Former SPIN writer Chuck Klosterman once came out with a list of bands that weren’t overrated or underrated but were just properly rated. He succinctly summed up The Beatles: “The Beatles are generally seen as the single most important rock band of all time because they wrote all the best songs. Since both of these facts are true, the Beatles are rated properly.”
The de facto ground zero from which contemporary rock and pop culture emerged, The Beatles did a few things better than their peers and even did a few things no one had yet conceived of. Thus, let’s celebrate the 20 ways that The Beatles changed the world.
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They created the first-ever rock music videos
They created the first-ever rock music videos
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Back in the day, most music artists could have legendary performances filmed on pre-built sets of late-night and variety shows, but outside of that, the best place to catch them would be in concert or on the radio. The Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night, had sequences designed to highlight certain songs, but the Fab Four wanted to push the idea of art and marketing even further and filmed their own performance clips for “Day Tripper” and “We Can Work It Out.”
They would go on to film several more. Still, these standalone, audience-free film experiments centered around new songs predicted the music video era, proving another reason why they were ahead of their time.
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