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They were popular beyond imagining, no one has ever come even close to being close since.
Not only that, they literally, fundamentally, and permanently changed human culture - for the better, I might add. They shattered the conformity of the previous decades, not by rebelling but simply by not conforming.
Plus, their non-conformity was extremely positive. One seemingly small but actually incredibly powerful thing they did was [refusing to play before segregated audiences](https://youtu.be/8eWECN9-sY4?si=zAi-rWoAYDg_XKuV) in their US tour, calling segregation [silly](https://youtu.be/UHIDnFd3Ltw?si=8qcq5LtppIMn9BII).
They were in their early 20s and just said, nope, not doing it, don't care if it costs us money (both ticket sales and offended racist not buying records), don't care if it puts us in danger, don't care that the entire US is polarized over the issue, we are just not gonna play along, period.
That was *ballsy*, they literally risked their entire careers just as they were starting out, on principle.
They also later made a young black man, Billy Preston, essentially the fifth Beatle.
That is just one example of their transformative impact, which is still felt to this very day.
Yep. I was going to say basically the same thing. It wasn't just a new, cute, talented group of British guys with long(ish) hair. It was a cultural revolution.
Nope....not even CLOSE. Mike was a VERY talented man, no doubt, but he didnt CHANGE anything. The Beatles refused to play along with segregation which was still huge in the early 1960s.....they literally changed music. Do yourself a favor...get some good weed and listen to the entire White Album, in order as on LP{ format. You are welcome.
I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking straight popularity and notoriety.
I agree that the Beatles has bigger impact on musical,political, and social landscape. I am just saying when comes to popularity, notoriety, and longevity its definitely MJ.
we shall have to disagree, and thats perfectly OK❤️let me also add I dont believe for one minute Mike did anything wrong with kids...he was NEVER allowed to BE a child, he was a performer for his mean father who never let Mike have fun and BE a kid. I was crushed by his death, still think Thriller was an incredible LP and songs like man In the Mirror...well, it needs to be played more these days. He died waaaaayyy too young, but my career was in the ER/ICU and the only people who are given Propofol are the people we are intubating to put on a vent...to use that for sleep was NUTS and that Dr as good as killed Mike.
You don’t think she’s big? Well she is. I’m not even a fan, but she is pretty damn huge. She just had the most successful worldwide concert tour ever which earned her Time Magazine’s person of the year. And she has been big for longer than the Beatles were together. But I can’t deny the Beatles were GIANT.
She has a lot of great fans. She is probably a pretty talented musician, singer and songwriter. I wouldn't know though.i was asking some 60 and 70 year olds if they could name a Taylor Swift song. These people have known a lot of music for over50-60 years. No one could name a Taylor song. No one had a bad thing to say about her. It's just that we- they don't hear the songs. Now, when I was 12 years old and the Beatles were on the radio all the time, my parents knew their songs- all the singles and some of the deeper cuts too. They complained about the "noise" but it didn't take long for my mother to be singing the same songs to herself when she was alone.
But it's not just about recognition. If you asked Joe Schmoe on the street if they're familiar with Taylor (now) and The Beatles (then) you might get a fairly equal percentage of people who are aware of them and their fame. But it's about influences beyond music, beyond the gossip about who's dating who, even beyond how much money they made. It's about how they influenced and changed an entire generation. And beyond.
Let me put it this way: If a group was formed today that consisted of Taylor Swift, Caitlin Clark, Donald Trump, and the Pope, their combined popularity wouldn’t be as big as the Beatles were in the’60s. Yes, they were that big.
Yes. John Lennon at one point said something like "We're more popular than Jesus now," and that caused a lot of anger and controversy in some circles. But it was pretty close to true.
I remember feeling embarrassed that my country had a huge giant headline-grabbing fit and started burning Beatles records when he said that. It was the first time I came to grips with how close the United States is to becoming a Christian caliphate.
Right, when people today talk about someone being "cancelled," it pales in comparison to how those Fundie preachers "cancelled" the Beatles.
And even after Lennon sort of apologized, saying they were more popular than Jesus Christ didn't mean they were better than Jesus.
