop artists having so many amazing producers using the same formulas & seemingly never running out of ideas & melodies that make songs great. They clearly carried the "Beatles baton" that made western 70s & 80s music amazing.
Sure, 90s western music was great too, but that only for other reasons such as re-inventing the wheel(formula) for hip hop, grunge, nu metal, edm etc. But in Japan, everybody fused popular & effective stuff so much that it wasnt uncommon to hear 60s style music & wall of sound techniques in mainstream music. The 90s jpop sound was very much that of taking world music from various eras & fusing them.
Japanese techno pop anime themes had jazz saxophone solos, hip hop had super jazzy samples & bossa elements, goth & metal bands all learned to dress androgenous from glam & hair metal while having baroque harpsichord & organs in their neoclassical genres, etc. Nothing was ever forgotten, only added hence even 80s synth based horror soundtracks created a palette for Japanese music artists to draw from.
Hip hop drums were quickly added to every genre as need be the moment Japan knew they existed. The better examples of said fusions became known as "city pop" & also "Shibuya kei". It wasnt rare to hear german, french, & russian influences any given day by any given japanese artist. It was rare in the west to have younger artists like Lenny Kravtiz still trying to produce authentic 60s style songs & mixes in the 90s, but such was common in 90s Jpop.
Sorry to write so much, got very passionate about my musical obsession & theories. I have pages of notes ive written over the years recapturing the forumulas & tracking down the origins of styles(the passing of the baton as i call it).
Japanese music is wonderful in animes, video games from the 80s and 90s. The melodies are beautiful. Kravitz is a good musician who knows his stuff, when the 2000s rolled on he was one of the few I liked, on the 90s of course he was very good.
This was a gud read don't apologise
Great stuff, thank you!
My pleasure!
The everly brothers were doing this in 1957, see walk right back for example.
Fab analysis! You really shed some rare light on a band that has been analyzed in endless ways. Great job! (Where would Revolution #9 be on your scale?🤔)
Fascinating video, I've read and watched hundreds of Beatles-analysis things over the years and I don't think I've ever seen this kind of take before!
Although (with my nit-picking hat on...) I'm a quite surprised by your rankings of Beatles for Sale - why would Honey Don't be a 5? Other than the daring and unusual E to C hook in the verse, it's a pure rock & roll song, so I think it should probably be a 2 or a 3.
Also Baby's In Black has a very pop/classical middle eight so I would probably rank that a 3.
While I do acknowledge the dichotomy between blues/r&r and european pop/classical tonality, I would categorize some of the songs differently. For instance, 'I saw her standing there', 'Chains' and 'Honey don't' should be a 1 on said scale since they're all basically r&r based, while stuff like 'Any time at all' and 'I'll be back' could well be moved up to 5. But it's nitpicking, and the point is well made anyway as it is an interesting approach in analyzing their stuff. Quite a testament to the top quality of their craft that we're still talking about it in such depth over 60 years on.
My favorite TH-camr posted another video, awesome.
The Beatles don't get a lot of mention for the country rock genre of the late 60s. Yet they were playing a form of that on their early albums especially Georges rockabilly guitar chords influenced by Carl Perkins and Chet Atkins.
I was thinking the same thing. The Beatles had several different influences from American music. I'd also add the harmonies of the Everly Brothers and Beach Boys were a signifcant influence on the Beatles' music.
Given that all four of them were influenced by Carl Perkins, it really doesn't surprise me, but it usually does get understated by people who aren't as familiar with 1960s country.
@@braemtes23 I agree, thanks.
@@fnjesusfreak I think so as well.
Fascinating! Thanks! :)
Can't buy me love sounds more jazzy than bluesy. It's got that swing.
Especially McCartney's vocals on it
I have 2 main problems with this analysis. First, this is completely missing the motown/soul/r&b stuff that influenced them so much. Secondly, I don't think there any conscious intent or market research going into what songs they were releasing. They began to write their own songs more over the span of the first few albums and were given more freedom to experiment. The exception to this being Beatles for Sale, when they were forced to rush through the album so quickly between touring and filming. They were running out of steam, and just did what they could to get an album out. They have basically said as much themselves.
interesting video!! never thought much about this but i always knew it was a thing they did and it was interesting to see you talk about this little experiment
The riff on Hold Me Tight might have been played by John cause his guitar was small enough to easily do that. It's definitely not as easy on a full scale guitar.
