Liverpool University Offers Beatles Masters Degree
By davidhall
A new sort of Beatlemania is emerging – the academic kind.
Liverpool University has announced that it will offer a masters degree program on The Beatles, popular music and society. The course focuses on the legendary band’s music as well as how it was influenced by the city of Liverpool. The university claims that the program is the first of it’s kind in the UK and “probably the world” [BBC News]. Check out what the course’s leader, Mike Brocken, had to say:
“There have been over 8,000 books about The Beatles but there has never been serious academic study.”
He added:
“The Beatles influenced so much of society, not just with their music, but also with fashion from their collar-less jackets to their psychedelic clothes.”
The course, which can be studied full or part-time, consists of four 12-week modules and a dissertation. Wow. Academics must be freaking out right now. Apparently, if you have “a good first degree” and some “music industry experience,” you have a shot at becoming a certified Beatles expert! Maybe they could even get Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to come in for some guest lectures.
The competition for entry must be stacked, but Brocken made it sound like the standards for entry would be high. Let’s just hope they uphold a strict screening process… the last thing we need is a few hundred more Beatles snobs claiming to be the ultimate authority.
What this really means is that within the next decade, we’ll be seeing bundles of Beatles novels and essays emerging from the graduates of the program. And that means this discipline is likely to seep into undergraduate programs and even high schools! Behold: Beatlemania is the new Academia.
What do you think of Liverpool University’s new Beatles MA program?
Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:22PM
It's annoying but completely understandable when people who were not awake or alive or of age at the time, have the 60's facts wrong; dates wrong even the songs wrong. So as the new academia explosion comes down to highschool and even lower, the Beatles music and individuals' facts will twist, blur and become junkmail. Kids don't even want to hear the Beatles. Yet they will be forced to listen to songs ad finum+ad nauseum. Granted, Lennon- McCartney is hugely indexed in music appreciation books. But I am afraid the commercialization ship that McCartney later invisioned has set sail and is doomed to float upon the sea of ' grandma's music'. Too bad – you really had to have been there, like anything else. ('66 Tour)
Thursday, January 27, 2011 1:33PM
I am glad for the 1st person to get a Masters in Beatles – quite a novelty. After that…..bullwark!
I got the box set and am glad I have it but after listening to many selections I realized I can easily flow through Magical Mystery Tour but other than that, I was listening at the time-went to see them with my little brother; explored much of the White album on LSD and found them irrelevant when it came to my growth and development in the things of God and my spirt. So I leave them with the songs of yesterday and feel that the world is yearning for pure idols and these are poets and musicians. John and George would tell you to stop with the reaching to emblazen them further into the anals of music. Take who influenced them and go back and learn of that. Let's be reasonable here. They won't save your soul or change the tides. But they were very good and had prestige for their continued growth and delivering the goods right on time. These are earthly matters. Not divine interventions.
Friday, January 28, 2011 9:02AM
The study of the band is not just the study of the band. Why was the world so ready for the Beatles,why were we so ready to change everything. They were a good band but there were a lot of good bands in the 60s. I remember seeing the cover of the first 45 on the juke box in the hangout where we were after school and knowing they were a game changer.Now how does a kid in junior high school know that. They were more than just a band they were what we were looking for and just did not know it.I am a huge fan of the fab 4 and I also am a huge fan of the era.