Just sitting listening to Abbey Road. Perhaps some NME readers should do the same. The Independent article also mentions Blur as possibly having a better claim on the title. Blur are a lot of things but the word 'influential' indicates some form of innovation or at the very least it suggests a band that lead the pack and do not simply follow trends. Please, Mr. Edison, won't you invent a machine to stop these monsters? Edited by - markyedison on 17 Apr 2002 00:47:05

Please, please, please.... What about the boys who inspired Elvis and The Beatles? Far and away the most influential band ever and that includes the last 50 years is Buddy Holly & The Crickets. It's not a tumor

the top 50 poll is the most influential artists on the nme not on other bands... just though i'd say... its taken from the most... covers, reviews, articles, interviews etc. ie> the smiths have had the most nme coverage in the last 50 yrs mick... http://www.polarofficial.com

YES INDEED BUDDY HOLLY ROCKS!!(HE WAS ALSO A BIG INFLUENCE ON THE SMITHS METHINKS)the pixies should also be considered, and the beatles of course and the ramones and talking heads and....and.......and.....SLINT too, so there!

The most influential would surely have to be the Beatles, no contest http://www.kaboommusic.cjb.net

R.E.M may not be the most influential of them all, but they rank right up there, they are definitely the most influential band of the last 20 years. Their innovations with their music throughout their career has been astonishing. (By the way, I'm an REM fan) Peace Q

there would be no good music today if it wasent for the beachboys(allways one step ahead of the beatles)

I think it was a case of mutual appreciation. The Beach Boys heard Revolver and made Pet Sounds. The Beatles heard Pet Sounds and made Sgt. Pepper. How's that for a witty rejoinder? Maybe that's why Brian Wilson lost it. Long live the new flesh

Brian Wilson said he started work on Pet Sounds after hearing "Rubber Soul" - he said each take was perfect and it inspired him to force the Beach Boys to record their vocals so many times. http://www.kaboommusic.cjb.net

Paul mcartney visted brian wilsons smile sessions and stole ideas for sgt peppers.Beach boys went back to basics with their smileysmile and wild honey albums before the beatles white album(one step ahead again)also sunflower gets my vote ahead of abbey road(both released end of decade)

Yeah, macca's bass style changed completely because of the Beach Boys influence. check out ob-la-di, ob-la-da on the white album. His songwriting changed too e.g. blackbird. Long live the new flesh

NME is a big bag of s h i t! the smiths...I mean really! aside from the fact that morrissey is a crap singer, the music is so bland it makes me want to swallow my own face just to get away from it. im sure it has been a huge influence on people who are toying with the idea of suicide! What a ridiculous piece of drivel. NME called Tool 'nu-metal radiohead'! those people dont know jack shit about music. fucking nu-metal! im choking on my own rage here! www.minerva.vze.com

nu-metal ,choke! Sounds like a term thought up by an ageing former punk who now writes for some rag of the musical elite, like the NME or the sunday times. One day he realised that some metal was good, really good, but he couldn't bring up the subject of 'heavy metal' within his little cabal of cynical snobs without conjuring up images of Twisted Sister, Judas Priest or Poison. So he calls these bands that he likes 'nu-metal.' Now he can talk about Tool and all the other great 'nu-metal' bands he has discovered: Skip forward a year or two. The bandwagon is rolling. Metal and rock bands are being played on MTV under the banner of 'nu-metal', and even 2FM and the like are playing them( the lightweight ones anyway, COUGHnickelbackCOUGH) Cue major labels signing up any old bunch of white guys with guitars and tattoos they can find. They saturate the 'market' and afterwards start talking about diminishing returns and the falling sales but never the falling quality of the nu-metal fad. Soon enough any threat of rock music being listened to, and enjoyed, by a mainstream pop audience is neutralised.... Sorry,I took a wrong turn there somewhere along the road. I swear I had a point. Now the sign before me reads Welcome to Paranoidsville, population; me Long live the new flesh

yawn. that happens ALL the time, with nearly every new scene, nu-metal is no different, apart from that it has a higher ratio of shit bands. and could someone please explain how nickleback are nu-metal? their sound is 1993 sub-grunge....

would just like to add that the velvet underground deserve a mention... for er, inventing the idea of sub-cultural, alternative music etc... without whom the doors or the sex pistols (nor sonic youth or blur...) would have no proper predecessors. hell... they even predated most of the beatles 'weird' turns. if there's one thing that v.u. were was 'influential'.

To say that The Smiths are the most influential band of 50 years is severely overstating the issue. The Smiths are great, but who have they really influenced? Their days of making happy. chirpy songs about really depressing subjects (which somehow worked) were probably due to the UK's depressing Thatcher-era; at least it was subject matter. These days, it's this "nu-metal" or neo-punk bands that are banging out powerchords and foul language one song after another, rebelling against nothing. If most of these bands disappeared tomorrow, nobody would remember them a year from now. The same cannot be said for The Smiths, who may or may not be "influential", but they're certainly memorable.

Since we're talking about music that is basically white kids adapting black music to their white world, it might be that the "most influencial" artists were the black artists who were the transition between "race records" and rhythym & blues to everything else mentioned above. So how 'bout Chuck Berry and Little Richard (and maybe Fats Domino) for most influencial?

I say this statement would be true as regards the most influential band making teenagers act like complete tits from the age of 14 to 19 (if their lucky). Who ever wrote that was a silly billy. long live Hendrix bab.

If you get past trying to be terribly clever and actually think about it, the topic is who has most influenced pop music in the past 50 years. Sorry if these artists don't fit everyones definition of "profound" and "worthy". There wouldn't be a Hendrix to "long live" without these guys. That's influential, says I.