Universally hailed as the most significant band of all time, The Beatles did a great deal to earn such an unrivalled status. From the music to their attitude – and even their choice of garments – the Fab Four pushed back against tradition and opened the door to the beckoning light of the future. Without their efforts, it is sure that most of what followed within the music industry wouldn’t have come to fruition.
It is a fascinating proposition to consider what the world might look like without the work of The Beatles. It’s almost guaranteed that popular music would be in no way as creative as it is today and that it would have taken much longer to get to the postmodern bonanza that keeps on giving, as the Liverpudlians were the first to really blur the lines between genres and styles. It’s indicative of the quartet’s impact that many university courses now examine their consequence on areas ranging from the 1960s to the music industry. It is, quite simply, the stuff of legend.
Given that The Beatles are such an essential force in the story of the modern era, it makes sense that they should be awarded for their efforts. Whether it be Academy Awards or a string of Ivor Novellos, their trophy cabinets are brimming with the most revered accolades an artist can receive. This is another signifier of just how wide-reaching their efforts were.
One award they are particularly familiar with is the Grammys. To date, they’ve been nominated for 28 Grammy Awards and have taken home 11. Notably, in 1965, they won ‘Best New Artist’, an award which, retrospectively, seems like a tremendous understatement, and in 1968, their psychedelic masterpiece from the previous year, Sgt. Pepper’s, was bestowed the ‘Best Contemporary Album’ title. In 1971, Let It Be even secured ‘Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture’.
However, only three Beatles songs have won individual Grammys outside of the albums they were included on, a number not as high as most would think. The first of these was their classic single ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ in 1965, which won ‘Best Performance by a Vocal Group’. As is well known, the track was popularised by featuring prominently on the soundtrack to The Beatles’ feature film of the same name. Following this, in 1967, ‘Michelle’, from the band’s stoned album Rubber Soul, won ‘Song of the Year’, thanks to it being a worldwide success on the radio after its release in December 1965.
Finally, ‘Free as a Bird’ won two awards in 1997. The song was released in 1995, 25 years after the band’s break-up and 15 years after frontman John Lennon’s murder, which incorporated his original 1977 home demo into a studio version featuring the surviving members, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. It won ‘Best Music Video, Short Form’ and ‘Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal’.
