Do you and your child know who Paul McCartney is?

[Rain Man]

Based on another thread, I would like to do a scientific study in this thread.

In the epic fail thread, there were some Facebook posts about people saying that "that Paul McCartney guy is going to take off now that Kanye did one of his songs".

The question in my mind is when people learn who Paul McCartney is. It's not unreasonable that an infant doesn't know Paul McCartney. At the same time, one would expect a 60 year-old to know who Paul McCartney is. But at what age does awareness begin?

So please do the following:

If you have children, ask them the question, "Do you know who Paul McCartney is?" and then report the answers back here. You can put in responses for as many as you like.

If you don't have children, ask the youngest person you see in the next 24 hours the same question above and their age, and report back. You can ask more than one if you like.

You can also answer for yourself, but ... most of you are old and highly sophisticated, so I'm more interested in the younger generation.

Poll forthcoming that is guaranteed to raise a smile, so get up, get out of bed, and drag a comb across your head. But if you don't want to, hey, life goes on, and nothing's going to change my world. I'll just let it be, and carry that weight as I rest in my little hideaway beneath the waves with my tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

[keg in kc]

Don't have any interest in either, but I'd certainly far prefer to listen to something with McCartney over Kanye if I was chained to a chair and forced to pick one.

If I had a kid, and he or she knew anything about either, it would come from their mother.

[vailpass]

My boys know who he is because they once meet him at the Gibson guitar tour bus. My 10 year old digs the Beatles.

[Reaper16]

Originally Posted by wazu

Had exact same conversation with my 11 year old and then separately with my 9 year old.

Me: "Do you know who Paul McCartney is?"
My Son: "No. Who is he?"
Me: "He was a member of the Beatles" (Who they do at least know.)

Then I was curious...

Me: "Do you know who Kanye West is?"
My Son: "No. Is that another Beatle?"

You might as well try again. With a 3rd child, I mean. Clearly the first two aren't going to amount to anything.

[Valiant]

Originally Posted by listopencil

It makes sense that kids who like Kanye don't know who the Beatles are. If you'd never had good food in your life you'd probably like McDonald's too.

Shit, Kanye should use his power and tell his listeners of these things called books.. He could revolutionize some shit. then tell them about math and learning..

Would be a epic melt down.. Will Smith's ****wit kids might even chime in..

[Gadzooks]

Here's an article from the Boston Globe who assume the tweets were jokes.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/tele...GUP/story.html
Just before the calendar flipped to 2015, Kanye West released “Only One,” a heartfelt ballad that, the mercurial MC said, was inspired in large part by his late mother, Donda West. The track also featured input from former Beatle Paul McCartney, one of a handful of songs that the pair recorded together during sessions last year.

The collaboration between one of hip-hop’s biggest names and a former member of rock purists’ gold standard, which is slated to appear on West’s forthcoming album, grabbed headlines, and it also inspired a bit of ribbing from the social-media peanut gallery.

What happened next, to borrow a phrase, will probably not astound you: These one-off jokes were taken as examples of Kids Today not knowing their history — or at the very least not knowing how to behave on social media when members of the rock canon were involved in a piece of music news.

The quick-and-dirty “look at these people on Twitter not knowing about this important figure” post has become something of a stock in trade for media outlets looking for ways to position themselves above particular generational frays; indeed, McCartney himself was the subject of similar roundups back in 2012. But this time, the news broke even more widely, with even network affiliates getting in on the action.

Thanks to the figures involved — the lightning-rod West, the boomer-beloved McCartney — this combination of one-off Twitter jokes being misinterpreted by people looking for quick-hit boomer outrage being stoked is still social media gold five days into the new year. But the way this news popped up, and then stuck around, speaks volumes about how nostalgia culture has in many ways become culture itself.

2015’s biggest pre-emptive pop-cultural splash happened 30 years ago, when the Michael J. Fox time-travel comedy “Back to the Future” came out. The movie, in which Fox’s Marty McFly was sent back to the soda shops of 1955 in order to save the world (and his parents’ romance), ended with McFly and Christopher Lloyd’s mad genius Doc Brown hyperspeeding to the present day, an era where “we don’t need roads” because vehicular transportation was limited to hovercars. That future is now, although cars still need wheels to get from point A to point B.

In that movie, the visual comparisons between 1985 and 1955 are fairly stark: bobby sox, malteds, dance bands in suits. To compare the fashions of 2015 to the 1985 present depicted in “Future,” however, is to see more subtle differences — a white Apple-produced headphone cord dangling from a pocket here, a train wrapped in a full-body ad there. Technologically, 2015 is much more advanced than its 30-years-prior counterpart, even if commutes aren’t yet conducted entirely above-ground. But the baseline in many other ways hasn’t changed much: Classic rock stations still have their identities rooted in the ’60s and ’70s; “Star Wars” remains at the forefront of the pop-cultural conversation; McCartney’s collaborations with younger stars are making waves on the charts.

But these shared cultural phenomena operate in tandem with the way culture is produced and consumed now, in which a much more chaotic marketplace — the exponential increase in cable channels, open-ended access to music and videos via streaming services, utterly personalizable news diets thanks to social media — results in certain ideals of the past remaining fixed. The way “Seinfeld” and “Law & Order” appear in what seems like perpetual reruns act as a time machine, only instead of requiring plutonium and lightning to work it’s summoned by the press of a button.

