From Liverpool's clubs to Sgt. Pepper's studio experiments, they rewrote the rules.
For a quick sense of their range, put on Come Together's swampy rock and then Eleanor Rigby's chamber-pop melancholy. They're both unmistakably Beatles.
Listen to Eleanor Rigby's string quartet or the psychedelic layers of Happiness Is a Warm Gun, and you hear a band that kept pushing what a pop song could be. They moved from the straightforward rush of She Loves You to the conceptual ambition of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in just a few years. That restless energy made their catalog a permanent reference point for anyone who came after.
They started in Liverpool in the early 1960s, sparking Beatlemania with hits like I Want to Hold Your Hand. By the late '60s, they were experimenting with studio techniques and broader influences, creating albums like Abbey Road before breaking up in 1970.
Keep it compact: a lyric you come back to, a live memory, or the part of the catalog you would point someone toward first.
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