The Beatles - Now and Then ("final" song)

funky said:
Definitely see the Nirvana parallels, albeit on a much smaller scale.

This came up in pub conversation not long ago, but for all the wealth of solo icons that America has given us from Elvis onwards, they have seemingly never given us a band close to the same level as the Beatles in terms of impact, influence, sales and legacy. Not one! All of the megabands that come close - Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Queen, The Who - are British.

Metallica and Nirvana are/were very genre specific. Aerosmith didn't have the same critical love, Guns n Roses likewise and seemingly lasted 5 minutes. ACDC and U2.... not American. Fleetwood Mac, mostly British, doesn't count.

Nothing post-Nirvana even qualifies because megabands just don't exist anymore. Maybe Coldplay, and they're British! Still not in the same league though.

The only ones I could think of are The Eagles and The Beach Boys, but they had something Beatles didn't have to worry about - diminishing returns. In fact on that note maybe it's the Rolling Stones that deserve the greatest credit, for being able to remain relevant for 60 years, even if they did have patchy periods (who doesn't)...
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Agreed.
They've certainly had big bands in recent years in terms of stadium rock - i.e. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Foo Fighters etc. but not really had the impact.
R.E.M. feel quite forgotten now even though they were huge in the '90s, which is a shame as I feel they should be more revered. I think there's some homophobia there with the retrospective press because they didn't fit the mould anymore once Stipe properly came out.
I think that's why grunge was such a big deal in the early '90s - it was meant to be a return to rock'n'roll and a big fuck-you to the teen pop sound but it was more important for the Americans because it was American.
We seemed to turn our nose up at the Seattle thing at the time in the UK, and Britpop was supposed to be an antidote but it really turned out to be just as 'laddish' (if not even worse) and the nuance that the likes of Suede wanted to bring in was swallowed up by Oasis shite.
Anyway - I think in retrospect, grunge is still super influential and important and I know many people don't agree with me but that's okay.
Oh, and Nirvana fans are also just as annoying as Beatles fans!
 
funky said:
I've just noticed they charted on THIS week's chart at #42 from a few hours' worth of sales and streams on Thursday??

Not the downloads chart, the official chart, where so many current artists struggle to chart at all

That's crazy
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It's definitely been made into an event so there will be a lot of curiousity streams (see also: Jesy Nelson). I will be very interested to see how it charts next week - a physical no 1 is a given and will be trumpeted despite being essentially valueless.
 
I was a bit surprised to see this at #1 on spotify for some reason!
 
It's quite pleasant, inoffensive but honestly it's b-side or album track. But what else did we expect?
 
I expect nobody outside of the centrist dads will be playing it in a year, but I'm surprised by how much I've taken to it. I like that it's both solemn and full of hope
 
It was always going to be massive. The extent of its success however has been quite eye opening, especially given how the charts and the various music platforms are engineered these days.

I noticed yesterday that the music video was #2 on YouTube, and I thought ok, they managed three days at #1, that’s still impressive for a 60s band. Turns out they were #2 because the lyric video was #1, the actual video had only just been released.
 
ManicKangaroo said:
Loads of them, but only 3 will be Chart eligible

4 different coloured 7" singles, 2 (red and black) 12" singles, a black 10" single, a CD and a cassette
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I find it slightly irritating that you can throw out as many variants of albums as you like, but only three nominated variants for singles are chart eligible.

It feels like a relic from a previous age.
 
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They should bring the album charts in line with the singles chart, if only to protect Taylor Swift fans' wallets
 
Finn said:
They should bring the album charts in line with the singles chart, if only to protect Taylor Swift fans' wallets
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I think lots of heritage acts would give up altogether if they did.
 
lolly said:
It feels like a relic from a previous age.
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Well, it is! And yes, it is silly that there's no similar rule for albums but I dare say no-one wants to pop the bubble while it still seems to be inflating.
 
I#m surprised by how much I like this and how much I've returned to it. It bears out the current fluff about the technical challenges being what speared it in 1995 because it is so obviously better than Real Love.

They've pulled a few good stunts in the video too - only the hardest heart wouldn't tremble at seeing Paul and Ringo at 81 and 83 singing " now and then, I miss you" and then cutting to John and George mid-performance at Shea Stadium (doing I'm Down judging my Lennon being guitarless).
 
#1 on the midweeks I see. Not sure how far ahead it is but it's #1 midweeks on streaming, digital sales, CD sales and vinyl sales. It's started to slow on streaming (down to 6 today in the UK) but it's already done 8m streams (1m in the UK) in 3 days so I'm not sure what catches it.

Taylor's already down to #4 so it won't be her.
 
Apparently it's outselling the rest of the top 5 combined, so even if it crashes from here it's probably locked on.
 
Marilyn said:
If they can get #1 in 2023 when Free As A Bird and Real Love couldn’t manage it in the mid-90s, that’d really be something
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By the time Free As A Bird was released as a single, the Anthology 1 album had been out for a couple of weeks and that took the shine off its sales, although whether they could have toppled Michael Jackson either way is moot. In 1995, there was too much of a focus on trying to get a Christmas #1 - if they'd released the single 2 weeks in advance of the album rather than vice versa, they'd likely have got it.

Real Love just wasn't very good.
 
GNL said:
But Kolly et al are all still alive to launch a reunion. Not everyone has that.
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I think they'll let the Beatles have this number 1 first. Maybe next week.
 
Kratz said:
I think they'll let the Beatles have this number 1 first. Maybe next week.
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That would be kind of them. After all, it's two blokes in their 80s doing a memorial to their dead friends. It would be like going against Captain Tom and The Queen.
 
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