Everyone knows The Beatles. Whether you grew up listening to them through your older relatives, found them on your own or just know a few of their songs through pop culture, The Beatles are a band known by all, unless you live under a rock.
Culturally, The Beatles created about 30 years worth of music in around 10 years. They dabbled in and pioneered music in several genres, including rock, pop, blues, psychedelic rock, proto-metal and more. They have been nominated for and have won several Grammys, including Album of the Year in 1967 for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. Their discography includes 14 studio albums, five live albums, 68 music videos and 17 box sets.
With this enormous cultural impact that has lasted for decades, it’s no surprise that people are still big fans of The Beatles to this day. Their number of monthly listeners on Spotify is nearly 23 million, quite impressive considering the last time they dropped new music was in 1970.
Even though The Beatles have a huge role in music history, Gen Z– in classic Gen Z fashion– has taken a disliking to this objectively great band that has been loved by all for the past half-century. “The Beatles suck” meme has been persistent on the Internet, especially on Twitter, for about a year or so now.
The funny thing is, people just say “The Beatles weren’t good” and it gets all of the impassioned Beatles fans up-in-arms and defensive. Anyone who says The Beatles weren’t good usually says only that and has no further opinion on the subject. They can never articulate why or how the classic band is not good. Since everyone in the past has loved The Beatles, the contrarian nature of Gen Z is to dislike them.
This trolling hatred is par for the course for Gen Z. Gen Z loves to make fun of things that are “mainstream trendy,” especially if it is loved by millennials (which The Beatles are). Making fun of things that most people love is something that Gen Z loves to do.
The reason for this hatred, I hate to say, is attention. Being a contrarian gets clicks. Gen Z won’t admit it, but many of their opinions and online actions are all based in how we can get people to notice us for that serotonin boost that comes with it.
As a member of Gen Z, I’ll admit it’s a guilty pleasure of mine to have a tweet get a lot of interaction. But I’ll be caught dead before I’m caught online with a contrarian opinion simply for the sake of outraging people. Hatred toward The Beatles — one of the best bands of the 20th century — is objectively baseless and the only point of it is to seem edgy and different for attention.
Mikayla Rochelle is a senior studying strategic communication at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. What are your thoughts? Tell Mikayla by tweeting her at @mikayla_roch.
