The aspect of this that really bugs me is that people never get how revolutionary something was. Like taking your example of music, people listen to songs by The Beatles or Nirvana or David Bowie and think “Their fine, but I don’t know what’s so great about them - 100 other bands sound the same.” But the thing is, at the time, no other bands sounded the same, they were just copied like crazy.
You see it with movies, too. Gone With The Wind, Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, Blade Runner - all really good movies in their own right, but putting them in the context of the movies of the time shows how influential they were. All highly copied afterwards.
people listen to songs by The Beatles or Nirvana or David Bowie and think “Their fine, but I don’t know what’s so great about them - 100 other bands sound the same.”
I’ve never heard a band that sucked like the Beatles sucks.
I don’t think the Beatles are bad because many others copied their style, I just think that, besides for a few specific songs, I don’t really like their style.
Oh, that’s fine, music is subjective. I think Jimmy Hendrix was an amazing musician who could make a guitar do anyone he wanted, but I don’t enjoy a lot of what he choose to do with one. My point is issue is that it’s hard for us to understand how influential something was if we weren’t around when it came out. All the cliches started with something that did it first.
