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October 25th, 2026 · 3:00am GMT
While The Beatles are frequently hailed as being one of the acts responsible for reshaping the landscape of popular music, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to show unequivocal support for the music that came into existence as a result of their influence.
Many people will tell you that before the Beatles, there was nothing, and that’s grossly untrue and unfair to both the rock and roll icons who inspired them, as well as the pop stars of the early 1960s and before. Yes, what the Beatles did was take inspiration from them and mould it into something novel, but this is how things are supposed to work, and to state that they were the true genesis of all pop music would be ignorant of how much groundwork had been laid down prior to their formation.
You can’t necessarily guarantee that the people who the Liverpudlian trailblazers claimed to be their biggest influences actually liked what they did, and so naturally, the same has to be said of what the Beatles went on to inspire. At the same time, the Beatles were serving as an inspiration to their own contemporaries, as well as taking cues from them in their efforts to expand their sound further, such as the infamous push-pull rivalry between them and their US counterparts, the Beach Boys.
However, it also became abundantly clear that the longer the group went on, the further apart all of the members began to drift, highlighting just how different their tastes had become. By the time they all embarked on their respective solo careers after they chose to disband in 1970, all four members were operating in distinctly different spaces, and their respective solo careers are illustrative of this creative discord.
Arguably, the member who had strayed the furthest in this time was George Harrison, and despite the fact that there were some of his influences present in what the Beatles did together, it has to be said that they weren’t giving him enough room to exert this influence as much. Therefore, it’s only natural that he would show signs of getting bored much earlier than his colleagues.
According to a 1976 interview with the guitarist and songwriter, he claimed that nothing was interesting to him in the contemporary world, at least not in the West. “Personally, I think Indian music is where it’s at,” he argued. “There isn’t too much going on in pop that I seem to like.”
However, he did go on to concede that in the early days of the band, there was one contemporary collective that he found himself being consistently impressed by, particularly noting two of its most prominent members as being incredible songwriters and performers.
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“When the Beatles started off, our influences were Tamla Motown and Chuck Berry, and that’s the music I still like,” Harrison proclaimed, adding: “My favourites are Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder.”
Motown was, of course, hugely influential to the wider pop landscape around the same time as the Beatles were reaching their peak, with the label’s main proponents hitting their stride slightly earlier and therefore rubbing off on the quartet.
Ultimately, while Harrison may have been drawn to the sound of Indian music rather than contemporary Western sounds, he was also pretty damn good at writing pop hits, and so it makes complete sense that if he was going to make an exception for any pop songwriters, it might as well be those who mastered the craft like Robinson and Wonder managed to do.
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