That one is pretty bold and outside the box. What's next no one has impacted Hockey as much as Wayne Gretzky

The bold statement was the part you edited out. Reading comprehension not your strong suit?

The Beatles might be the biggest sellers but Black Sabbath is the most influential band/artist of all time. The Velvet Underground sold .000004% of what the Beatles did but they probably still caused more people to start bands.

Joy Division > New Order - (Power Corruption and Lies)

I think the Beatles influenced how artist view the making of a complete album vice singles, but musically I don't think they were pushing the envelope as much as people give them credit for. They were a band that did a good job latching onto whatever genre was popular at the time and reinventing themselves, kinda like Madonna. I guess that's my bold statement about them

It's kinda funny how we have come full circle and singles are the popular thing now instead of albums, at least with the younger generation.

^ Just another reason why so much current music is garbage.

No, that's just your personal vantage point, as I'm sure when you were a kid, adults felt the same about what you were into then.

Let me use this Douglas Adams quote to illustrate the issue on how it's really all relative. For our purposes, let's assume it's about music.

If anything music is actually getting better. Because the more that's out there with each passing decade, the more refined and/or novel new music has to be to stand out. But when it sucks, it sucks for consistent and modern reasons, such as the diminishing ability for bands to takes risks (such as the Beatles did) without a huge record company to fall back on. Bands have to be far more DIY these days than they used to be, and unfortunately, the type of artist who's a talented song writer is usually not also a talented manager. For example, if Jimi Hendrix had to put out his own records and promote his own shows, he would never have gotten anywhere. That's why these days, the fan has to do more work to seek things out than they used to, as they sure as shit won't be playing the good stuff on the radio like they did on the album stations in the '70s.

The Beatles influence is due more to their popularity and how it changed the industry rather than the actual music. The industry changed to adopt the Beatles template, as did the public.
50s Rock n Roll was a fad that lasted from 1955-59. Mostly country and R&B artists who jumped on the fad bandwagon. By 1959 these artists went back to the genre they preferred, disappeared, went to prison, or were in the army. Even Elvis was a fair weather rocker, his later music is where he really was at. Early 60s rock n roll was a mixture of Motown, Beach Boys and Frankie & Annette. Along come The Beatles and not only revive rock 'n' roll, but start the classic rock era that lasted a good 30 years.
Before the Beatles it was solo artists, or "So and So and The So and Sos". Beatles popularity gave us the concept of the "rock band". Kids may not have wanted to sound like the Beatles, but they wanted to form a band like the Beatles. "What are we gonna call ourselves?"
Before the Beatles there were artists and there were songwriters. Not only did the Beatles write their own stuff but if you wanted to be like the Beatles you had to write your own stuff too. Carole King once said, "The Beatles nearly put us out of business." The early Stones albums are all covers. They realized if they were ever going to make it they had to start writing their own songs too.
As for the music. At the time the Beatles were busy being the most famous people who ever lived, there was a guy named Dylan recording folk music.
In 1965 The Byrds thought it would be a good idea to take a Dylan song and give it the Beatles' poppy sound. The result was their recording of "Mr. Tambourine Man". This recording is probably the most influencal rock song.

So much music has always been garbage.

Today you at least have Sigur Ros, Red Sparowes, Tool, This Will Destroy You, God is an Astronaut, Mono, William Elliot Whitmore, Beirut, Mars Volta (though broke up now), Guapo, Koenjihyakkei, Ruins, Regina Spektor, Maserati, Secret Chiefs 3, and the list goes on...

I would agree that no one has had more of an impact than the Beatles. Kate Bush and Tori Amos, while both phenomenal artists, don't even crack the Top 100 in terms of impact.

I would say the Top 5 most impactful are the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Dylan, the Ramones, and the Stones. Elvis and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five probably also belong on that Top 5 list, so we'll make it a Top 7 instead.

Difference is most artists could still put together ALBUMS worth buying, and most people found them worth listening to on a GOOD sound system- not downloaded mp3s listened to on ear buds. And yes there is still good music being made today, but it's largely absent from the radio and other mainstream media.

The Velvet Underground had a far bigger impact than the Ramones, and if you take Lou Reed and John Cale's careers in total, they blow away everyone except maybe the Beatles -- between the two of them, they had a profound impact on punk, goth, glam, industrial and ambient -- to say nothing of Cale's role in making Hallelujah the most covered song of the last fifty years.

Peter Hamill had more of an impact and influence than most of those artists/bands.

Ramones get a lot of credit but seriously - how can one discount the Stooges, New York Dolls, Modern Lovers, and the whole Bowie/Bolan thing (and VU obviously)?

And to the guy saying the Beatles haven't really influenced the music.

Lowlife is the best New Order album, followed by Technique. PC&L has high highs, but is weighed down by a significant amount of filler. Actually forget it, the best New Order "album" is Substance. Both of Joy Division's albums are better than anything New Order ever did.

Best forgotten New Order tracks:
"Leave Me Alone"
"All Day Long"
"Avalanche"

New Order could even lose their 3 best albums (just to bring their output to match Joy Division's) and they'd still have better material than JD.

Hmm... I prefer New Order to Joy Division, but I'd have trouble saying one is objectively better than the other. I see them as two bands pursuing two pretty distinctly different musical visions.

Thanks for directing me to this. Three very good songs there ("Live and Learn", "Head Above Water", "Devil Come Round"), which I wouldn't have expected after all those fallow years (not that I am a big MWH fan to begin with).

The problem to me with todays music is with the digital technology you don't have to be that great of a singer/musician to record a song in a studio. You mess up the second chorus you can copy and paste the first chorus.

Fixed

Amen

That's a really fucking ignorant statement. And I don't listen to much modern stuff either.

Yeah, that whole album had just the songwriting and production that I was looking for from them.

Ignorant, yes. But not as ignorant as the commentary on the Beatles Smithee was responding to.

/bold ..... Movement is possibly the worst debut by a band ever. It sounds like it was recorded in a closet. But I have warmed to it over the years.

/notsobold ..... The best New Order release is their 1981-1982 EP. I still have that sucker on vinyl somewhere. It has the definitive and superior version of Temptation, which for a while was hard to find amidst all the digital re-releases.

It was just re-released on clear vinyl for Record Store Day.
http://www.bullmoose.com/p/17047085/new-order-1981-1982

I'm pretty sure Technique is New Order's best album. I say pretty sure because I haven't heard Low-Life outside of The Perfect Kiss (which I hate) and Subculture (which I love).

Movement is terrible except for the first track, Power, Curruption & Lies is great but a little uneven, and Brotherhood is solid. But Technique is great all the way through.

Another "bold" statement: Republic is really good.

I don't get Joy Division at all. I have Closer and I get nothing out of it. Id rather listen to The Cure's Seventeen Seconds or Faith any day.