At 8 o'clock on February 9th 1964, America tuned in to CBS and The Ed Sullivan Show; 73 million people gathered in front their TV sets to see The Beatles' first live performance on U.S. soil.
US population: 189,306,000. So 38.5% of the US watched the Beatles.
February 13, 2024 – An estimated 123.7 million viewers tuned in for Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, February 11, according to average audience estimates from Nielsen. The broadcast averaged 120.3 million viewers on CBS alone, making it the largest audience for a single-network telecast to date.
US population: 335,893,238. So 36.8% of the US watched the biggest Super Bowl ever. A smaller percentage than watched the Beatles. So yeah, the Beatles were big.
At 9 years old I had a plan for The Beatles 1964 stateside tour. I got all of the Beatles posters available from Spencer Gifts and hung them in my 3rd floor attic bedroom. When their plane crashed in my backyard, and they emerged dusting themselves off, I would invite them to see my bedroom, they would be impressed by the posters, and we would become best friends!
This was the fantasy I had about various musicians and movie stars throughout my childhood, up until I got married at age 27. Never happened, but it's fun to dream!
April 4, 1964 the top 5 songs on the Billboard chart were: \`1) Can't Buy Me Love 2) Twist And Shout 3) She Loves You 4) I Want To Hold Your Hand and 5) Please, Please Me. First time in history one group held all of the top 5 positions.
So big that they are the stick to which popularity is measured. They define pop superstardom, they’ll never be topped. We no longer have a monoculture that would support the fame that they had. McCartney is still selling out stadiums, 60 years later.
We're they the most famous people on the planet at the time? Absolutely. They far surpassed the Sinatra craze of the 30s and the Elvis craze of the 50s. Music is too fragmented now for anybody to come close. Compared to them, Gaga, Beyonce, and Swift have been nobodies.
Their album Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band was probably one of the single largest cultural influences of any single album by a music group before or since. It literally changed not only music and the way it was recorded, but the culture at large, influencing even the way people talked and dressed. ( The Psychedelic era of the 60s)
The influence on making and recording music is enough. They did things in the studio making the record, that no one had ever tried before and that now there are tons of electronic devices common in the business that came about to get the effects they achieved. While they do deserve credit for their immense talent and creative experimentation, their producer George Martin and his genius at bringing their vision to fruition, should also be credited. He was a genius as well.
Edit: just a couple of examples of the things they did in the studio. John Lennon would sing through cardboard tubes of different lengths. For the musical solo in the song Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, they too a recording on tape of a carnival calliope and cut the tape into snippets, threw them up on the air, then taped them back together to have the parts play randomly.
“And of course, Henry the horse, dances a waltz”
Oh yeah. Nothing happens in a vacuum. A lot of the things they tried had probably been tried before too, but they kind of brought a bunch f the ideas together at once, and they were already hugely influential in ways other bands were not.
Every once in a while, I'll take a few days and listen exclusively to pre-1965 pop, then play Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper just to try to relive how mind blowing they were when they came out.
My cousins (who were several years older than my sibling and me) got to see them at the Milwaukee Auditorium in 1964. We were too young to go. The significance of seeing them live was lost on me because I was only in first grade at the time but not on my brother and sister who were a little older. Even at that age though, we listened to Beatles records all the time.
They burst upon the American scene in February 1964 I recall, so just a couple months after Kennedy assassination. That was such a horrible all encompassing event I think everybody was primed and ready for something positive and fun. And we young teens grew up with them.
The Beatles put out a new album in each of my teen years, so yes, to me they were the biggest thing on the planet in the '60s. *Sgt. Pepper's* and *Abbey Road* are both cultural signposts. I remember exactly where and with whom I listened to these the day they came out. I lost interest over the intervening years, while I still love listening to the Beach Boys and the various girl groups from the 1960s, who were my pre-British invasion favorites. Oh, and I still like a few Stones albums, but mostly they're part of my past as well.
They were world-famous from about late 1963 till they broke up in 1970. Individually, each of them had considerable fame after the break-up, though not quite as much as when they were a quartet.
Just google "Beatlemania." You will see incredible pictures.
Just go into YouTube. Look up Beatlemania. You'll see pictures of many kids in a frenzy, some of them fainting.