Excellent analysis with chords for key Songs👍 Nevertheless "Beatles for Sale" remains even after 60 years in my Top 4 Beatle albums along with Pepper, Revolver and Rubber Soul🎉
Later Generations seem to favour almost exclusively their own compositions but the truth is: in their heyday there simply was no better Beat / Rock'n'Roll group than the Beatles - a statement that not only Lemmy or Ozzy would concur. Even the Stones couldn't touch their fiery delivery in Songs like I'm down, Twist & Shout, Rock'n' Roll music or I saw her standing there....
Okay, the Stones and the Animals were better Blues Bands...
The Beatles did not invent this process it was already ongoing. They merely continued it (as did a lot of other people). They were (in John Lennon's words) just primitives who did something until it sounded right.
Examples?
@@michavandam OK one of their idols was Buddy Holly who invented the completely self contained rock band - an example of the ongoing process. Once a music academic waxed enthusiastically about the Beatles Mixolydian harmonies and Lennon remarked he didn't what the guy was talking about - an example of the Beatles primitive trial and error approach.
Highly perceptive, James. Eureka!
5:45 ...and if you add any more chords to those three, you call it "Jazz".
Them picture's I thought it was a love 😍 child between Liz Trus+Mr Truman from Eastenders lol 🤣 🤣.
Great video and very informative tho thanx for that blue's breakdown 👍
Dude you need to discover the Lemon Twigs they are the torch bearers for the music we all love
What you're calling "European pop" is really just the deep influence of soul, especially Motown. Soul music I argue singularly charted and planned out the entire harmonic sensibilities of the sixties, and it's no wonder the Beatles were fans as far as covering Ray Charles' "Hallelujah I Love Her So" in 1960. The soul covers don't stop there: Money, Anna (Go to Him), Baby (It's You), You've Really Got a Hold on Me, Please Mr Postman, as well as many many songs on the BBC radio. Soul music is a fundamental, fundamental force on 60s songwriting and the time has long passed to ignore it. The Stones, the Yardbirds, the Zombies, the Animals, the Who and even the Kinks all have a strong streak of soul music in them. It's so evident.
Do you consider that The Beatles also invented (or at least codified) Brass Rock as we know it? I do! There's two Beatles tracks that I think start it off - "Got To Get You Into My Life" (ok, that one might be Brass Blues-Pop, but it's on the way!) and "Good Morning, Good Morning" (which is a bit more like it!). If so, what else did The Beatles do along those lines?
James yes it is is an amazing song
I actually do like that song! I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek in this vid about the cheesy stuff.
I still listen to it all tho haha
Why the negative comments, this gentleman is just sharing his opinion.
There is no way any of this was going through their minds. You are analyzing the results, not describing the process.
You express some doubt in the first few minutes about the validity of your theory but I immediately grokked the truth of it because I had a similar experience decades ago when I realized they were reinventing the Tin Pan Alley / West End era of songwriting by modernizing the sound with electricity. Once I arrived at this conclusion I applied it to other "models" and found that British Invaders were "juicing up" the standard formats of Pop music. And that a subliminal element of David Bowie's appeal was that he essentially embodied all four Moptops into a single artist. But, I digress... I did not put together the added secret ingredient of AF/AM influence as you do and now conclude my tomato sauce was not as zesty as yours. Suddenly, it's all clicking into sense... albeit with much less eloquence than your obvious erudition. Well done, mate! Cheers...
At 65yo I am too young to remember the music first time around. But I vividly remember watching the B&W films on the BBC at Christmas (was it Boxing day or Christmas eve?).
At 5:35 and it might just be because I’m Aussie but it’s like you’re playing The Jack by AC/DC.
Very interesting
I'll second the 'Rubber Soul album was the turning point' thought, but maybe it was just the 'No turning back' point. I'd love to see an analysis of those songs.
