Remember, at the beginning of this year, when Kanye West started working with Paul McCartney and Twitter blew up? If you missed that, it now depends on to which generation you belong, to assume why Twitter blew up.
It wasn't the announcement itself about two important musicians collaborating, but the fact that a whole generation on Twitter was wondering who this Paul McCartney was and how cool it was of Kanye West to give this unknown guy a break. Yeah well, Paul McCartney always gets by with a little help from his friends...
For many, this Twitter commotion was a very confronting shock that probably represented many things. One being the obvious; there's a generation that doesn't seem to know where modern day pop music has its roots. The other being a cold hearted, hard truth; it looks like everything has an expiration date after all. You could be as big as a Beatle and change music forever, work hard for an incredible legacy, but still, at some point, there will be a time that no one really cares anymore. They've moved on and that's scary stuff.
Luckily, there are many people who are keeping the music alive, but even when I look at how I got introduced to The Beatles, I have to admit, I missed the Beatle Mania and got a second hand introduction. Some songs were a favorite subject from my music teachers, the biggest hits I'd heard on the radio, and some of those I loved more in their cover versions.
In fact, the Beatles song that has impacted me the most when I was young was "Help", but in the version of Tina Turner. She had recorded it for her hit album "Private Dancer". While the Beatles version is up-tempo and surprisingly cheerful for its lyrics, Tina turned it into a beautiful piano ballad, completely dramatized. It's even better if you listen to it a certain way though.
You have to play the previous track on Tina's album first, "Steel Claw". It's loud, fast, heavy and it sneers at the end. Then, there's a short silence before you hear the first piano notes of "Help". The silence is there to catch your breath and get ready for beauty.
That's the great thing about the, much fought about, Beatles catalog. It’s not just the value they’re represented in money, but their songs can be stripped down to a piano or a guitar and still hold. Most of today’s songs would have to be reproduced to get that result, ‘cos who knew then, that beats (rhythms) would become so important to music today. And that, would probably not have happened, if it The Beatles hadn’t changed pop music the way they did then.
