The Beatles Failed To Revolutionize Music But Rap Did, New Study Finds


The Beatles have long been considered one of the most influential bands in history, but a new study has found that their true impact on music may have been overrated, the Telegraph reports.

“The historians all talk about how The Beatles changed everything but it’s entirely coincidental,” Professor Armand Leroi, of Imperial College and senior author of the study, told the Telegraph.

The group of London researchers examined the charts from 1964 to 2010 and analyzed the data to figure out when certain trends appeared and how long they lasted. Their findings revealed that the long celebrated “British Invasion” of the 1960s had no groundbreaking impact on the music charts at all. British bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were actually just copying trends that were already in play on the pop charts before their arrival on the global music scene. Their musical style, notably their chord changes and tone, was not revolutionary at all, the researchers found.

The academics did, however, pinpoint a culture shifting moment of in pop history: the emergence of rap music in the early 1990s. Thirty years after the arrival of The Beatles, the pulsating new sound from the Bronx changed the musical landscape in a way that hadn’t been seen before or since. In fact, according to the study, rap has dominated the music charts since the 90s, something that rap fans already knew.

“The impact of Hip Hop has been huge,” Professor Leroi continued. “Before that it had all been about synths and drum machines and everything really sounded like Duran Duran.”

NWA
This photo of rap group NWA was taken in 1991 when the hip hop revolution happened. Photo courtesy Neal Preston/CORBIS

The study’s lead author, Matthias Mauch, lecturer at the school of electronic engineering and computer science at Queen Mary University of London, has called the findings a cutting-edge new development in the way that musical trends are studied.

“For the first time we can measure musical properties in recordings on a large scale. We can actually go beyond what music experts tell us, or what we know ourselves about them, by looking directly into the songs, measuring their makeup, and understanding how they have changed,” he said.

The study that dethrones The Beatles as game changers hasn’t convinced everyone. The director of the world’s first Beatles masters degree, Mike Brocken, found that the data excludes several key factors that determine a musical act’s true influence.

“Popular music cannot be ‘measured’ in this way – what about reception, the political economy, subcultures? So my first instincts are to question any study that uses the dreaded data analysis,” he told the Guardian.

“I don’t think that the kind of formalistic musical analysis that is suggested here helps at all. The Beatles ‘communicated’ things to people; whether it was via an A-minor chord or an A-major chord really does not make the slightest difference. Semiotic approaches yield far more than chord shapes and time signatures.”

No study will ever diminish the love and nostalgia that fans have, however, as their album of number one hits continues to sell worldwide. The Beatles’ final album, Let It Be, was released 45 years ago today, and fans on Twitter have been posting tributes.

How’s that for a less than revolutionary British band?

[Photo courtesy The Telegraph]

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