Will We Have Ever Have Another Universally Loved Band?

The black keys are pretty universally loved.

I realize that that comment will incite 10 posters saying that they don't like the black keys but that's a music board for you.

I don't think anyone can predict that another beatlemania will ever happen again though

A lot of the Beatles success can probably be attributed the the developmental stage of media at the time. There were only a few tv stations so everyone saw the same things and the Beatles got more exposure to a higher percentage of people than is possible in today's time of incredible choice in media. It's just a theory that I thought of on the fly right now.

Michael Jackson wasn't a band, but he had the same sort of worldwide appeal before his wierdness turned off many.

No

For one thing, even the Beatles were not universally loved, even among the young audience. They were despised by many folkies and doo wop fans, whose scenes their success pretty much destroyed (although doo wop was probably on its last legs anyway).

More importantly. music is too fractured and Balkanized now. The Beatles played all sorts of popular music -- not so much b/c they were eclectic, but b/c the music back then was so closely related. The Beatles played rockabilly, soul, power-pop, even show tunes -- pretty much all the popular genres of the time.

Are there any acts today that play rap, metalpunkpostcore or whatever its called now, Americana, "industrial", and alt.country? If there are, I'm not aware of it.

And if there are, I doubt if they're very popular. Listeners today want to hear their music and only their music, on their special Sirius/Spotify/Pandora channels.

In the 60s, top 40 radio played all sorts of artists: British Invasion, Motown, garage rock, soul, country, R&B... So people were exposed to different genres whether they liked it or not.

The "bifurcation" (Alfred North Whitehead, where are ya?) of pop music began in the late 60s, as much of the white audience went to hard rock and the black audience went to disco aka "dance music". No artist since has been able to close that gap, although if rap continues to make inroads on the rock audience perhaps it will do to R&R what the Beatles did to folk.

quote:

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Universally Loved Band

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Has not, does not, and will not ever exist.