Depending on how much broad-brush history you absorb as fact, Kraftwerk invented dance music, whilst the Beatles redefined what pop could be. Kraftwerk gave us the synthesizer and the Beatles brought psychedelia to the masses, Kraftwerk essentially invented synth-pop, and the Beatles popularised the very notion of artists actually writing their own songs.
While the truth is – as with most things in history – a tad more nuanced than that, one thing you can’t deny is both bands’ indelible influence on pop culture, music, technology, and songwriting.
So – and for no other reason than we don’t think anyone has seriously analysed this before – we’re going to ponder which band has truly been the most influential… and which act will continue to cast the longest shadow in years to come?
Yes, it’s time to weigh up the impact that both four-piece outfits have made over a series of categories and definitively answer the question you have always wanted an answer to: which of these two has been the most important to the evolution of popular music?
The Music
On the face of it, The Beatles will easily triumph in any debate about music.
The original Fab Four had not only countless hits, but, through their LPs, widened the language of pop by exploring a plethora of genres. Across their career, they took in the teenage-angled pop of their early period (She Loves You, I Want to Hold Your Hand etc), to the more trailblazing, technologically innovative likes of Strawberry Fields Forever and those all-encompassing humanist anthems like Hey Jude and Let it Be. People are going to be singing those in centuries to come, without a doubt.
The Beatles re-established just what a rock ‘n’ roll band was, and took the record-buying public with them. Those classic albums, from Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper, to The White Album and Abbey Road, became eclectic and vibrant documents of the 1960s.
Lennon and McCartney penned songs about everything from love to freedom, peace to spirituality, contentious social issues and various allusions to drugs and the counter-culture.
“Because they had such a flair for arrangement, such ears for the telling junction, their records were full of neat, thrilling transitions that became hooks in themselves,” wrote author David Hepworth in an article entitled ‘The Beatles Were Underrated’ in The Word in 2008. “The listener would ricochet from one hook to another like a metal ball in on of Bally’s machines”
Kraftwerk, on the other hand, tended to focus on modes of transport and, well, computers.
Oh, and just about the only type of music that the Beatles never dabbled in was (the as yet uninvented, to be fair) synth-pop.
Although the Beatles were one of the top five early users of a Moog synth, but it’s not like they ever made a Don’t You Want Me with it is it?
So just in terms of the sheer variety, The Beatles win the most important category in our made-up fight, but will that buy them any time in the longevity stakes?
We’ll focus more on that later, but here’s a crumb of comfort for Kraftwerk fans who believe that the Düsseldorf four will be remembered for longer: ask Beatles fans what kind of music they made and the reply will be ‘well, what kind of music didn’t they make?’.
Unfortunately, that clever come back is not going to buy them time in the history books. The youth of today’s attention economy-oriented brains may hurry to reach a snap decision about what kind of band the Beatles actually were – and let’s face it, the early stuff is very of its time – whereas much of Kraftwerk’s post-Autobahn material still could pass for a modern release by dent of its innovative use of synths and drum machines.
It all still sounds pretty damn cool, which you can’t really say for Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.
Which is a neat way of me trying to pretend that Kraftwerk have snatched this opening category… when of course they haven’t.
John, Paul, George and Ringo win this round by their sheer girth of music and hits.
Focussed, clean, pop and electronic, Kraftwerk might well be, but in terms of the quantity of exceptional, era-defining material, the Beatles triumph in this round without much fuss.