How Many Bands were better than The Beatles?

None?

One?

A thousand?

Is it enough to be great at what you do?

Steve Martin argued that if you’re good enough, sometime you’ll get recognized and find success. In some fields, I’m sure that’s true. If you can regularly run 100m in 9.8 seconds under pressure, I guess you’re going to be able to make your way to the Olympics after winning plenty of other races. If you make the effort to enter races, you’ll get discovered.

But if you can write and perform the most beautiful songs, or the most amazing poetry? Will your skills necessarily reach a wide audience?

Of course there are clear differences. A great sprinter and a great musician both need extreme dedication and technical ability. A great sprinter needs some natural attributes. But the Beatles weren’t about technical ability, they weren’t the best musicians, not by a long way.

Creativity. And, much as we might dislike considering it, marketing. Visuals made the Beatles cool. They weren’t as popular before they started wearing suits. Marketing was a part of their success. Maybe some luck and connections too. Maybe they found their own voice in songwriting early and had the courage to follow through.

I suspect there have been hundreds of bands as good as the Beatles, certainly in terms of performing if not songwriting. But they found a way, found an audience, and explored ways to be themselves.

I think they found a way too for it to be fun.

And of course the real problem is that we assume that success means being recognized, being well known, having a big audience. ‘Making it’. Serving a smaller audience really well might be a better definition.