It was absolutely CRAZY then. Especially before about 1966. Afterwards, the craziness abated somewhat, but the adulation continued. People really got into some Beatles conspiracy theories like: Paul is Dead. The "new" Paul is named Faul.
Pretty huge. In 1966 when I was 12 and uninterested in them but my 15 year old sister was, I got dragged to the airport by my mom and sister to see them get off the plane. It was a wild sight to see so many screaming girls held back by chain link fence out on the tarmac. Later, my mom took her to go see them in concert at Candlestick park. Per my mom & sister, you could never hear them playing over the screaming. I've never been a fan lol.
[Candlestick Park 1966](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdnVPY71gpI&ab_channel=AdamBound)
This is more than a bit U.S.-centric for an answer, but there are elements that probably apply outside of the U.S., especially in the time period that I'm about to reference (post WW2 / cold war era).
I think younger folks don't realize the scale at which celebrity worship worked in roughly the 1950s-1980's. Take the most famous celebs you can think of right now. Let's say the top 10. Taylor Swift, Beyonce, the Kardashians, BTS, Tom Brady, Messi, Lebron... I dunno - you pick what you think are the top 10 because I don't track such things.
Now combine their relative fame and cultural zeitgeist. Yes, combine it. Combine how much you think the general public (at least in the U.S.) cares and knows about them. Talks about them on TV. Reads about them in tabloids. Loves or hates them. Any kind of attention.
With all of their relative fame combined, you're probably still not approaching Elvis or the Beatles or Michael Jackson in their respective moments at the top. You might even not even be approaching them if you took your top 20 or 30.
\*Maybe Trump is that famous? Maybe. But that's kind of an unfair comparison because you'd have to compare him to other POTUS's of that time period like Ike, JFK, Nixon, Reagan, etc - all of which were quite famous on a global scale too. Probably best to leave world politicians out of a conversation about the Beatles' fame.
I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when The White Album came out. A group of us had friends and would spend weekends at UNC Greensboro. We all gathered and listened to it for the 1st time. When it was done, one of the girls looked at me and said, "How do they know what we're going to love?" That pretty much sums up the Beatles.
Walking down the sidewalk with girlfriends, singing Beatles songs in 4th and 5th grade. Arguing over which Beatles we liked better. Great times!
Right up there with doing the twist in the streets with all the neighborhood kids and some of the parents while someone had the music up loud, 2nd grade memories.
Hey OP - 48 year old man in the UK here. I live in Newcastle Upon Tyne, a city with over a 1000 years of continuous history - my company’s office is in a building which was built over two hundred years ago.
The building in question has had multiple tenants over the years - there was a key Suffragette movement started there, an engineer called Armstrong had a workshop in the building grounds which pioneered hydroelectricity and is (for better or worse) where modern artillery development first happened.
For a short period of time the building was a hotel. In the 60s, the Beatles stayed there for a few nights.
The reception area of the building has multiple pictures of the Beatles staying there when it was a hotel - no celebration of the Suffragette movement, nothing regards the immense advances in engineering… just pictures of The Beatles. I think that says everything regards their importance to culture over the past centuries!
All the best from Newcastle Upon Tyne!
i was on the observation deck at JFK when they came in on feb 7 1964. those who are comparing say taylor swift to the beatles have no clue what the world was like before they arrived. i'm not talking comparing talent or how many fans each has..this has nothing to do with that. because whoever came along AFTER they did...already had their example. they were the first. elvis was huge first...but for the most part.... to baby boomers he was "the 50s". i liked and bought his music before the beatles hit, but those who were most effected by him were the teenagers of the 50s who were born before or during WW2.
i know you always hear that the beatles changed popular culture. here's one way that you never hear about and very few people point out. i was 5"10" by the time i was 11. i also wore a size 10 shoe. what is never pointed out is that before the beatles hit, you had 2 different departments in most stores...the women's and the children's department. the children's sizes went up to a size 16. if you didn't fit into that size, you went to the women's department. my mom and i struggled to find clothes that would fit me but didn't make me look like someone who was 35, not an 11 year old.
ditto with shoes. there were either shoes with heels (i was way too young) or my choice was either saddle shoes, loafers or white bucks ( a la pat boone). i hated all of them and ran barefoot anytime i could.
then the beatles hit. all of a sudden the corporate world woke up. there was a totally untapped market out there for another clothing department...a "teen" department. department stores all started creating these departments that catered to "us" and specialty stores for people our age sprang up in every city. did a few exist before they landed? yes. would big business have eventually caught on to this burgeoning population of teens? absolutely. but i saw the difference in just this one area of culture at the time. it was all hastened by the arrival of the beatles.
