Posted on 01/05/2015 12:41:05 PM PST by Red Badger
It's becoming more and more apparent that a new generational gap is forming. Whereas one generation didn't grow up with iPhones and high-speed internet, the newest generation sees these things as everyday commodities. It's natural for gaps like this to form, and with those gaps come plenty of hilarious consequences.
With how quickly technology is advancing, these gaps show themselves more frequently nowadays. There are the usual complaints (like 'those darn kids never put their phones down'), but it's really the disconnect between the two generations that stings. For instance, it seems unimaginable that the younger generation doesn't know who the Beatles are.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened this past week after a collaboration between Kanye West and the legendary Paul McCartney debuted. It's hard to imagine that McCartney would ever be 'discovered' by Kanye West, but according to Twitter, that's how it happened:
OVOJosh @OVOJosh Follow
I don't know who Paul McCartney is, but Kanye is going to give this man a career w/ this new song!! 9:27 PM - 1 Jan 2015
As is the usual, Twitter was soon overtaken with tweets about the aging Beatles star. Aside from the standard outrage, there were plenty of tweets that were obviously sarcastic: people trolling for a quick laugh at the younger generation's expense. That being said, many of the tweets asking who this 'Paul McCartney' guy was seemed legit:
Justin Morello @Morello_Justin Follow
Kanye West really knows how to expose great new talent. Bet this Paul McCartney guy is gonna be HUGE after this song. 8:12 PM - 2 Jan 2015
Cocolish @BeCoco77 Follow While seeing a story like this is still all sorts of sad, it's really just a byproduct of aging in a culture that glorifies a new celebrities seemingly every 15 minutes. Sir McCartney has seen something of a career revival over the past few years, and in the end, the older generation should just be happy that the newer, younger generation is being exposed to the legendary performer. After all, how many people went out and researched his music once all of this started? There are going to be hundreds of new Beatles fans once all of this is done; it's almost guaranteed. Even so, that doesn't stop tweets like this from summing up how we feel: There's a whole generation of people that think Kanye is about to make Paul McCartney a super star. Epic fail folks. End times are near. 8:33 AM - 5 Jan 2015
Too bad Kayne can’t collaborate with Sinatra and Elvis. Bet he’d make them into stars too. He also missed collaborating with Mozart and Bach. They were all so unlucky to have missed out on the Kayne magic.
As I mentioned down thread. Also, the singer was not yet the focal point of popular music in the 1910s. Sinatra signalled that change and he retained superstar status from the 1940s till his death in 1998.
Hardly the equivalent. In 1915, there was no TV, no music on radio, no talking movies, and no equivalent pop cultural explosion.
Virtually EVERYBODY in the Western World -- including my 80-year-old Russian born Jewish immigrant grandmother who never learned to read English -- knew who the Beatles were by the end of 1964, which made them TRUE superstars -- as opposed to today, when the world is full of "superstars" that an awful lot of people -- especially people in their 60s and 70s -- never heard of.
I can tell you though, having been a new teenager when the Beatles first hit the American airwaves, I sure knew who Rudy Vallee was, and recognized the parody when the New Vaudeville Band released "Winchester Cathedral" with the singer sounding like he was singing through a megaphone.
...the best-selling album of the decade is the Beatles' 1, a collection of their number one hits. And that, when counting the individual albums in their massive (and very expensive) box sets of remastered recordings released just this past September as individual albums rather than one "unit," the erstwhile lads from Liverpool have sold more CDs than Eminem, the leading solo act of the decade, or any group, for that matter.
The sooner Paul McCartney is forgotten, the better.
Hot Tours: Paul McCartney Is No. 1 With Sold Out U.S. Tour
Which popular musician from his generation is more suitable for posterity then?
A lot of the Animals output wasn’t even self written. Especially before the late 60s.
Don't sugarcoat it.
McCartney will endure as a songwriter first. And at his best he had one hell of a voice.
I don’t need a virtual web station to listen to the Beatles. You can listen to their entire catalog in less than a day.
The big band era bands are like comparing the Beatles to the bands of 1991-1994.
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