Just WHAT IS IT about The Beatles?! #thebeatles #paulmccartney #johnlennon #georgeharrison

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]So, I, like you, yes, you, the viewer who's clicked on a Beatles video, I love The Beatles. Like, really love them.

[00:00:08]Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of other music, too, but the key word there is love. I like a lot of other stuff, but nothing hits quite like The Beatles.

[00:00:20]There's just something about them.

[00:00:26]>> [screaming] >> Let me give you an example. Let's take The Beach Boys. Now, The Beach Boys as Pet Sounds is probably the closest to perfect that I think any album has ever come. To me, it's up there with the best of The Beatles, and I absolutely adore it. And yet, outside one or two albums that I own and I've got their greatest hits, I just don't find myself nearly as interested in exploring their wider discography, nor their history. The Beatles, however, I am borderline obsessed. I own all of their albums, invariably multiple times.

[00:01:01]I own all of their solo albums, too.

[00:01:03]Yes, including Ringo's. I have shelves and shelves of books. I've watched their movies and documentaries multiple times over. For some reason, there's something about them in particular that instills this kind of cult-like devotion in me, and I don't think I'm alone. Surely, there are very few bands or artists who have fan bases that transcend generations, borders, social classes, sexes, and for whom emotions and passions are instilled quite so fervently. But, what is it? What is it that keeps me returning to them consistently and constantly, when I literally have a world of music at my fingertips? What is it that keeps me reaching for Revolver, Ram, or Ringo, instead of exploring other bands who I know I'd like if I gave half the chance? What is it that unites me, a millennial, with silent geners and baby boomers 40-plus years my senior, who actually lived through the '60s and the exciting social and cultural changes that came with it. What is it that brings new generations in, equally as excited to explore more and more of this cultural behemoth? Well, I want to explore all of these questions, which, let's be fair, might quite neatly be summarized by the question, just what is it about The Beatles? And you'll have your own take, and maybe you'll agree with me, maybe you won't, but either way, you'll have an opinion, and I want to hear it. So, put it down in the comments below. I read and respond to every single one. Hello, hello, welcome to Apple Jams, your Beatles and solo Beatles hangout. I'm so glad to see you here. So glad you could come. I have one little baby request, and that is if you would, please, please me by smashing a like on this video and subscribing, if you haven't already, that would really help me, if you can. And I think the first place we have to start is the most obvious place, the music itself. Because before Beatlemania, before the rooftop, before the documentaries and the rock and roll Hall of Fame and the deluxe editions and the endless discourse, well, there were just four lads making records. And those records, they're almost obscenely good. The Beatles catalog is so consistently strong that it almost feels like cheating. Most bands get, what, one, two classic albums if they're lucky? The Beatles had five or six all-time classic albums. I can hear some of you already. What do you mean, five or six? Don't you mean like 12? Or maybe you think I'm over-aggrandizing them. Either way, let me know in the comments. And the crazy part about this is that they did all of this in basically the lifespan of a houseplant, seven years. Seven years from Please Please Me to Let It Be. And in that time, they didn't just refine a sound, they reinvented themselves over and over again. They went from Merseybeat rock and rollers to folk rock poets to psychedelic explorers to studio-bound avant-gardists and stripped back garage rockers. And every time they pivoted, they didn't just follow a trend, they created one. Every album feels like a leap forward. A Hard Day's Night to Beatles for Sale is a leap.

[00:04:03]Help! to Rubber Soul is a leap. Revolver to Sgt. Pepper's is a leap so big it should have snapped their legs on landing. And the magic of it, the quality never drops. Even the lesser albums, you know, like the Help! and the Beatles for Sale, but they still have songs on them that other bands would have built a whole career around. I don't know, like something like It's Only Love or I've Just Seen a Face, you know, they'd be career highlights for lots of other bands. And for the Beatles, it's just another day at the office. This is the first answer to the question, what is it about the Beatles? It's that they created a body of work that was so consistently brilliant, so endlessly inventive, that it feels bottomless. You can live with these albums for decades and still find new corners to explore.

[00:04:46]Songs that open up for you on repeated listens. One of the biggest reasons that the Beatles still sound fresh, still sound so alive, is that they didn't just treat the studio as a place to record songs. They treated it as a playground, a laboratory, a fifth Beatle. And they did this at a time when the technology was, frankly, prehistoric by today's standards. Four tracks. That's what they had for a lot of their career. Four.

