The Beatles

The Beatles came out of Liverpool in 1960 as a scruffy beat group with a revolving door on the drum stool, and by the time it stopped swinging (Pete Best out, Ringo Starr in, in 1962) they had the lineup that would turn pop inside out: John Lennon and George Harrison on guitars, Paul McCartney on bass, all three trading lead vocals, and Starr keeping the whole thing honest behind the kit. They'd sharpened their teeth in the clubs of Liverpool and Hamburg, and it showed. With Brian Epstein managing and George Martin producing, "Love Me Do" gave them their first hit in late 1962, and within a couple of years Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic and dragged the whole British Invasion along behind it.

Then they got strange, gloriously. Worn out by the road, they quit touring in 1966 and moved into the studio for good, and the records that followed, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, stretched rock and roll to fit sitars, strings and studio trickery without ever losing the tune. Folk rock, psychedelia, hard rock: they tried it all and made most of it sound as if it had always existed. The White Album sprawled, Abbey Road gleamed, and in 1968 they set up Apple Corps to run their own show.

It ended in 1970, with all four heading off into solo careers, and the split only made the catalog loom larger. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame took them in the first year they were eligible, and the Grammys handed them a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. On rock radio's all-time countdowns they have never really gone away: listeners still reach past everything that came after for "A Day in the Life", "Hey Jude" and "In My Life".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.