R or B?

[Discipulus]

The Beatles

 41/52%

The Rolling Stones

 38/48%

79 total votes

[Tux]

Definitely 100% R!. I admit that the Beatles had - and still have - a huge impact on many musicians, but IMHO they are the most overrated band ever. Look at their lyrics, it is like listening to Lala and Po in teletubby land. Count the total number of distinct words in a song like "hello, Goodbye" (31) and then compare that to the number of distinct words (150+) of e.g. lyrics from the early days of Marillion which are plain poetry. FWIW Going Home from the Stones has 134 distinct words.

I know there are zillions of people that do not agree with me, but I personally would not shed a tear if there was no more songs played on the radio from the Beatles.

Read more... (590 Bytes)

[Corion]

As the one suggesting Mo-Do as another datapoint, I feel obliged to add something productive, so here's the (deparsed) oneliner I used to look at the statistics of lyrics:

# BEGIN { $/ = "\n"; $\ = "\n"; }
# use feature 'current_sub', 'evalbytes', 'fc', 'postderef_qq', 'say',
+ 'state', 'switch', 'unicode_strings', 'unicode_eval';
while (<>) {
    chomp $_;
    foreach $_ (/(\w+)/gu) {
        ++$total;
        ++$count{lc $_};
    }
    END {
        say "${_}: $count{$_}" foreach (sort keys %count);
        say sprintf('%d distinct words in %d total', scalar keys %coun
+t, $total);
        say sprintf('%0.2f', scalar keys(%count) / $total);
    }
}

[Anonymous Monk]

What you tried to do. This is how it's done https://www.cuindependent.com/2016/03/12/top-ten-overrated-bands-of-all-time/

words and unique words by genrehttps://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8j7eg9/total_unique_number_of_words_in_song_lyrics_by/

being first counts for a lot

[LanX]

True ... the lyrics of Kraftwerk are even sparser ... totally overrated.

[Tux]

True, but they also do not have a lot of words at all, making the words more unique:

 72 distinct words in  94 total (76.6%) - Earth and Fire : Storm and T
+hunder
108 distinct words in 154 total (70.1%) - Genesis        : Firth of Fi
+fth
133 distinct words in 202 total (65.8%) - Mike Oldfield  : Tubular Bel
+ls pt II
 80 distinct words in 142 total (56.3%) - Novalis        : Wer Schmett
+erlinge lachen hört
 67 distinct words in 129 total (51.9%) - Pink Floyd     : Shine on yo
+u crazy diamond
 24 distinct words in  48 total (50.0%) - Kraftwerk      : Autobahn
101 distinct words in 202 total (50.0%) - Mary Black     : Columbus
 70 distinct words in 157 total (44.6%) - Supertramp     : Breakfast i
+n America
151 distinct words in 448 total (33.7%) - Marillion      : Script for 
+a Jesters Tear
108 distinct words in 327 total (33.0%) - 2 Unlimited    : No Limit
134 distinct words in 662 total (20.2%) - Roling Stones  : Going Home
 31 distinct words in 248 total (12.5%) - The Beatles    : Hello, Good
+bye
 19 distinct words in 376 total ( 5.1%) - Mo-Do          : Eins zwei P
+olizei

counted with this script.

[bliako]

good point generally, but Kraftwerk belongs to a different genre. A genre which *often* strives for sparsity and mantra-like lyrics.

bw, the operator with my pocket calculator

[karlgoethebier]

R&B

[shmem]

I can get no satisfaction from The Beatles. I'd rather listen to italian madrigals.

[hippo]

I can't get no satisfaction from The Beatles.

FTFY ;-)

[Discipulus]

Tux++

> IMHO they are the most overrated band ever.

I always thought the same! Again in my humble opinion, musically speaking, B are a hoax while The Rolling Stones are a fundamental pillar of music.

Listen to Mother's Little Helper, one of my favorite ones.

L*

[shmem]

Between B and R I would choose P.

