Maturing Musically, part 3: Doing it Beatles Style.

In case you live under a rock, or have been off the planet recently, I thought I'd let you in on one of the hottest selling music groups this past month. They're a little 4 member band known as the Beatles. Not sure if you know the name. But here are just a few of the records they broke last month: (statistic from hypebot.com)

1). In the United States:

• On Billboard's Comprehensive Albums chart, which lists the most popular album releases in the US, including current and catalogue titles, The Beatles set a new record for the most simultaneous titles by a single artist (18), including five of the top 10 and nine of the top 20.
• On the Pop Catalog chart, The Beatles achieved another new Billboard chart first for the most simultaneous titles in the top 50 (16), a record they previously set themselves with 12 titles in December 1995. The Beatles have nine of the chart's top 10 titles, and all 14 re-mastered CDs are in the top 20, led by 'Abbey Road' at number one and 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' at number two.
• On the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, 'The Beatles' stereo boxed set debuted at number 15, and 'The Beatles in Mono' limited edition boxed set debuted at number 40

In the UK:
The Beatles had four titles in the top 10, seven in the top 40 and 16 in the top 75, including both the stereo and mono boxes, as well as 2000's 'Beatles 1' compilation. This set a new record for the most simultaneous albums in the UK charts according to the UK Official Charts Company. In this week's UK chart, The Beatles have 13 albums in the top 75. A further 84,000 CDs were sold last week, bringing their total sales of the re-masters to more than 354,000 in 11 days and their total UK sales this decade to 6,755,000.

In Japan:
14 re-mastered titles and boxed sets debuted in the top 25 of the international chart, including seven of the top 10, led by the stereo boxed set at number two, the mono boxed set at number three, 'Abbey Road' at four and 'Let It Be' at six. Across all titles and box sets, more than 840,000 albums were purchased by consumers in Japan in the first three days of sales.

Now if all this doesn't mean much to you let me point out that the most recently recorded Beatles CD (Abbey Road) was recorded 40 years ago. Also, this band that has all these albums on the charts, has lost two members: John Lennon and George Harrison. Yet there music is still selling millions of copies world wide. Why is this? What about this music makes it so salable even today? Who can say really. The talent of the band? yes. the heart they put into the music? yes. But it is undeniable, even today people long to here the strains of Yesterday. Who knows, maybe the answer to why the Beatles are still selling today is because it is a taste of the past, and like the song says, "Yesterday all my problems seemed so far away, now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh I believe in Yesterday."

Regardless of the reasons, The Beatles remain a pop music icon, and a top seller, which I think reiterates my point from my second Maturing Musically post that most of the best songs have already been written...and several of those were written by the boys from Liverpool.