The great thing about music is that one’s taste in whatever band or singer is never wrong.
Like one’s taste in food. It’s all individual.
And I say this, after buying nearly all the Beatles’ albums as a kid before I bought any other group’s. What jdsmith sees in the Kinks is what he sees, and he sees something special.
Different from what I see in the Beatles.
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Well, you’re a good decade ahead of me. So I get hearing the transformation of radio, from Johnny Cash to Elvis to the Beatles, which is awesome. But now that I’ve been listening to the Beatles for 40 years and the Kinks for 20…I’m gonna side on the Kinks side. Nearly every song was thoughtfully written…and maybe not to get another hit. Once again, NOT that there’s anything wrong with that…I’m a Capitalist.
Like Chewballs said, as a matter of artistic and lyrical depth and breadth, I’ll knuckle up with the Davies got my back.
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Yeesh… 
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I was quite a fan of his for a couple of years.
This one reminds me of somebody in my past:
They did some others I like. I ain’t hatin’ on the Kinks. 
As was I.
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The Beatles get a lot of hate, I can never quite figure it out. Just a band, you like them or you don’t, but why go out of your way to say you don’t? It seems that way a lot of times.
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I think putting just about any band over The Beatles is hipster nonsense. Most of the music we listen to simply wouldn’t exist without The Beatles.
The Who are awesome though. You heard any of their super early stuff? From around (or just before) their first album? That band owned.
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I recall a story about The Doors playing at the Isle of Wight festival and having a big row with another band because neither wanted to follow The Who.
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Wasn’t that about who didn’t want to follow Hendrix? Maybe even The Who?
Was it? Maybe my memory’s failing me.
Maybe. My memory is not always so well oiled either
. “Nobody wanted to follow The Who; Emerson, Lake And Palmer didn’t want to go on first, they wanted to be on in the dark; and The Doors probably wanted to go on first – it was an impossible situation to square this conundrum, so I walked away in the end saying, ‘I’ll have to leave it to you, I give up.’”
Ray Foulk
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I have lived in Liverpool
I can’t let them down !!
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That would be a truly baffling head-to-head. I can’t stand Elvis Costello. Apparently he was an irritating little git in real life, too.
This is often said with the implicit assumption that nobody at the time was doing anything influential; that somehow The Beatles was the only band anybody listened to in 1965. That isn’t even remotely true. As the well-endowed one mentioned, the Beatles represented a specific style and they were influential in that niche. IMO they were the first ‘pop’ band: that was a big niche and a lot of the next music-producing generation would have listened to them, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing unique, either musically or lyrically, about The Beatles’ output. Their biggest influence, surely, was on the way music was/is marketed and promoted.
Aaanyway, back to the topic at hand. I like this one. Musically it’s slightly Beatle-esque, but it’s the lyrics that make it something else:
IIRC, didn’t Edison Chen arrange something like that a few years back?
Both great bands.
And the question “[Band name A] vs. [Band name B]” is f***ing pointless, but idiots will still feel the need to let the world what they think.
It’s possible to have a general consensus that one thing is better than another.
Or it could just be for a bit a fun and so super serious. 
Uhm…
So Archie comic art has the same artistic merit as Dada art? California plonk to Bordeaux wine? Gainsbourg as Air Supply?
Sounds like Commie type of thinking and conformity to me.
Let us all go have a BBQ in the suburbs, drink Kokanee or a shart wine, watch Friends, and listen to Bryan Adams. 
(shit that sounds like Canada Day for the masses 
)
He’s still alive, you know. Costello and Springsteen are both insufferable egotistical pricks, but I think Costello is a much better lyricist.