What with the recent release of Radiohead's new album The King of Limbs, the internet is once again bordering on convulsions in reaction to this rare event. There's a Track-By-Track Breakdown of the album on Rollingstone.com. There's a blog dedicated to determining if there is another album being released right behind Limbs. There's a guide to Thom Yorke's dance moves in the "Lotus Flower" video. But a thoroughly interesting opining from Tim Carmody on Snarkmarket caught my eye. Tim examines the claim by a flighty Twitterer that "Radiohead > The Beatles". The article is well thought-out, but it's the comments below that are the real treasure, as readers (and Tim, in response) examine the heights within our popular consciousness to which Radiohead, and many other acts, have scaled and what that really means in the music industry. As I have often dwelled on such a comparison, my couple of pennies were added as follows:
This, from Tim, is the key: “It isn’t completely about longevity, or quality, or even popular success, but the intersection of the three.” There are bands/artists that make absolutely brilliant music and that garner incredible popular+critical acclaim, but fall off after one or two albums; bands/artists that have been consistently making excellent music for decades but that only a small sliver of the populace has heard of; bands/artists that have been selling concert tickets by the millions since before I was born but who’s music really isn’t all that good (probably fewer of these, but they’re there). Radiohead is a band that has made consistently amazing music, for nearly two decades, and is adored by the majority of fans and critics alike, and they do all these things at a level probably unparalleled today.
Now, are they better than the Beatles? I feel the premise of the question is misguided. As has been said above, *so* much about the music industry has changed since then. A godfatherly figure in my life, who was alive during Beatlemania and may have actually seen them in the Cavern, once explained to me that a very significant part of what enabled the Beatles to cast such a massive shadow over all popular music henceforth was that they were The First. Granted, their music was consistently excellent, and they were consistently loved by pretty much everyone with ears. But everyone before them, even figures as large as Elvis, got on a boat and crossed the ocean. The Beatles boarded a rocket and went to the moon.
Has Radiohead also gone to the moon? Almost certainly. Again, the level at which they have achieved quality, longevity, and popular success with their music is matched by an incredibly select group of musicians, dating back through the 20th century. But I personally feel that they can never be “better” simply because it’s the Beatles’ flag sticking out of the rock, planted in 1964, with the words “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Given all that, though, like Tim also said above, “the fact of making the comparison no longer seems inherently ridiculous.”
