Yeah there were quite a few negative reviews. They were often described as "annoying noise".

On the Beatles forum we were curious about that ourselves a while ago, but could only find a few reviews. So it's funny to see more.

They were right, eh?

And it only got worse with the bigger than Jesus statement.

to be fair , and i am no beatle fan , but those reviews are from whgen they were suit wearing mop tops who were led on a leash by mngmt ,

they were the eqiuviliant of say the backstreet boys or nsynch , fast 3 minute pop tunes

I am not making fun of them but back then there music was 3 minute bubble gum pop that the teens ate up but the older male fans by and large dismissed as rubbish .

as they grew into men wore there own clothes and wrote more interesting music those reviews were forgoten

and what to critics know??     one of those mags said led zep would go over like a led balloon

I agree, they were primarily a boy band in their first few years - teenage girls screamed at them, they were good looking guys, and they sang about holding hands and being in love. They certainly weren't macho (and never were macho).

About as boy band as you can get - but I'm not using that as a stick to beat them with. Whereas the connotations of a boy band today are negative because they are 99% manufactured, The Beatles wrote their own songs, played their own instruments and were great singers who didn't need autotune (unlike modern boy bands), so it was seen as a great thing back then. Everyone goes on about the latter Beatles period as if it trumps the Beatlemania phase, but I think them at their peak during Beatlemania matches up to anything they did later on, albeit in a very different manner. I think A Hard Day's Night is pure pop perfection, and I think it's the standard album upon which great pop acts like ABBA have built upon. It definitely has pros which outweigh later Beatles albums (likewise, individually, all latter Beatles albums had pros which outweigh the others) - it's bursting with melody (as always - there is meaning in all great melody), fun, fast paced, energetic, the harmonies are amazing, the music is very tightly knit, and many of the songs seem like the peak of McCartney and Lennon's shared compositions, each offering their own qualities to the same song. It's the most fun Beatles album and is as important to their back catalogue as Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Pepper, White Album and Abbey Road.

This isn't having a go at you kalas as I know you are a lover of good pop too, but what I'm going to say is that some people outright sneer at all forms of pop music. I know a lot of friends who are scared of it compared to rock, because it isn't macho and ballsy enough, so they jump on the bandwagon to try and make themselves look cool. It's somehow effeminate to like pop music, and I've received the usual homophobic banter of it being 'gay'. Some people can get a bit too pretentious and narrow minded over pop as if 3 minute meaningless lighthearted pop songs are nothing to get excited about, but good old fashioned pop has qualities that other, more artistic pieces of work don't have, like the qualities listed above.

I don't care what Pitchfork or some hipster nonsense says about pop music because it is the foundation upon which the very best music is made. Perhaps if Pitchfork was around in the early 1960s, they'd be sneering at The Beatles with their elitist, narrow minded opinons. But for me, pop is greater than rock. Rock is brilliant, but its at its best when it has evolved from pop music - just look at Oasis. For me, Morning Glory is the ultimate pop album, evolved to a rock sound. I don't think for one second it is a rock album because fundamentally, all those songs have the hallmark of pop songs - and Noel is a pop writer in my opinion, compared to, say, Pete Townshend who is a rock writer. And The Stone Roses were better in their poppy form of the debut album than the rockier second album. So if anyone says pop is 'gay', they are pretty much slandering all the great works that derived from it.

For me, it is the foundation upon which the greatest albums of all time have derived from, and one that The Beatles built upon and The Beach Boys built upon to create some of the most revered albums of all time. My favourite band The Smiths are essentially an evolved form of pop - their sound is very poppy and Morrissey, as we all know, loved his pop and Eurovision! And it's why I love quintessential pop bands like A-ha, Coldplay and ABBA - who are sneered upon - because I see echoes of the same qualities that The Beatles perfected during their Beatlemania phase. I will always be of the belief that pop rules over all other genres!