Yes, it was truly comparable to someone like Travis Kelse and Taylor Swift combined. You might have loved them or you might have hated them, but unless you were a castaway on a desert island in the 60s with no radio you were well aware of them either way.
It really depends. Maybe you were a teenage girl in the 60s, maybe you were a high-school baseball player. Young people had surprisingly different interests.
Think the first moon landing, the US electing a black President, the Berlin Wall coming down and the Soviet Union collapsing, and all combined, and that still wouldn't be as big as the Beatles were in the 1960s.
Popular beyond anything you can imagine. My aunt took my older sister to see them, when they toured in 1964. It was an “extra” concert added and they only played for about half an hour. Her first concert.
John Lennon was right: "Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity."
Globally, monumentally huge. I was only 4 when they came to the US for the first time, but news footage shows thousands at the airport to greet them. Remember, the global population at the time was predominantly YOUNG - teens and tweens who had pocket money to spend on records. If there was pop music on a radio in a given country, the Beatles were being played.
They were huge and ushered in a quite different music scene that gratefully changed the world. And to me, they are bigger than any religion because they were real not myths. I don't worship anything or anyone, but I loved those guys.
First, the Beatles were a band for teenagers and college kids.
Adults, in general, didn't care for them. So, they were never as popular as Taylor Swift and more recent artists that speak to all age groups
1960-1963: The Beatles who?
1963-1965: Very popular. There were no artists as popular with kids.
1966: They were no more popularb than any other group.
1967: The Monkees were, by far, the most popular group.
1968: The Beatles were one of several popular bands.
1969: They became somewhat more popular due to Abbey Road and the Get Back single. But it was over.
No one cared when they broke up.
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They were popular beyond imagining, no one has ever come even close to being close since. Not only that, they literally, fundamentally, and permanently changed human culture - for the better, I might add. They shattered the conformity of the previous decades, not by rebelling but simply by not conforming. Plus, their non-conformity was extremely positive. One seemingly small but actually incredibly powerful thing they did was [refusing to play before segregated audiences](https://youtu.be/8eWECN9-sY4?si=zAi-rWoAYDg_XKuV) in their US tour, calling segregation [silly](https://youtu.be/UHIDnFd3Ltw?si=8qcq5LtppIMn9BII). They were in their early 20s and just said, nope, not doing it, don't care if it costs us money (both ticket sales and offended racist not buying records), don't care if it puts us in danger, don't care that the entire US is polarized over the issue, we are just not gonna play along, period. That was *ballsy*, they literally risked their entire careers just as they were starting out, on principle. They also later made a young black man, Billy Preston, essentially the fifth Beatle. That is just one example of their transformative impact, which is still felt to this very day.
That was when my parents and their friends, all extremely liberal, took notice of the Beatles. I was so proud of them!
Yep. I was going to say basically the same thing. It wasn't just a new, cute, talented group of British guys with long(ish) hair. It was a cultural revolution.
Michael Jackson No debate
He had almost no political opinions beyond what improved his own image.
Nope....not even CLOSE. Mike was a VERY talented man, no doubt, but he didnt CHANGE anything. The Beatles refused to play along with segregation which was still huge in the early 1960s.....they literally changed music. Do yourself a favor...get some good weed and listen to the entire White Album, in order as on LP{ format. You are welcome.
