I disagree with those in this thread who say that the course of music evolution would not change if the Beatles had never existed.
Whenever people hear music, they are altered, even if only slightly, which will impact the music they create and the way they react when they hear other music. So, if you negate the Beatles, then you would end up with slightly different music traditions. There might even end up being different genres eventually that *would never have arisen* had a particular group not become popular.
Here is an analogy from another area of human creativity: languages.
Out of the infinite number of different languages that *could* emerge, only some have been developed (due to a mixture of history and human brain abilities). If Latin (a metaphor for The Beatles) never arose, we would all be speaking and communicating here, but using a different language, and perhaps a radically different one. Perhaps Chinese!
I feel a music group can have a big effect on the future developments within music.
It is not a given that all possible music genres will be created and blossom, just as there are many potential languages that *will never exist.*
Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonlitSunshine
Let X be the band who released music in the 60's whom are considered to be a massive influence on modern music, in any potential timeline. If one were to remove X entirely, such that there was no replacement band with similar ideas, then many modern bands may not exist.
As The Beatles represent X for our specific timeline, they have a point :P
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I agree that if there were no replacement band with similar ideas, then many modern bands would be very different.
But even though there were music trends and ideas that gave rise to the Beatles and that would have continued even if the Beatles had never formed, I'd still say the modern world of music would have been different without the Beatles, their unique songs, and their impact on popular culture and musical preferences.
How different would music be now if the Beatles had never existed? I think it might be like the difference between a city in Germany and a city in the United States.
I still remember landing in Hamburg for the first time and walking down a street, amazed. They had much of what we had in the U.S., but everything was slightly different: the road signs, the pedestrian signals, the cross walk stripes, the shapes of windows in houses. And there were a few more radical differences, too: graveyards I visited in Germany were lovely, intricate places full of trees and shrubs and real flowers; in the U.S., they are usually flat, grassy, sterile areas devoid of life except for some oaks among the gravestones decorated with plastic bouquets.
A history without the Beatles could have changed the current music scene as much as the difference between a German and a U.S. graveyard.