The Millennial Generation has produced nothing of note culturally.

[traininthedistance]

I read an article a few months ago that posited that American popular culture more or less hasn't gone anywhere since the early '90s - everything that has come since then has been derivative repackaging of earlier artistic innovations.

You've only got so many notes in the scale, and so many instruments in common use- after enough decades of searching for new combinations, it starts to get hard.  There's a reason Schoenberg and Cage did what they did... and with its more limited harmonic palette, it's no big surprise that pop music might start to run out of new sounds after awhile.

And honestly being derivative isn't necessarily always a bad thing, so long as the original influences are solid.

[traininthedistance]

The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved.

How le edgy of you.  Also, Beethoven was in fact rock-star popular by the standards of his day.  He wasn't as financially successful as a Salieri because he didn't have a patron or write much of what was the most lucrative genre (opera), and he was a bit of a spendthrift... but to call him some forgotten non-commercial gem who was picked up by later generations who rediscovered his genius is, well, 100 percent wrong.  Mozart's situation was very similar- he probably made more money but was even worse at keeping it.

Now, J.S. Bach, he was considered kind of stuffy and provincial in his day, and was forgotten, and had to be reintroduced to the public by Mendelssohn, so he might actually be a plausible example.  But part of the reason he was forgotten was that everything Baroque was more or less forgotten, and a lot of the great active composers of that time still knew he was a whiz at counterpoint, and worth studying for that.  Perhaps you could make an analogy to Robert Johnson or something (though of course Bach was far more prolific, among other traits).

And, if rock critics care so much about album sales, why do they love the Velvet Underground but not the Eagles?  There's a lot more to the Beatles hagiography than commercial success, and deservedly so.