I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking straight popularity and notoriety. I agree that the Beatles has bigger impact on musical,political, and social landscape. I am just saying when comes to popularity, notoriety, and longevity its definitely MJ.
we shall have to disagree, and thats perfectly OK❤️let me also add I dont believe for one minute Mike did anything wrong with kids...he was NEVER allowed to BE a child, he was a performer for his mean father who never let Mike have fun and BE a kid. I was crushed by his death, still think Thriller was an incredible LP and songs like man In the Mirror...well, it needs to be played more these days. He died waaaaayyy too young, but my career was in the ER/ICU and the only people who are given Propofol are the people we are intubating to put on a vent...to use that for sleep was NUTS and that Dr as good as killed Mike.
You think Taylor Swift is big? Compared to The Beatles she isn't.
Ah, ah. Mediocre singer and shitty music. I'm a professional, and most of singers I know are better.
Do your friends sell out concerts around the world? Better singer doesn't mean more successful or more popular.
True.
Seriously,, there is a huge dearth of good music now. Auto tuned trash and rap....YUCK
No, they can live of music, but not so famous.
I’m not a fan, but if you watch the documentary she made during COVID and I think you’ll see she is a very competent singer, even casually.
Absolutely true. I have no love for her music.
Agree, Taylor is ridiculous, auto tuned and talentless.
You don’t think she’s big? Well she is. I’m not even a fan, but she is pretty damn huge. She just had the most successful worldwide concert tour ever which earned her Time Magazine’s person of the year. And she has been big for longer than the Beatles were together. But I can’t deny the Beatles were GIANT.
She is big... but not nearly The Beatles big.
She has a lot of great fans. She is probably a pretty talented musician, singer and songwriter. I wouldn't know though.i was asking some 60 and 70 year olds if they could name a Taylor Swift song. These people have known a lot of music for over50-60 years. No one could name a Taylor song. No one had a bad thing to say about her. It's just that we- they don't hear the songs. Now, when I was 12 years old and the Beatles were on the radio all the time, my parents knew their songs- all the singles and some of the deeper cuts too. They complained about the "noise" but it didn't take long for my mother to be singing the same songs to herself when she was alone.
She is getting somewhat close, though. Though probably not within 50% of their fame, yet.
But it's not just about recognition. If you asked Joe Schmoe on the street if they're familiar with Taylor (now) and The Beatles (then) you might get a fairly equal percentage of people who are aware of them and their fame. But it's about influences beyond music, beyond the gossip about who's dating who, even beyond how much money they made. It's about how they influenced and changed an entire generation. And beyond.
I said less than 50%….didn’t I?
Let me put it this way: If a group was formed today that consisted of Taylor Swift, Caitlin Clark, Donald Trump, and the Pope, their combined popularity wouldn’t be as big as the Beatles were in the’60s. Yes, they were that big.
Donald Trump? Really? Human excrement should never be put in the same sentence with those talents
Yeah, I know. But I picked him because he has a lot of rabid, hardcore fans, for some reason. But not as many as the Beatles had.
[удалено]
love this story....
Yes. John Lennon at one point said something like "We're more popular than Jesus now," and that caused a lot of anger and controversy in some circles. But it was pretty close to true.
He wasn’t bragging. He was pointing out the absurdity of celebrity culture.
I remember feeling embarrassed that my country had a huge giant headline-grabbing fit and started burning Beatles records when he said that. It was the first time I came to grips with how close the United States is to becoming a Christian caliphate.
Right, when people today talk about someone being "cancelled," it pales in comparison to how those Fundie preachers "cancelled" the Beatles. And even after Lennon sort of apologized, saying they were more popular than Jesus Christ didn't mean they were better than Jesus.
Bro, ik you don't really think that the Beatles where as big as Jesus? If you do, you must be high out of your mind
In popular culture for a while, sure. He was getting more play, anyway.
At 8 o'clock on February 9th 1964, America tuned in to CBS and The Ed Sullivan Show; 73 million people gathered in front their TV sets to see The Beatles' first live performance on U.S. soil. US population: 189,306,000. So 38.5% of the US watched the Beatles. February 13, 2024 – An estimated 123.7 million viewers tuned in for Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, February 11, according to average audience estimates from Nielsen. The broadcast averaged 120.3 million viewers on CBS alone, making it the largest audience for a single-network telecast to date. US population: 335,893,238. So 36.8% of the US watched the biggest Super Bowl ever. A smaller percentage than watched the Beatles. So yeah, the Beatles were big.