Last week, the writer Tim Urban wrote a piece called "It's 2015, And You're In The Future," in which he compared the present year to various moments in the pop-cultural past. Among them: “‘The Wonder Years’ aired from 1988–1993 and covered the years 1968–1973. If it were made today, it would cover the years 1995–2000.”

2015’s version of “The Wonder Years” isn’t a look back at the past, but instead a blast from it: “Friends,” the NBC sitcom that in many ways defined the 1990s, spawning a number of cultural touchstones that included Jennifer Aniston’s haircut and Matthew Perry’s leading-man career, arrived in toto on the streaming-video service Netflix on Jan. 1. It was presented as an entertainment to be enjoyed in that most 2010s of ways — to be binge-watched — and many viewers agreed, tweeting their observations about Ross and Rachel and the gang as they fired up episode after episode.

The hubbub was almost enough to make you forget that the show debuted 20 years ago, or 24 years after the Beatles released their final album. (Squint hard enough and those haircuts could be seen as ones worn proudly by ironists.) And with that shifted idea of the present comes a shifted idea of the past, which makes the Beatles seem as if they’re much more of a recent phenomenon — even though the 50th-anniversary parties celebrating their arrival on these shores only occurred a few months ago.

That McCartney and West collaborated shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to anyone looking deeper than either artist’s most superficial public image; McCartney has shown his affinity for the present through his collaborations with the Welsh psych-pop outfit Super Furry Animals and the electro outfit Bloody Beetroots, while West has paid homage to classic rock’s past by working with Elton John and sampling King Crimson. What is surprising, though, is how much time has elapsed between McCartney’s burst onto the pop music scene and now — and how, thanks to the way nostalgia is becoming more crucial to shared entertainments, that half a century seems like the blink of an eye.

[kcxiv]

im sure if i asked my 16 year old nephew he wouldnt know whot he **** he is anyways. I dont listen to the beatles. Its good music, just not my type of music.


I dont see it as a big deal really. How the **** are they supposed to know if no one around them listen to certain music.

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by Valiant

Shit, Kanye should use his power and tell his listeners of these things called books.. He could revolutionize some shit. then tell them about math and learning..

Would be a epic melt down.. Will Smith's ****wit kids might even chime in..

will smith's kids will say some scientologist comment that make no ****ing sense whatsoever. haha

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by Fruit Ninja

im sure if i asked my 16 year old nephew he wouldnt know whot he **** he is anyways. I dont listen to the beatles. Its good music, just not my type of music.


I dont see it as a big deal really. How the **** are they supposed to know if no one around them listen to certain music.

Unfortunately, you may be right.

The British Invasion began more than 50 years ago. Most of the Beatles music has been turned into Muzak. People have heard the songs but don't know the artist.

FTR, my daughter first heard "Yesterday" when she was about 2 and a half due to an Apple commercial. She asked me to put it on her iPod, which she listened to overnight.

One day later, she sang the complete song to her mom after she returned from an overnight business trip. My wife broke down on tears.

This Paul McCartney guy is pretty good.

[Al Bundy]

No kids here, but when I played a Beatles song for my dog he threw up. I don't like the Beatles either.

[Graystoke]

I don't see what the big deal is. Sure my kids know who Paul McCartney is, but so?
They know more about music then I do at this point.
I respect the Beatles and all but in my opinion lots of old folks are stuck in a classic rock
vacuum. There is so much good music out there today but if its not the Beatles, Zep, Floyd or some other crusty dude they aren't interested. Like I said, lots of respect but lets move on.

[HemiEd]

I have two grandsons that know who he is, but he needs to stop singing similar to Brett Favre needing to retire. He was downright awful the last time I saw him sing live at the Olympics.

[Rain Man]

The poll results are really cool. It tells how fast cultural icons are assimilated into the collective consciousness. Look at the enclosed graph, and you'll see how it steadily climbs from about 30 percent who know McCartney at a young age all the way up.

I deleted one vote from every category because some troglodyte always thinks it's funny to click every vote. Whoever you are, we get it. You know how to click buttons. For your next trick, perhaps you can learn to peel a banana with your feet.

I'm actually half-tempted to post this on my real work blog, because it's so cool.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

I have two grandsons that know who he is, but he needs to stop singing similar to Brett Favre needing to retire. He was downright awful the last time I saw him sing live at the Olympics.

Sir Paul puts on a great show live, was amazing in last year's Grammy Tribute to the Beatles, was awesome on SNL in late 2012 and is still writing great songs.

Live appearances are extremely tricky, which is why 99% of the time, singers lip sync. Technical difficulties can cause singers to sing out of tune and out of time to due monitor mix, in-ear failure, glitches, time delays and so on.

In this case, he said that a giant bell rang near to him that was deafening. A noise like that would totally mess with pitch, which is just another reason why he should have pre-recorded everything (like they do for the Super Bowl) and just lip synced.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/late...ames-bell-hell

[jd1020]

I just googled him. Who the **** are "The Beatles"?

[RockChalk]

Originally Posted by Cochise

I saw him a couple months ago, sat front row at an arena show. Best concert experience I've had, and I have been to many many concerts.

I wasn't front row, but his show at Sprint Center a few months ago was awesome. Incredible energy for his age