[00:05:09]Your phone has more multi-tracking power than Abbey Road did in 1966. And yet, they made Revolver. They made Sgt.

[00:05:15]Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. They made Strawberry Fields Forever, a a song that was literally stitched together from two different takes at two different tempos, in two different keys.

[00:05:26]George Martin basically had to perform musical surgery with scissors and tape.

[00:05:30]This is where the Beatles' genius becomes more than songwriting. It becomes vision. They didn't ask, "What can we do?" They asked, "What if we can do this?" They leapt onto opportunities like feedback that might happen by accident. Or somebody putting the tape on the wrong way around and leading to backwards guitar at the end of Rain. And they had the engineers and the studio staff at EMI along for the ride as willing participants. ADT or artificial double tracking, invented for the Beatles. Tape loops, they used them like a DJ uses samples. Vari-speed, they used it like a mood dial. Close miking, they helped normalize it. Backwards guitar, why not? Full-on orchestras on pop tunes, sure. A song built on a drone, yeah, let's try that, too. They were constantly pushing, constantly experimenting, constantly looking for the impossible, constantly forcing the engineers to keep inventing new techniques just to keep up. The Beatles didn't just use the studio, they expanded what the studio could do. And that to me is why their music still feels modern, because the techniques that they pioneered became the foundation of everything that came after. Sampling, looping, sound design, experimental production, it all traces back to those cramped rooms at Abbey Road where four lads and some slightly exasperated technicians were trying to rewrite the rule book constantly. But we also have to talk about the Beatles themselves, their personalities. Because if it was just the music, we'd admire them, but we wouldn't love them. Part of the magic is that the Beatles weren't just a band, they were four distinct personalities who, together, created something greater than the sum of their parts. You had John, the wit, the bite, the raw and volatile charisma. You had Paul, the charmer, the melody machine, the craftsman, the relentless experimenter. And then George, the quieter, introspective one, the cynic, the spirit. And finally Ringo, the glue, the humor, the heart and rhythmic foundation that made everything feel right. Individually, they're fascinating, but together, it's alchemy.

[00:07:26]There's something irresistible about watching four people who are so different and yet so similar, so occasionally incompatible and yet they all perfectly elevate each other. John's edge sharpened Paul's sweetness. Paul's optimism softened John's cynicism.

[00:07:41]George brought spirituality and sometimes a sarcastic edge. And Ringo kept everyone sane. And the humor, my goodness, the humor. The Beatles were funny in a way that feels timeless. Not scripted, not polished, not PR trained, just four lads who couldn't help but take the piss out of everything, including themselves. That sense of playfulness is baked into the music. You can hear them smiling on those early records. You can hear the mischief in the outtakes throughout the anthologies, such as them falling apart in hysterics whilst recording "Any Old Iron" or "Bird Can Sing". And even towards the end, with the well-known strain that they were under during the recording sessions for the White Album and for Let It Be, you can see their camaraderie in the rooftop gig. We don't just love the songs, we love them, their personality, their flaws, their chemistry. They feel like people we know, people we root for.

[00:08:31]But there's another layer, timing. The Beatles didn't just exist in the '60s, they became the '60s. They were the soundtrack, the mirror, and the engine of a decade that changed everything. The world was shifting at a speed that must have felt dizzying. Youth culture was exploding, technology was accelerating, social norms were being cracked wide open. And right in the middle of all that turbulence were these four lads who somehow captured the spirit of the moment. They weren't just reacting to the culture, they were shaping it. The haircuts, the clothes, the attitudes, the politics, the art. They were a cultural storm. And because they evolved so quickly, they carried their audience with them throughout the decade. When the world turned psychedelic, so did they.

[00:09:16]When things got darker and more outspoken, so did they. The Beatles are inseparable from the '60s, and the '60s are inseparable from the Beatles. And that historical context adds weight to their story that no modern bands can replicate. They weren't just musicians, they were participants in a global transformation. But the story doesn't end in 1970. Just when you think it's over, it isn't. Most bands break up and that's it, you know, they might do a reunion a few years down the line, make some half-decent solo albums, maybe write a memoir. But the Beatles, well, they went off in all of their different directions and created entire catalogs of work that are in some cases as rich and rewarding as the Beatles work itself. Paul gave us Ram, Band on the Run, and Chaos and Creation. John gave us Plastic Ono Band, Imagine, and Double Fantasy.

