The Impact Of Greater Than Legends: The Beatles And Their Impact On America

Lacey Christophersen

Mrs. Stieve

English 11

3 January, 2023

Greater Than Legends: The Beatles and their Impact on America We all know that The Beatles were a popular British boyband group in the 1960s and 70s, but they were more than just popular. They actually completely changed the way the world viewed boybands and men. Even now, over 50 years later, The Beatles are still seen as revolutionary figures in not just the music industry, but in fashion and culture as well. They've completely set new standards in the rock and roll genre, and they were so popular that if asked almost anybody could name a Beatles song or two. Imagine being so popular that years and years after your breakup, you still receive new fans and new listens every single

The way the Beatles were able to Market their music was extremely intelligent to boost their popularity. Part of it was just the music itself, but another part was just using new and uncommon themes. For example, their “Yellow Submarine” animated movie ended up bringing way more interest to the idea of animation for music, which was quite uncommon at the time. They used bright and fun artwork to boost popularity of their albums. if you saw a plain Black album with white writing on it versus a fun and colorful album cover, which album would you be more inclined to buy? The boring looking album, or the bright album? the artwork on “Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and other similar albums by The Beatles are known for having inventive artwork That can really catch the viewer's eye. The Beatles were also able to strategically create Global awareness through their performances. one example of this was George Harrison's and Ravi Shankar's concert for Bangladesh. The concert was organized to make it known that there was a crisis in Bangladesh regarding genocide and refugees. Looking back on the event, Ravi Shankar had said, “ after this Performance, it was like overnight everybody knew the name of Bangladesh all over the world because at it came out in newspapers everywhere.” It actually was so successful that it became a template for charity rock concerts today. There were some rocky moments for The Beatles, however. They received backlash from Christians for their “communist, evil rock.” It didn’t help that John Lennon had said the group had become “more popular than Jesus.” Multiple anti-Beatles crusades were launched and believers of the Church worried that their sons and daughters knew more about John, Paul, Ringo, and George than Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke. This, though, caused to be of little worry for the members because they weren’t very negatively affected by these groups.