I also have a tangential thought. I love the 'Rock 'n' Roll Music Albums that Capitol put out back in the mid '70s, but I never liked the B-Side of the second album. When I try to make my own Side 4, I get lost. I always swap out Helter Skelter, Taxman, and Birthday with Come Together, Don't Let Me Down, and sometimes Lady Madonna, Day Tripper, or We Can Work It Out, but they just don't seem to fit the first 3/4 of the track list.
I'd argue Rubber Soul still had a lot of the old Beatles in it, most songs were still about relationships, the album closes with Run For Your Life, a rockabilly style song with the opening lines lifted straight from Elvis...Revolver was the beginning of the end of touring, studio only Beatles.
No commercial decisions for me, just artistic ones.
Hi.
Have you seen the way Julian Casablancas used techneeks from composers in the seventeen hundreds and brought them into rock ? In the interviews he does, Gordon Raphael talks about it. You could make a video about that.
The Strokes were my first band for getting into this music, and Inalwayse took it for granted, but it’s true I can’t see any other rock bands like The Velvet Undergroung, Television and The Stooges that used this. I heard Julian took music courses before he did the rock band.
And if you want examples of bands doing it since:
The Libertines: Cant Stand Me Now
Franz Ferdinand : Take Me Out
Maximo Park Signal and Sign
The Parisians: Trust + Leather
Thanks
This is an interesting thesis even if I don't think it's the whole story by any means. It was indeed the Beatles' superpower to blend musical styles but I think just defining two poles is not the whole story. Specific genres like rockabilly and country may have a common approach to chord choice but were very different from the other popular genres like tin pan alley in terms of melody and arrangement. Also McCartney in particular seemed keen on channelling his love of the songs of the Great American songbook with their sophisticated chords and melodies.
Again one of the things that made people take notice of the early Beatles' songs was the harmony (vocal and instrumental) they employed that was probably imported from black genres like doo-wap and given their own particular spin (eg forms of dissonance when say, a melody note one semi-tone different from a notes in the a chord or use of a pedal - a sustained constant tone).
Folk music is also an influence (arguably in tracks like Baby in Black, Eight days a Week, Follow the Sun etc) but by Rubber Soul very much a part of their sound , perhaps by way of Dylan. (For an enjoyable illustration of this listen to Rubber Folk where the Rubber Soul album is reinterpreted by some leading folk performers like Martin Simpson, Cara Dillon and Jon Boden etc.)
And on it goes, through music hall, Indian music, classical and modern classical concert music and seemingly whatever was happening at the time.
Incidentally would argue that a song like No Reply would qualify as an example of the ground-breaking creativity the group were capable of in these early days. The bridge section alone is startling with its sort-of modulation typical of how they were experimenting with the pop form.
By the time of Beatles for Sale, they were tired and overworked. The constant touring and promotion work left little time to work on new material. Due to the demand of more singles and albums, they threw in more covers to fill up the album as they didn't have the time for original material.
You are right and I think the idea that this was some kind of test is wrong but the whole concept of the video is very good.
Beatles For Sale is a hidden gem
And then they just kept fusing genres after that pretty much immediately. Rubber Soul came next and it started incorporating folk, psychedelic, and Eastern influences. It was as though they figured out where they needed to be with Help! and said, "OK great, now how can we twist that to suit who we are as artists?"
Good analysis. Except for the “cheesy crap” descriptor. Lots of great songs in that category that you call crap.
I couldn't disagree with you more, Beatles for sale is one of my favorite albums.
Same, I love it
The Beatles included in their early work a clear doo-wop influence, which is already in the middle of these two influences.
Interesting!
I'm just a bit puzzled by how you decide wether a song is a 2 and how you decide it's a 4. You didn't say anyrhing concrete about that.
I do think "Honey Don't" was a 3, certainly not a 5. And "Yesterday" is a 5; it can't be a 4 just because of one blue note.
Why do you need a 5-point scale anyway? Wouldn't just 3 points do?
There's a third influence in there too... Folk Music...
To me the interesting way to look at your data would be to eliminate the cover songs which you characterize as "extreme" from the mass of Lennon and McCartney which you characterize as a hybrid. The songs that Lennon and McCartney gave to other artists in the Epstein stable during 1963-64 also ift your thesis. Lennon and McCartney were pretty sophisticated tunesmiths by the end of 1963. Also at this time, the songs chosen for Ringo to sing were those primitive R&B and rock n roll covers. FWIW, they had an extensive musicall and chordal vocabulary as was illustrated in the myriad of styles they covered as shown in the BBC Sessions.