[00:10:05]George gave us All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World, and the Concert for Bangladesh, the blueprint for Live Aid. Ringo became the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine.

[00:10:16]I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Ringo gave us some great albums, too, including the career highlight Ringo in 1973 and the recent Long Long Road, which you can see my review of here. The Beatles story does not end in 1970. It expands, it branches, it becomes a universe. And for fans, that means that the journey never really stops. There's always another album to revisit, another deep cut to rediscover, another era to explore. When I was at university, I was really into the Beatles, and I remember thinking, I've got this iPod, and I've got the entire Beatles catalog, and I've got the capability to listen to so much more, but I tend to just like listen to the entire Beatles catalog on a playlist from beginning to end, and then by the end of it, I want to hear it again, because they've changed so much in that time. And then add the individual solo careers to the end of that. I mean, like, by the time I get to the end of all that, you know, I'm ready to listen to some of it again, or, you know, go back into particular favorites or something like that. There's There's just always something that I would go back to. It's crazy. It's a bit of an obsession, not going to lie. And then there's the Beatles story, because if the if you wrote this story as fiction, right, people would say it was too dramatic, too convenient, too perfectly structured. It begins with hardship, you know, poverty in Liverpool, broken homes, the loss of John's mother, the death of Stuart Sutcliffe. It's a story born out of grief and grit. And then comes the rise, the Hamburg years, the Cavern, the record deal, Beatlemania, the world domination. It's the hero's journey on fast-forward. And then the cracks, the exhaustion, the pressures of fame, and the controversies, such as John's bigger than Jesus comment and the snub of the first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos. And then of course, the tragedy, the death of Brian Epstein, the moment the adult in the room disappears. Suddenly the band is adrift, Magical Mystery Tour flops, the studio becomes tense, friendships strain, and then the ending, depending on where you put it of course. I think of it as the rooftop concert, the last moment of unity, the burst of creativity, the final burst of magic before the dissolution. It's triumphant and heartbreaking at the same time. Of course the story didn't end there as I've already said, but as a core narrative of the Beatles story before the expanded universe of the solo years, it follows the classic three-act structure of setup, confrontation, and resolution. And that resolution ends with, as I've said, either the rooftop performance or the final moments of Abbey Road and that immortal line, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." The Beatles story has everything, joy, sorrow, conflict, redemption, humor, tragedy. It feels written even though it wasn't. It's a story with the scale of a legend, but the heart of four exceptional but very real people. At the end of the day though, it really does come back to one simple truth. They They were They were a bit good, weren't they? Like Like really good. Not good for their time, not good, you know, for a pop band, not good considering the technology, just good, full stop. The melodies, the harmonies, the chord progressions, the arrangements, the production, the experimentation, the emotional range, the sheer variety, you know, from perfect rock and roll and pop tunes in the early days like I Want to Hold Your Hand to groundbreaking experimentation like Tomorrow Never Knows, from perfectly crafted acoustic ditties like Blackbird to heavy distortion-laden screamfests like Helter Skelter on the same album. From dreamy psychedelic inner world explorations like Strawberry Fields Forever to massive communal emotionally cathartic anthems like Hey Jude. Very, very few bands would have this combination of consistency, innovation, and breadth.

[00:14:15]Plenty have one or two of those qualities, but The Beatles had all three, and that's why we keep coming back. That's why new generations keep discovering them. That's why the music still feels alive, still feels relevant, still feels like it belongs to now. The Beatles weren't just a band, they were and are a phenomenon, a cultural touchstone, a shared language, a reminder of what creativity can look like when talent, timing, personality, and sheer cosmic luck just collide. So, what is it about The Beatles? It's everything. It's the music, it's the people, it's the era, it's the story, it's the legacy, it's the feeling. It's that somehow against all the odds four lads from Liverpool created something that feels eternal, and they've got quite a lot of fans. Let me know in the comments below if there's anything you think I've missed of what makes The Beatles just The Beatles. If you've enjoyed this video, I'd really appreciate a like and subscribe. It really does help. But, having said that, all that's left to say is ta-ra for now, and thanks for watching.