We can’t work it out, Prof ! ...and we’ve really tried to see it your way

Top scientist insists the Beatles had virtually no influence on pop – and offers this bizarre diagram as his proof

THEY are the biggest band in pop music history and usually credited with being the most influential.

But in reality The Beatles were an average group who did little to change the musical landscape – at least according to one academic, who claims to have the science to back it up.

Despite the Fab Four’s 600million record sales, Professor Armand Leroi dismisses their output as ‘ditties for prepubescent girls’ and claims they ‘sat out’ the musical revolution of the 1960s.

His findings come not from a background in music, but from evolutionary biology. ‘As fruit flies evolve, so too does pop,’ he says.

‘Every new song comes with its own burden of mutations. Some of them bad, but a few of them flourish and get passed on to future generations. Listen carefully, and you can hear the music evolve.’

Not surprisingly, the heretical suggestions have drawn the ire of Beatles fans, including music expert Paul Gambaccini who blasts Prof Leroi as ‘preposterous’, threatening to ‘dissect him like a fly’ in a head-to-head debate.

The academic, from Imperial College London, used computer algorithms to analyse singles from every major band between 1960 and 2010 to see how they deviated from the musical norm.

And he plotted each on a vastly complex network diagram, with each band linked to who they influenced and colour-coded by genre.

After crunching the data, Dr Leroi concluded that the creators of Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby and I Am The Walrus, ‘musically weren’t that important’.

Instead, he said it was The Kinks, The Who and The Rolling Stones who had the most influence, paving the way for punk. He said: ‘The London bands dragged aggression [levels] up and transformed the musical landscape. Meanwhile, Lennon and McCartney were writing ditties for prepubescent girls. The Beatles sat out the British revolution.’

He will be presenting his controversial findings in The Secret Science Of Pop, to be aired on BBC4 at 9pm on Tuesday.

THE POP CHART: Professor Armand Leroi and his network map, featuring hundreds of bands and showing how their music is linked, colour-coded by genre. He claims his research demonstrates how The Beatles had no special influence