I Believe in Beatles

It has recently come to my attention that there is a major problem facing our world and our future and I cannot allow it continue without addressing it. (Uh-oh, he’s about to get preachy, run for cover…)

About a year ago Entertainment Weekly ran an article entitled “Do The Beatles Still Matter?” As soon as I saw the article I became furious. The Bible was printing sacrilege. Any magazine that would even bother to print such a stupid, inane, completely and absolutely ridiculous article wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. I stopped just short of canceling my subscription then and there, but I still have yet to fully forgive them for even ASKING such a question (even though the article did ultimately come to the only conclusion one could possibly come to on the matter). When I was finally able to bring myself to read such garbage, I found that it focused on the fact that a lot of young people today don’t listen to The Beatles, aren’t familiar with them, or even worse, weren’t fans. Now many of the people interviewed or quoted said they liked Good Charlotte or Avril Lavigne or some such music, so while still very troubling, I was able to deal with it by writing it off as just another example of the dumbing down of youth culture and MTV related ignorance. That got me started on my “the country is going down the shitter, people are idiots, our educational system is a complete failure” internal tirade, but it was okay, because “surely they will learn when they grow up” I thought. I didn’t know the Beatles when I was 14 either. “Give them a few years.” I mean all the people I know now love The Beatles. I mean, they have good taste in music so surely they must…

(Blood pressure slowly beginning to rise)

I first started noticing suspicious things last semester. As I was moving from my “big fan” phase to “obsessive to a potentially unhealthy degree” phase, my sensitivity to all things Beatles became heightened. And therefore little things that might previously have gone unnoticed struck me as odd. Like when I mentioned "Doctor Robert" in an RA staff meeting and no one had any idea what I was talking about. Or when jokes about being the walrus or doing it in the road were met with puzzled expressions. I become somewhat concerned, so I stared flat out asking people “are you a Beatles fan?” And the responses I got were worse than I could have possibly imagined. (Brace yourself…) By and large PEOPLE DIDN’T REALLY KNOW THE BEATLES.

(Blood pressure reaching dangerous levels)

I honestly cannot conceive of how this is possible. People I know and care about, most of my friends, people whose opinions on matters of taste I had even trusted, people I had (God forbid) even listened to music recommendations from DIDN’T KNOW THE BEATLES! Or if they did know them they “weren’t huge fans”!! I felt beyond betrayed. I mean I had taken music opinions from these people! It was like knowing someone for years and then one day finding out they are actually only a very life-like cyborg. I mean if you don’t like The Beatles I fail to see how you are technically “alive” per say. So I must do my part to remedy this situation now.

Not to be preachy (far too late for that) but if you don’t like The Beatles then all of your opinions on music and, well, any art at all, are completely invalid. I cannot stress this strongly enough. It is very simple: If you don’t like The Beatles then you don’t like music. Bottom line. This is so incredibly not debatable that Lincoln and/or Douglas couldn’t even make an argument on its behalf. To say you like music and are not a huge Beatles fan is like saying you like reading but don’t really care for sentences. The Beatles are what music is built on. They ARE music. (Well duh, but you get my deeper point…). It goes even deeper than that though. There are a few things that exist in the world that are so great, examples of such great genius that it seems almost inconceivable that they could have been created by the human mind. I think I could put the short list at the works of Shakespeare, Beethoven, the threesome scene in Wild Things, and The Beatles. I mean listen to "Day in the Life" or "Dear Prudence" or The White Album or hell, almost anything they ever wrote, and there’s just no way to describe how incredible it is. It exemplifies the line in American Beauty “Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it.” Their music hits you in places you didn’t even know existed. The fact that IT exists gives you hope. The fact that four real people from a small town in England were able to create something like the music of the Beatles gives you hope in all of humanity. If human beings can create something that transcendent, that genius, that indescribable, then there’s nothing humanity can’t do. To not embrace The Beatles is to not embrace life. There are certainly statements that I feel must be true if you want to claim to lead a valid, fulfilling, and worthwhile existence: “I participate in the inhaling of oxygen and the exhaling of carbon dioxide” “I’m not a big fan of genocide” and “I like the Beatles”. If you cant truthfully say these statements then you should give you life to someone who could make better use of it.

So by now you either get the point or you are illiterate, in which case might I ask what you are doing here. And all if all this impassioned rhetoric does nothing else (well besides make me seem a little mentally unstable) I hope that it at least makes you consider giving the Beatles a deeper listen. Despite what P. Diddy would have you believe, this is an issue that is more important to your life, and our life as a society, than voting. Because no matter who is president or what happens in world affairs, we will all always have The Beatles. They are unversal and eternal they are our shared soundtrack. And so when I find myself in times of trouble, and have nothing to believe in anymore, I know that, unlike John, I believe in Beatles, and no matter what, just knowing that,  I can always say: “it’s alright”.

Top 3 & 1/2 of the Week:
1.) Steve Martin
2.) Wilco - "Jesus, Etc."
3.) Jim White - "Static on the Radio"
3 & 1/2.) Your Mom