[bliako]

same here

[eyepopslikeamosquito]

I'd always assumed most folks preferred The Beatles, the more pertinent question being: L or M? Lennon or McCartney?

I'm a Lennon fan myself, and always felt the Lennon-McCartney authorship was a crock. I see they've tried using AI to figure out who wrote which song ... and to compose new "Beatles compositions", such as Daddy's Car. :)

[Tux]

I thought you were in IT, so you should know "Assumption is the mother of all fuckups". :)

I personally don't like the voice of either Lennon or McCartney, So I don't care. I found that I - in general - prefer female voices over male voices.

[talexb]

The Beatles, because of the breadth of their musical expression, helped as always by their producer George Martin, sometimes described as 'the fifth Beatle'.

[jdporter]

The importance of George Martin's contribution to the Beatles' sound simply cannot be overstated. Lennon and the boys were surely creative (especially after the influence of certain chemicals), but the Beatles' music would be half of what it is, perceptually, if not for Martin. To call him anything less than the Fifth Beatle would be doing him a great disservice.

[karlgoethebier]

«…George Martin's contribution…»

Probably the worst thing that ever happened to this band was G. Martin. Except Yoko. But may be that Martin told John and Paul something about the modes?.

[Anonymous Monk]

Yes.

[LanX]

Yes: Move yourself ...

[Tux]

103 distinct words in 331 total (31.1%) - Yes            : Owner of a 
+lonely heart

Be yourself
Give your free will a chance

Isn't that exactly what this thread is about? Your own free will and taste/distaste?

Is music not all about "Let us agree to disagree"?

[shmem]

Yes: Move yourself ...

... close to the edge

[Anonymous Monk]

Beatles i bought. Dad bought. Stones I bought. Yes is strictly by radio.

[perldigious]

Going to have to go with The Stones since I'm a Beast of Burden and I've always had Sympathy for the Devil. :-P

Maybe it's a generational thing, and I'm probably about to start a Rock and Roll holy war by saying this, but I always found the Beatles to be overrated. Of course, I feel the same way about Metallica, and that is my generation. I just never understood why either is considered some sort of outstanding example of their genre. To the Beatles credit, I put on their song Taxman pretty much every year I first sit down to do my taxes. :-)

[bliako]

The Beatles surely have left a long-standing legacy and IMO are first in the queue for PITA and PITE awards (E stands for ear, A lies a metre below). A legacy which is well alive and kicking you-know-where hundreds of thousands of commuters through London's Abbey Road, as they face long traffic jams day-after-day, hour-after-hour because some silly popfan crosses the zebra for a photo. When I first saw that, while visiting a friend in a hospital nearby, I couldn't understand what was going on. I thought it was some prank. It's really funny to see hundreds of tourist-looking people queuing in the pavement and crossing the road in small groups and a friend takes a photo. It took me a while. See: https://www.travelandleisure.com/attractions/abbey-road-new-fan-crosswalk, https://worldcams.tv/united-kingdom/london/abbey-road

The Beattles were the first pop I ever heard when I dag a tape from granny's attic. I was impressed by that sound and wanted to hear it repeatedly. But the innocence of my formative years soon perished so much so that they now sound hollow (compared to Pink Floyd or Marilion as some other Monk commented).

Trivia: M.J. was once described as a "priapic monkey" by some Guardian pophack but I can not find now the article (no surprise). Which means I can claim the copyright to a very successful description, IMO. But their music again sounds hollow, compare to Jefferson's Airplanes (random pick) and 500 others.

But the issue perhaps lies much deeper than personal taste, re: https://medium.com/@MichaelMcBride/how-jackson-pollock-and-the-cia-teamed-up-to-win-the-cold-war-6734c40f5b14, so, all in all, I keep far away from mainstream.

bw, bliako

[dbuckhal]

R == Rush
B == Band-Maid


tip-toes out of the Monestary...

[herveus]

Howdy!

Ah. "Less filling! Tastes great!"