June 2015 | Liner Notes

Flickr user Phil Sherry

Last
year, tens of thousands of people heard (or heard of) The Beatles for the first
time. As Paul McCartney performed at the Grammys, the uninitiated (mostly teens
and pre-teens) raised their collective eyebrows and asked, on various social
media platforms, “Who’s this?” A second group, those who grew up listening to
the Beatles first—or secondhand—took screenshots of these reactions and took to
their own social media accounts to either mock or descry. The message was
either “look at these idiots” or “how have things gotten this bad?”

Like
most outrage born on the internet, the episode was quickly over and quickly
forgotten. But the purported incident bears review at a critical distance.
Whether they were laughing derisively or lamenting the downfall of musical
taste, the second group grounded their reasoning, unconsciously, in the
assumption that Paul McCartney and his work should be instantly and universally
recognizable. How could something so fundamentally important to us, they seemed
to be asking, not register (let alone resonate) with successive generations?
Surely, this new generation is the first to shrug off the heroes of their
fathers.

It does startle
you, admittedly, when someone doesn’t know something as culturally prevalent
and as impactful as The Beatles. But after that initial disbelief, it’s
important to remember how multitudinous the experiences in this country and
around the world. People grow up with different frames of reference, different
ways of relating to the world; they worship at the feet of different
pop-culture gods.

The internet
is not a surprising place to find this kneejerk response, though. Of course the
initial “who’s this?” and “why should we care about this old guy?” from the
first group stems from entitlement and myopia more often than from genuine
confusion; they believe that entertainment not tailored to their interests is
irrelevant.

The
second group—the self-appointed defenders of good taste, the
outraged-on-behalf-of—ignore the simple fact that new people learn new things
every day. Stay in any corner of the Internet long enough, be it a subreddit or
a forum or (heaven forbid) a comments section, and you’ll start to see veterans
of that zone gnashing their teeth at people asking “the same questions every
day.” They snarl without realizing that different people are asking the
question, that revelation is, in fact, commonplace.

McCartney,
through his work, finds himself outside (and above) this crowded
back-and-forth. He was exposed to new potential fans because of his recent
collaboration with Rihanna and Kanye West, which produced some genuinely great
music and got each of the artists to drift into new territory.

Collaboration
is breathing new life into old songs, too. At a show in the O2 arena in London
recently, he welcomed Dave Grohl onstage to help him with a well-trod standard,
“I Saw Her Standing There.” This after playing several Nirvana songs with the
remaining members of that group (Grohl included) earlier this year. At the O2,
McCartney even peppered in “Temporary Secretary,” a song he’s never played live
before. Credit to this revival may be attributable to comedian Jonah Ray, who
spoke with McCartney about his love for the often overlooked track on the
Nerdist podcast.

Despite
McCartney’s pliability and his obvious genius, despite his fundamental changing
of the face of music, legacies are not static. They grow; they change; they
fade in certain circles and flare up in others. The Beatles’ music seems, to
us, timeless; but we’ll have to allow successive generations periods of
discovery.

One day,
centuries from now, a lone traveler will come across a dusty stack of records—The White Album, Revolver, Abbey Road, etc.—in
a cardboard box. Across the side, scrawled in Sharpie, it will read, “Look upon
my record collection, ye mighty, and despair.”