The Beatles paradigm

I've been listening to the Beatles lately (okay, for the last 10 minutes) and they've got me thinking. Everyone raves about them, and they're pretty much the best rock band of all time, so they must do something right. But except for Eleanor Rigby (which is amazing) I'm finding it all a little boring.

But you could say that for a lot of really great art forms. Ever found a Shakespeare drama very run-of-the-mill or a Jane Austen love story predictable? Yeah. Me too.

The difference is that usually, when you read something and think: "I've seen five other stories just like this," you're reading a copy, something somone made up in the spirit of something they've already heard of: you know, Sex and the City or something.

BUT when you're bored by Shakespeare, it's because everyone else is imitating him. His art isn't trite because he's trite, it's because he was the first one to ever write a story like that and everyone else liked it so much they decided to make about 100 remakes of Romeo and Juliette, and Hollywood has never quite got it out of their system.

I guess that's why they still make us read it in school, and why the Beatles are the greatest, yada yada yada. But it's still kind of disappointing to me. Why do the great ones have to be the boring ones?

In the end, I suppose we should blame the imitators. There's really nothing wrong with imitation, I hate to say, and that's where you've got to start. But I have always held that it's best to be original. You know, write off-beat stories about spinster siblings or something equally nuts.

What am I trying to say? Create your own classics.

But you can't honestly bash anything involving Colin Firth, now can you?