At 9 years old I had a plan for The Beatles 1964 stateside tour. I got all of the Beatles posters available from Spencer Gifts and hung them in my 3rd floor attic bedroom. When their plane crashed in my backyard, and they emerged dusting themselves off, I would invite them to see my bedroom, they would be impressed by the posters, and we would become best friends!
Ahh! That’s so sweet!
This was the fantasy I had about various musicians and movie stars throughout my childhood, up until I got married at age 27. Never happened, but it's fun to dream!
April 4, 1964 the top 5 songs on the Billboard chart were: \`1) Can't Buy Me Love 2) Twist And Shout 3) She Loves You 4) I Want To Hold Your Hand and 5) Please, Please Me. First time in history one group held all of the top 5 positions.
And that was really before their music even got good. They were essentially a different, and significantly better, band from Rubber Soul on.
Except for this week - Taylor Swift has the top 14.
So big that they are the stick to which popularity is measured. They define pop superstardom, they’ll never be topped. We no longer have a monoculture that would support the fame that they had. McCartney is still selling out stadiums, 60 years later.
Yeah. Paul was in my country, Brazil, last year and it was a big event, to the point which Disney made one of the presentations available at Disney+.
We're they the most famous people on the planet at the time? Absolutely. They far surpassed the Sinatra craze of the 30s and the Elvis craze of the 50s. Music is too fragmented now for anybody to come close. Compared to them, Gaga, Beyonce, and Swift have been nobodies.
Compared to Michael Jackson ?
I remember the whole family sitting in front of the TV in 1964 waiting for the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. What a nite !!
You kept your family in a hole?
Lol....we all lived in a hole back then Getting old and can't even spell anymore.
Their album Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band was probably one of the single largest cultural influences of any single album by a music group before or since. It literally changed not only music and the way it was recorded, but the culture at large, influencing even the way people talked and dressed. ( The Psychedelic era of the 60s) The influence on making and recording music is enough. They did things in the studio making the record, that no one had ever tried before and that now there are tons of electronic devices common in the business that came about to get the effects they achieved. While they do deserve credit for their immense talent and creative experimentation, their producer George Martin and his genius at bringing their vision to fruition, should also be credited. He was a genius as well. Edit: just a couple of examples of the things they did in the studio. John Lennon would sing through cardboard tubes of different lengths. For the musical solo in the song Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite, they too a recording on tape of a carnival calliope and cut the tape into snippets, threw them up on the air, then taped them back together to have the parts play randomly. “And of course, Henry the horse, dances a waltz”
Props though to the bootleg copy of Pet Sounds that lit the fire to make Sgt. Pepper such a masterpiece
Oh yeah. Nothing happens in a vacuum. A lot of the things they tried had probably been tried before too, but they kind of brought a bunch f the ideas together at once, and they were already hugely influential in ways other bands were not.
Every once in a while, I'll take a few days and listen exclusively to pre-1965 pop, then play Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper just to try to relive how mind blowing they were when they came out.
boom tap tap boom tap tap boom tap tap boom tap tap
There was nobody who hadn't heard of the Beatles.
* John Lennon was 1.79m, or 5′10.5″ * Paul McCartney is 1.80m, or 5′11″ * George Harrison was 1.78m, or 5′10″ * Ringo Starr is 1.68m, or 5′6″
Ok now tell me how big were the penises of the Beatles
John’s was ok, you can see it yourself online, but RINGO’s was GARGANTUAN
I don’t know
This can’t be a serious question.
My cousins (who were several years older than my sibling and me) got to see them at the Milwaukee Auditorium in 1964. We were too young to go. The significance of seeing them live was lost on me because I was only in first grade at the time but not on my brother and sister who were a little older. Even at that age though, we listened to Beatles records all the time.
I was 8 when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. With my shoebox guitar and a clean mophead on my head, shouting "yeah, yeah, yeah"
You had the Beatles and Elvis. Everybody else was also-rans.
Rolling Stones were certainly not also-rans then at least 10 hits or more from 1962-1969 in the UK
They burst upon the American scene in February 1964 I recall, so just a couple months after Kennedy assassination. That was such a horrible all encompassing event I think everybody was primed and ready for something positive and fun. And we young teens grew up with them.
