Please Do Not Question the Beatles. Thank You.

What We Hear vs. What We’re Told to Believe

Before the early 1960s, the music industry was a well-oiled machine with clearly labeled parts. A song was written by songwriters, performed by singers, and polished to a shine by producers and session musicians who probably played on 400 other hits that week.

Nobody was bothered in the least. That was just business as usual.
Elvis didn’t arrange horn sections. Nat King Cole didn’t orchestrate his ballads. And no one screamed, “Fraud!” upon finding out Frank Sinatra didn’t scribble Fly Me to the Moon on the back of a cocktail napkin during a late-night epiphany.

Then came those four lads from Liverpool — and the world collectively lost its mind.

Suddenly, the gold standard of authenticity wasn’t just performance or interpretation.
It was full-on musical divinity: write every song, sing every harmony, reinvent Western music theory before breakfast — and do it all while touring the world and starring in movies.

And thus, the Most Sacred Narrative in Music was born:

The Beatles did it all themselves.

The public took this story, wrapped it in velvet, kissed it on the forehead, and placed it in a shrine next to their vinyl copies of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It became untouchable. You could say the moon landing was faked, that the Earth was flat, or that birds were government drones — but if you questioned whether George Harrison really wrote the harmony to Something, you’d be escorted out of the record store by torchlight.

Even if you don’t analyze. Even if you don’t read music. Even if you’ve never heard the word chromatic.
The ears know.

Because you can hear the difference between this:

Paul McCartney (Beatles)
“Martha My Dear”
E7 Am7 D7 G7sus4 G7
Gm7 C9 Fmaj7 F#dim7 G7

and this:

Paul McCartney (solo)
“Maybe I’m Amazed”
C Am Dm F G

Or this:

John Lennon (Beatles)
“Because”
C#m Cdim C#m7 F#m7 B E A Am

and this:

John Lennon (solo)
“Imagine”
F G C E

Or this:

George Harrison (Beatles)
“Something”
C Cmaj7 C7 F D7
G Em A C C7

and this:

George Harrison (solo)
“My Sweet Lord”
E D A

This is not about better or worse.
Some of the greatest songs ever written use three chords and a capo.
Dylan did it for decades.
That’s not the point.

The point is: these are different songs.
Different musical minds. Different harmonic logic.
You don’t go from Because to Imagine by streamlining your process.
You go by subtracting something.

One artist changing directions — maybe that happens.
Maybe somebody gives up their greatest songwriting skills on purpose.
But all three?

That is something else.

I get that creative energy changes with age.
People slow down. Output fades.
But that’s not what this was.

This wasn’t slowing down.
This was retreating.

A great mathematician might age out of peak discovery.
He might publish less.
But he doesn’t go back to long division.
He doesn’t spend his golden years relearning arithmetic.

It’s like Beethoven deciding to write only campfire songs after the Ninth Symphony.
Not because he had to.
Because he wanted to “get back to his roots.”

And we’re expected to nod along.

To believe that three world-class harmonic architects, each capable of extended voicings and chromatic depth,
independently decided to walk away from it.

No loss. No explanation. Just… simplicity.

And if you question it — if you notice the absence of the very thing that made them historic —
you’re the problem.