The question "Who is the best band of all time?" comes up often enough from enough different sources that it seems worth considering. There are certainly plenty of candidates, and it makes for a lively discussion.
But it's almost impossible to come up with a convincing argument for anyone to be better than the Beatles. The group popularized the modern idea of rock, by far the most prolific and popular genre in history (barring the conventions of so-called "classical" music, which admittedly hung around in various incarnations pretty successfully for a few thousand years). The Beatles are responsible for the idea of a "pop" song at all: something catchy that shows up on the radio and makes people want to dance and sing along.
They were also incredibly diverse in their stylings: unlike many other bands that invariably come up in the "best band" discussion, the Beatles bothered to explore their own imaginations and see what came out (admittedly with the help of psychadelics, but so it goes). And wonderfully enough, those experiments often produced genius, "Octopus's Garden" notwithstanding.
Most astonishingly of all, the band broke up nearly 40 years ago (an astonishingly long time for music, when Billboard Charts change completely in a matter of weeks), and their music is still enjoyed by millions. They've even become the inspiration for truly fantastic film (Across the Universe) somehow became a video game (Beatles Rock Band is one of the most fantastic things ever created by man).
Who could compete?
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