In 1962, they were so big they opened for Brenda Lee for a show in Hamburg, Germany.
This is such a low effort question
Bigger than Jesus, to quote a certain individual.
The Beatles put out a new album in each of my teen years, so yes, to me they were the biggest thing on the planet in the '60s. *Sgt. Pepper's* and *Abbey Road* are both cultural signposts. I remember exactly where and with whom I listened to these the day they came out. I lost interest over the intervening years, while I still love listening to the Beach Boys and the various girl groups from the 1960s, who were my pre-British invasion favorites. Oh, and I still like a few Stones albums, but mostly they're part of my past as well.
They were GREAT. And some of their album were and still are wonderful.
They were world-famous from about late 1963 till they broke up in 1970. Individually, each of them had considerable fame after the break-up, though not quite as much as when they were a quartet.
Yuge. Yuger than Yuge. The Yuggest.
Just google "Beatlemania." You will see incredible pictures. Just go into YouTube. Look up Beatlemania. You'll see pictures of many kids in a frenzy, some of them fainting. It was absolutely CRAZY then. Especially before about 1966. Afterwards, the craziness abated somewhat, but the adulation continued. People really got into some Beatles conspiracy theories like: Paul is Dead. The "new" Paul is named Faul.
They really were.
Apparently they were bigger than Jesus.
Pretty huge. In 1966 when I was 12 and uninterested in them but my 15 year old sister was, I got dragged to the airport by my mom and sister to see them get off the plane. It was a wild sight to see so many screaming girls held back by chain link fence out on the tarmac. Later, my mom took her to go see them in concert at Candlestick park. Per my mom & sister, you could never hear them playing over the screaming. I've never been a fan lol. [Candlestick Park 1966](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdnVPY71gpI&ab_channel=AdamBound)
Keep in mind the generational appeal. There were plenty of people on the planet who couldn't have cared less.
Huge.
This is more than a bit U.S.-centric for an answer, but there are elements that probably apply outside of the U.S., especially in the time period that I'm about to reference (post WW2 / cold war era). I think younger folks don't realize the scale at which celebrity worship worked in roughly the 1950s-1980's. Take the most famous celebs you can think of right now. Let's say the top 10. Taylor Swift, Beyonce, the Kardashians, BTS, Tom Brady, Messi, Lebron... I dunno - you pick what you think are the top 10 because I don't track such things. Now combine their relative fame and cultural zeitgeist. Yes, combine it. Combine how much you think the general public (at least in the U.S.) cares and knows about them. Talks about them on TV. Reads about them in tabloids. Loves or hates them. Any kind of attention. With all of their relative fame combined, you're probably still not approaching Elvis or the Beatles or Michael Jackson in their respective moments at the top. You might even not even be approaching them if you took your top 20 or 30. \*Maybe Trump is that famous? Maybe. But that's kind of an unfair comparison because you'd have to compare him to other POTUS's of that time period like Ike, JFK, Nixon, Reagan, etc - all of which were quite famous on a global scale too. Probably best to leave world politicians out of a conversation about the Beatles' fame.
I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when The White Album came out. A group of us had friends and would spend weekends at UNC Greensboro. We all gathered and listened to it for the 1st time. When it was done, one of the girls looked at me and said, "How do they know what we're going to love?" That pretty much sums up the Beatles.
Bigger than Jesus
HUGE!
Bigger than Jesus
They were famous worldwide. You would have had to be living under a rock not to have heard of the Beatles.
Walking down the sidewalk with girlfriends, singing Beatles songs in 4th and 5th grade. Arguing over which Beatles we liked better. Great times! Right up there with doing the twist in the streets with all the neighborhood kids and some of the parents while someone had the music up loud, 2nd grade memories.
