Surprise! The #1 Band Ever is The Beatles

Although the rest of this list is somewhat dubious (The Ramones as low as 27? Really?), this is a pretty great article about The Beatles, including how they've become so ingrained into each one of us that it's become easy to take them for granted:

Their music has become so omnipresent, been insinuated into all aspects of culture so deeply, that we can easily take them for granted....You can be having a conversation with anyone about anything remotely related to entertainment and simply say the extremely common surnames “John,” “Paul” or “George” and everyone will know who you’re talking about (“Ringo,” too, but that one’s a lot easier)....And because the Beatles have become such an institution—the most famous band in popular music, bar none—far too many today simply look at them as some artifact, a museum display worth pausing to gaze at nostalgically before moving on to the next exhibit while their iPod is blasting the latest Kanye banger or Animal Collective collage into their ears....Behind drugs and broken hearts, the Beatles should rank about third in the leading causes of musician depression. But they don’t inspire jealousy and frustration. If anything, they’ve become the great equalizer—if pressed for inspiration or stuck in writer’s block, just rip off the Beatles. Great bands have been doing it all my life and even before that; blatantly, shamelessly, by admission. They were getting ripped off the very next day after one of their songs would first be played. You don’t even think in those terms now. It’s a sound that has become indelibly classic. And so we take the Beatles for granted. We pass right by the exhibit without giving more than a curt, “Thanks, guys.”

The writer also brings up something I have before HERE, about our curious patience for waiting for far shittier artists to put out records these days:

It is simply confounding today recognizing both the quantity and quality of their work in such a short time. When the Beatles called it a day, they were all between the ages of 27 and 29....It’s not just that the Beatles influenced the music that came after them. They were also changing it day by day—one of their singles would be released, another artist would hear it, become inspired/jealous and rush into the studio to capitalize and three weeks later, a new take on the idea or a conceptual copycat would be in stores right next to the 45 that “licensed” it. Nothing moves that fast today, which is odd because the technology would certainly allow for it. But that’s because no one today is moving as fast, as radically, as extraordinarily as the Beatles. No one else ever has, really.