My mother has always been a huge fan of The Beatles, and I suppose it was inevitable that this affection would be passed on to me – she has a large collection of CD’s and has several of their films on videotape, and I remember watching their film Help! a lot in my childhood. I was too young to really appreciate the storyline but I liked the songs and I thought the men singing them were quite funny. As I got older, I grew more accustomed to the modern music my friends enjoyed, and so the band disappeared from my life. Now that The Beatles have recently been made available to stream online, I have happily rediscovered The Beatles and the music from my childhood.
The first song of theirs that I played on Spotify was, surprise surprise, ‘Help!’. It’s catchy, rhythmic and to me, it just encapsulates The Beatles. Because I loved the film Help! so much, I have many positive connotations attached to the song – it brings back memories from my childhood, giggling at their silly jokes.
The Beatles are, of course, iconic and influenced music as we know it to no end, but it has been speculated that younger generations haven’t actually listened to a lot of their music, simply because of their lack of digital presence. Now that The Beatles have gone online, hopefully many more people will, like me, rediscover The Beatles for themselves.
Words by Ruth Grove