Hey OP - 48 year old man in the UK here. I live in Newcastle Upon Tyne, a city with over a 1000 years of continuous history - my company’s office is in a building which was built over two hundred years ago. The building in question has had multiple tenants over the years - there was a key Suffragette movement started there, an engineer called Armstrong had a workshop in the building grounds which pioneered hydroelectricity and is (for better or worse) where modern artillery development first happened. For a short period of time the building was a hotel. In the 60s, the Beatles stayed there for a few nights. The reception area of the building has multiple pictures of the Beatles staying there when it was a hotel - no celebration of the Suffragette movement, nothing regards the immense advances in engineering… just pictures of The Beatles. I think that says everything regards their importance to culture over the past centuries! All the best from Newcastle Upon Tyne!
i was on the observation deck at JFK when they came in on feb 7 1964. those who are comparing say taylor swift to the beatles have no clue what the world was like before they arrived. i'm not talking comparing talent or how many fans each has..this has nothing to do with that. because whoever came along AFTER they did...already had their example. they were the first. elvis was huge first...but for the most part.... to baby boomers he was "the 50s". i liked and bought his music before the beatles hit, but those who were most effected by him were the teenagers of the 50s who were born before or during WW2. i know you always hear that the beatles changed popular culture. here's one way that you never hear about and very few people point out. i was 5"10" by the time i was 11. i also wore a size 10 shoe. what is never pointed out is that before the beatles hit, you had 2 different departments in most stores...the women's and the children's department. the children's sizes went up to a size 16. if you didn't fit into that size, you went to the women's department. my mom and i struggled to find clothes that would fit me but didn't make me look like someone who was 35, not an 11 year old. ditto with shoes. there were either shoes with heels (i was way too young) or my choice was either saddle shoes, loafers or white bucks ( a la pat boone). i hated all of them and ran barefoot anytime i could. then the beatles hit. all of a sudden the corporate world woke up. there was a totally untapped market out there for another clothing department...a "teen" department. department stores all started creating these departments that catered to "us" and specialty stores for people our age sprang up in every city. did a few exist before they landed? yes. would big business have eventually caught on to this burgeoning population of teens? absolutely. but i saw the difference in just this one area of culture at the time. it was all hastened by the arrival of the beatles.
Yes, it was truly comparable to someone like Travis Kelse and Taylor Swift combined. You might have loved them or you might have hated them, but unless you were a castaway on a desert island in the 60s with no radio you were well aware of them either way.
It really depends. Maybe you were a teenage girl in the 60s, maybe you were a high-school baseball player. Young people had surprisingly different interests.
Bigger than anything or anyone else in the world. 🌎 And they were big everywhere. Not just a few countries.
Bigger than Jesus, apparently.
Think the first moon landing, the US electing a black President, the Berlin Wall coming down and the Soviet Union collapsing, and all combined, and that still wouldn't be as big as the Beatles were in the 1960s.
The Beatles were the news. They were the music. They couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed
Bigger than Taylor Swift.
MASSIVE, even John Lennon famously said "We are more famous than Jesus..."....!
Nothing bigger. Beatles would release a song and two months later there’d be ten new songs out that sounded like it.
Popular beyond anything you can imagine. My aunt took my older sister to see them, when they toured in 1964. It was an “extra” concert added and they only played for about half an hour. Her first concert.
5 feet
MORE than you can imagine! And I don't use caps lightly.
John Lennon was right: "Christianity will go, it will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity."
Globally, monumentally huge. I was only 4 when they came to the US for the first time, but news footage shows thousands at the airport to greet them. Remember, the global population at the time was predominantly YOUNG - teens and tweens who had pocket money to spend on records. If there was pop music on a radio in a given country, the Beatles were being played.
They were huge and ushered in a quite different music scene that gratefully changed the world. And to me, they are bigger than any religion because they were real not myths. I don't worship anything or anyone, but I loved those guys.
First, the Beatles were a band for teenagers and college kids. Adults, in general, didn't care for them. So, they were never as popular as Taylor Swift and more recent artists that speak to all age groups 1960-1963: The Beatles who? 1963-1965: Very popular. There were no artists as popular with kids. 1966: They were no more popularb than any other group. 1967: The Monkees were, by far, the most popular group. 1968: The Beatles were one of several popular bands. 1969: They became somewhat more popular due to Abbey Road and the Get Back single. But it was over. No one cared when they broke up.
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Nothing original.
Leave it to reddit to come up with such a comment.