{"id":332026,"date":"2025-12-05T12:50:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/332026\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T12:50:28","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T12:50:28","slug":"the-beatles-dont-need-help-winning-new-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/332026\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beatles don\u2019t need help winning new fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author and longtime Rolling Stone<\/a> music journalist, Rob Sheffield, joined host Kenneth Womack for our special seventh season finale of \u201cEverything Fab Four<\/a>,\u201d a podcast co-produced by me and Womack (a music scholar who also writes about pop music for Salon) and distributed by Salon.<\/p>\n

Sheffield was a guest at the recent \u201cEverything Fab Four\u201d Fest<\/a> in early November in Asbury Park, NJ, where he shared an onstage conversation with Womack and our previous podcast guest, Jamie Bernstein<\/a>. The event celebrated The Beatles<\/a>\u2019 \u201cRubber Soul<\/a>,\u201d an album which not only turns 60 this week but that Sheffield says is his favorite and \u201cgoes with us everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care if they made \u2018better\u2019 albums,\u201d he said. \u201cTo me, \u2018Rubber Soul\u2019 is the one. The Beatles shocked themselves with how great it was, and it\u2019s still shocking me. It\u2019s an album that continues to inspire and influence musicians to this day.\u201d From the Fab Four\u2019s 1960s contemporaries Brian Wilson<\/a> and The Rolling Stones<\/a> to more current artists such as Ariana Grande<\/a> and Phoebe Bridgers, Sheffield believes people appreciate that the band was \u201cwilling to experiment and not repeat the formula.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Womack\u2019s part, he expressed admiration for Sheffield\u2019s work and the \u201cvulnerability\u201d he shows when writing about music \u2013 something Sheffield attributes to the former Beatles. \u201cEnthusiasm. Music has always brought it out of me, and you can blame Paul McCartney<\/a> for that. He and Ringo<\/a> both, in 2025, still have this pure, undimmed, unjaded enthusiasm.\u201d He went on to explain that Taylor Swift<\/a> (whose work he examines in his latest book, \u201cHeartbreak is the National Anthem<\/a>\u201d) also seems to share that as a songwriter. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved her ability to jump into every emotion \u2013 to summon that enthusiasm. She and Paul are both so similar in their fanaticism about writing pop music. They can take an everyday scene and make it something memorable.\u201d<\/p>\n

LISTEN:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Follow and listen to \u201cEverything Fab Four\u201d on\u00a0Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0RadioPublic<\/a>,\u00a0Pocket Casts<\/a>\u00a0or wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n

The conversation then turned to The Beatles\u2019 \u201cAnthology<\/a>,\u201d which just saw an album and docuseries update and rerelease for its 30th anniversary. \u201cJust when you think they can\u2019t dig into the vaults any deeper, they do,\u201d said Sheffield. \u201cEvery time it seems it\u2019s leveled out and reached its plateau, the kids take it and run with it. There\u2019s never been any need to turn people on to The Beatles, because they just do a better job of doing that themselves than anyone ever has.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Host Kenneth Womack is the author of a two-volume biography on Beatles producer George Martin and the bestselling books \u201cSolid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles\u201d<\/a> and \u201cJohn Lennon, 1980: The Last Days in the Life.\u201d<\/a> His latest book is the authorized biography of Beatles road manager Mal Evans, \u201cLiving the Beatles Legend,\u201d<\/a> out now.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

about Everything Fab Four<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Author and longtime Rolling Stone music journalist, Rob Sheffield, joined host Kenneth Womack for our special seventh season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-332026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}