The Beatles and The Beach Boys weren't actively competing with each other yet in 1963, but if you're comparing the bands, you have to compare their output from that monumental year. 1963 brought The Beatles first two albums ( Please Please Me and With the Beatles) and three new Beach Boys albums ( Surfin' U.S.A., Surfer Girl, and Little Deuce Coupe), and the race to pop stardom was on. That same year, The Beatles put out their debut single, "Love Me Do," an instant local hit for them as well. The Beach Boys achieved local success with their debut single "Surfin'" in 1961, which was followed in 1962 with their debut album Surfin' Safari and its even more popular title track. In California, The Beach Boys fused it with doo-wop and surf music, and in Liverpool, The Beatles fused it with skiffle and their homegrown Merseybeat. Its impact - of course - was far from over, and in the early 1960s, new bands all around the world had begun reshaping the genre in different ways. 1962 - The Beginningīy 1960, rock and roll might've seemed like it had run its course, following the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper on the day that music died, the death of Eddie Cochran, the arrest of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage scandal, Elvis getting drafted, and Little Richard retiring. We've also got Beatles and Beach Boys vinyl in our shop.
So much happened in that eight-year period and this one article can't cover it all, but we tried to focus on the key moments between the two bands in the race to write the world's greatest pop album.įor even more on these two bands, check out the brand new films Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road and The Beatles: Get Back. The peak of their rivalry was between 19, but we'll also be looking at the leadup and the aftermath with this year-by-year breakdown, which begins in 1962 (the year The Beatles released their first single and The Beach Boys released their first album) and ends in 1970 (the year The Beatles released their final album). It's times like these that we end up with some of the best music ever written.īeatles vs Beach Boys may be a rivalry that ended over 50 years ago, but you can spend a lifetime talking about it, so we decided to take a closer look at the creative competition these two bands were in throughout the 1960s. The real winners are us, the listeners, who get the benefit of hearing all the great music that came out of this friendly competition. Like any music rivalry, there's a valid argument to be made no matter which side you choose. Pop music was advancing so quickly in the 1960s, and it was largely because its two leading bands were constantly trying to outshine each other. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and its pre-release, non-album single "Strawberry Fields Forever," the very song that caused Brian to abandon his storied Smile album, claiming The Beatles had already achieved what Smile had set out to do. The Beatles' Rubber Soul inspired Brian Wilson to write Pet Sounds, which in turn was a massive influence on Sgt. Their creative rivalry wasn't invented by the press like Beatles vs Stones partially was it was a very real competition that existed at every turn of each band's career. Like The Beatles and the Stones, The Beatles and The Beach Boys weren't actually enemies they were friends and they were both fans of - and influenced by - each other's music. It's easy to see why those two extremely popular British bands were pitted against each other, but when it came to innovations in the songwriting, arrangements, and production of pop music in the 1960s, The Beatles' greatest rivals were The Beach Boys.
Beatles vs Stones may be the most well-known rivalry in the history of pop music, but it's a rivalry that always seemed a little superficial, more based on image and stylistic preferences than anything else.
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