The Beatles transcend time, geography, demographics and personal taste
My friend Michael is a musicologist whose speciality is Johann Sebastian Bach. An author and lecturer, he speaks to erudite groups in many countries about, for example, Bach’s Mass in B minor.
Michael doesn’t think much of most popular music.
But last weekend he walked into a Manhattan dinner party where the early Beatles played on the sound system. As Can’t Buy Me Love began, Michael was nodding along.
“It’s just,” he said with a smile, “so good.”
That same weekend, across New York state in a Buffalo suburb, my friend Lauri overheard some kids of middle-school age chattering about music they were discovering on TikTok: “Did you hear that one, ‘I heard some news today oh boy’?”
The Beatles endure. They transcend time, geography, demographics and personal taste.
That will be proven once again on Friday, yet another anniversary of John Lennon’s murder outside his home at the Dakota apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Forty-three years have passed, but that won’t discourage the crowd that I am certain will be gathering about a quarter of a mile away in Central Park.
Source: Margaret Sullivan/The Guardian
