Introducing the Beatles!

Catalog description

This course addresses the Beatles' musical career in terms of their wide-ranging cultural and artistic influence. Particular attention will be devoted to examining their songs within the context of their composition and in terms of their place (and placement) on the band's albums. In addition to investigating their biographical lives, we will discuss the Beatles' overtly literary and textual intentions, especially their various attempts at irony, parody, and satire. This course's chronological design is arranged in order to capture the band's artistic trajectory from two-track recording and the relatively primitive Please Please Me album through the sonic heights of Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album, and Abbey Road. The thrust of this course is interpretive in nature, with the Beatles' songs and albums receiving considerable scrutiny in terms of their composition, production, and attendant musicianship. Developments in recording and instrument technology are germane to our understanding of the Beatles' evolving aesthetic, as is the bandmates' development as songwriters who eventually eschew issues associated with romance in order to address larger and more prescient subjects in their music such as loneliness, oppression, nostalgia, ethics, and redemption.