I understand your system, but If I Fell doesn't really analyze to the 7 chords of the diatonic scale as you laid out. For starters the intro is in a different key, but more to the point borrowed notes in the harmony achieve dissonance virtually identical to the I-chord dom7 you associate with Blues/Rock. It's Lennon demonstrating that he can analyze the mechanism, isolate it, and apply it without the limitations of any particular idiom. Yes it's a synthesis, but no it doesn't fall on the "conventional White Pop" end of your spectrum.
To me Beatles For Sale is a prototype of Rubber Soul.
I must admit i prefer the early stuff before they went down the psychedelic route interesting theory
He also misses that his “3s and 4s” tend to be their originals and A Hard Days Night was their full original album. It was their musical language.
The 1s and 5s tended to be covers. And it’s documented that Beatles for Sale was a rushed album that they made while exhausted.
Love me do only has the G as a 7th chord
Where does Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Pepper fit?
Nonsense. The Beatles were writing Tin-Pan Alley style songs in England, they just were just very good at it. They never fused this with classical music, because they couldn't read music, they were illiterate, making their ability to compose complex harmonies extremely limited. The one 60s pop musician who actually did compose something similar to a classical composition, with repeated motifs, and complex melodic lines, was Brian Wilson, and the classical inspired composition was "Smile". The Beatles tried to rip him off, but they never succeeded, because they were musically illiterate.
Wooo
I’m sorry, but the idea that pop songs with a clear blues influence, including dominant seven chords on the tonic and the the IV chord in addition to the (actually very classical) dominant 7 on the fifth, while also including not only the minor diatonic chords but chromatic chords as well, was even remotely unusual in pop music before the Beatles is just plain wrong.
Don't be sorry; just give examples.
Yeah, it's everywhere in the standard tunes of the 20th century's first half, and probably started back in the 1890s with ragtime. The Beatles did do it differently from anything that came before, but I couldn't quite explain what exactly was different.
You have made some very good and insightful videos in the past but you are greatly missing the mark with this one. I think you are confusing Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones with The Beatles.
Besides that, the blues is from CELTIC music and Chuck Berry was mainly rockabilly not rock n' roll (Berry also stole songs from pianist Johnnie Johnson).
The use of interesting chord progressions is without doubt lacking today but there is another thing lacking and I think in an even worse way these days. it's inventive melody. This obviously also relates to underlying harmony. Great songs often utilise very distinct extended chord notes or move out of the diatonic scale, even if it's just one or two notes. This is a way to create very distinct melodies. How you go about doing a video on this I'm not sure but nobody is really making videos about melody in any serious detail. At the end of the day, melody is the most important part. It's even more important then the lyrics. If you look at Noel Gallagher songs for example, there is often nonsense lyrics but he has a good melody.
Another point about melody is the rythmic phrasing. Take any of those Beatles songs you mention and think about the rhythm of the lyrics. It is almost always distinct and changes in interesting ways across the whole song structure.
A good melody is the hardest part to come up with.
Just two?
🪲🪲🪲🪲
The V chord doesn’t need any special “bluesification” to become a dominant 7 chord. A dominant 7 chord on the fifth degree of the scale is about as archetypically classical as functional harmony gets.
Right? Beatles have nothing to do with classical music besides some very basic ideas borrowed from simple pieces. The blues already has Classical influence since it already uses the 12 tone system and basic polyphony, all the "classical" elements in the Beatles music comes from the blues.
This guy has no idea what he is talking about.
How black is black music though? They were still using the Western discourses of scales, construction and instruments.
Fusion of traditional African and American country/folk.
Love me do doesnt sound completely like a blues song tho.. melody counts too.
Cool vid tho
It always felt kinda country to me.
Great video!
“ Hold me tight” is their absolute worst song. Worse than “wild honey pie”, which was a waste of tape. “Hold me tight” was a serious attempt at a pop song, which makes it far worse in my opinion.
That thumbnail is diabolical 💀😭
Nonsense.