(590 views)The Enduring Legacy
An old friend of mine issued a group email the other day asking everyone he knew to send him lists of their favorite songs of all time. He was looking for a list of 20 songs... 25 tops. He wouldn't fully explain why he wanted us to do this, just said he had some vague theory he was testing out.
I spent more time than I care to admit trying to compile my songs, and found the task ultimately impossible, although I did send him an unsatisfying list of 25 songs, winnowed down from an initial draft of 80.
If I did it again tomorrow, I wrote him back, the list would be completely different.
One interesting thing, though: When push came to shove and I had to make some hard decisions about what to cut out and what to leave on the list, I ended up rejecting more recent songs (because who knows if I'll still like those next week?) and holding onto the golden oldies with staying power. To my genuine surprise, 24 of the 25 songs in my final draft were either from my teenage years (contrary to popular belief, there were one or two good songs released in the 1980s) or were older than I am.
When you grew up in the '80s, you grew up in the shadow of the Baby Boom generation, so no surprise that the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, the Doors, Janis Joplin, Hendrix - all broken up, past their prime, or dead by the time I became musically literate - formed a big part of the soundtrack of my youth.
It turns out, though, that my resentful, diluted X of a generation is not alone in loving the music of the '60s. A recent Pew Research survey found that the Baby Boomers' music - most notably that of the Beatles - is universally popular across four generations of listeners, from 16-to-29-year-olds to senior citizens.
No wonder the musical event of the year was arguably the re-release of what's known as the Beatles' "canon" - more than 200 original recorded tracks stretching across 14 albums - for the first time in digitally remastered format, as well as the release of the Beatles: Rock Band video game, which promises to make the group even more appealing for generations to come.
*So here is the question: in your opinion, why do the Beatles live on so strong, and will they ever fade away? Is it all in the advertising, or are they truly a band never to be rivaled?