SOLD-OUT - The color and background of the Beatles
Pop
SOLD-OUT - The color and background of the Beatles
According to Time magazine, The Beatles were "the most innovative creators of modern popular culture". Leonard Bernstein compared their significance to Bach and Beethoven. They recorded more chart-topping songs and more chart-topping albums than anyone else in the past sixty years. Paul McCartney and John Lennon are the most successful songwriters in pop history, having together written some twenty-five number one songs. And although the Beatles are best remembered for their hits, the Liverpool quartet experimented often and boldly in the latter half of the Sixties.
Rock and roll is, somewhat simplistically, the result of a particular cultural-historical fusion: that of when the musical traditions of Black slaves brought over from Africa met those of white settlers who had emigrated from Europe to the new world, the Americas. Moreover, all this took place in a radically transforming society, following technological progress and its associated industrialisation and urbanisation. In the second season of this series, we look at the social, cultural and musical events of the period from Elvis to the twilight of the rock and roll era in the Fifties.
