Why ‘Get Back’ Matters
I blubbered like one of those teens in concert footage of the Beatles at Shea Stadium as I watched them perform on the rooftop in Part 3 of Get Back, Peter Jackson’s documentary about the Beatles that premiered on Disney+ over Thanksgiving weekend. Why? Part of me wants to say, “Who cares? Just go with it.” After all, being a Beatles fan means never having to explain yourself. But I also know I’m not the only one who was enthralled by the experience of spending nearly eight hours watching John, Paul, George, and Ringo in the studio working, playing, and sometimes fighting.
Something astonishing is going on with Get Back. Disney does not share audience-viewing data. But I’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence that Get Back — in all its sprawling, 468-minute glory — is luring in viewers and keeping them riveted for hours at a time when the average human attention span is shorter than a goldfish’s.
And mind you, viewing Get Back means watching the Fab Four sit around in the studio trying to make music in fits and starts. Flashes of creativity happen along with plenty of goofing around, disagreeing, and flailing away at rough drafts of songs that don’t always get completed. On the surface, not a lot happens. You have to really pay close attention to understand how the story arc unfolds.
So why are the Beatles now trending stronger than Billie Eilish on Google? Why is this band that broke up decades ago gaining an avalanche of news coverage? Here’s why:
1. These are the Beatles. They’re more than an historically great and influential band. They’re a powerful brand with enduring appeal. When the Beatles re-released their 1969 album Abbey Road in 2019, the album charted Number 3 in the United States and Number 1 in the United Kingdom. The group’s music has been streamed billions of times, with half those streams coming from Gen Z and Millennials. The Beatles are a hit on TikTok, which skews toward Gen Z audiences: the Beatles joined TikTok officially later in 2021, and yet content tagged #Beatles and #TheBeatles have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times. Variants of #GetBackBeatles have been viewed millions more times.
2. Long-form content is perfect for digital. That’s because 468 minutes of the Beatles creates countless opportunities for viewers to chop that content up into bite-sized memes, GIFs, and videos shared on social channels ranging from TikTok to Twitter. The Beatles are perfect inspiration for the era of the digital creator.
3. Nostalgia is powerful. As Don Draper said in Mad Men: “Nostalgia — it’s delicate, but potent.” Nostalgia is a longing for comfort, which is why we often associate nostalgia with the past. The Beatles are like a heaping plate of comfort food, especially during these uneasy, troubled times. (The show premiered just as we were processing news about a new Covid-19 variant emerging.) Google “nostalgia marketing,” and you’ll begin to appreciate why nostalgia is big business now. It doesn’t matter that the Beatles were popular long before many of us were born. What matters is that they provide a sense of comfort. I remember listening to my sister Cathy’s copy of “Let It Be” when I was a boy. I studied those evocative Ethan Russell band portraits on the cover. I fell in love with all the songs, not knowing how controversial the album was at the time for Phil Spector’s production. I pondered the meaning of the curious studio banter (“And now we’d like to do ‘Hark the Angels Come’”). Those moments made deep impressions on me in the early 1970s. “Get Back” brought them all flooding back.
4. Get Back is perfect mythology. Before I dug into Part 1, I wondered if Get Back would demythologize the Beatles by showing how the sausage was made in the song factory. As it turns out, the eight hours of footage glorify their mythology in vivid color. There’s lovable Ringo on the rooftop, looking like a splash of red as he famously wears his wife Maureen’s raincoat to play drums on the cold January day. There’s George, the immensely talented but overlooked little brother sulking in the studio but happily helping bandmates who appreciate him (check out the way he helps Ringo on “Octopus’s Garden”). There’s Billy Preston lifting their spirits and improving their sound with his spirited presence. Paul the bossy genius drops songs like diamonds in the studio. John slices the air with his eviscerating wit and brings on the passion with his guitar playing. Paul and John goof around like two adolescent boys, such as when they sing “Two of Us” without opening their mouths, as if trying to start a two-person ventriloquist act — befitting two guys with a deep, complicated relationship going back to childhood. And, of course, there are all the meme-worthy moments that have been ingrained in our collective consciousness for decades (“I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we pass the audition”).
John. Paul. George. Ringo. How many rock stars do we refer to by their first names as if we know them? Get Back made me feel like I know them a little bit better — not the four men, but their beautiful mythology.
