The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever
The Beatles are probably the single
most famous band ever, so I don't think they need much of introduction. In a 5/6 year time frame, they released some of the most important albums ever, influencing rock musicians, the whole field of music production, and even avant-garde/experimental tape music. Essentially, without The Beatles, modern music would not be in the same place it is now. They were responsible for SO many unique ideas and performances in studio, and wrote some of the most incredible songs. They didn't shy away from simplicity, yet they could play INCREDIBLY complex harmonic ideas and make them feel accessible and moving.
Listen to Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles here.
This song is on my personal
favorite album of theirs, Magical Mystery Tour. The timbre of the whole album is super psychedelic and strange, and the songwriting is really unbelievable. This song is in A major (although the recording and use of the mellotron are actually like a quarter tone off, so it's between A/Bb major) but does some really cool stuff. Each Chorus section drops down to an Emin7, giving it that super dark feeling, almost like we are modulating, but technically not. Then we hear an F#, and when moving from Dmaj, to Emaj, then to F#7, it feels like we are in F# major, the parallel major to the Amajor's relative minor of F#. Super simple idea in practice on a guitar, but SO complex in music theory terms. If you can, check out the demo's to this track on the Anthology 3 album, it's really interesting to hear it played by John with just an acoustic guitar. It began as a rock/guitar tune, but in the studio, was arranged in an amazing and complex fashion with the mellotron and orchestral sections.