Denying the Beatles' influence on music is an exercize in illogic. I've done an arrangement of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" for folk audiences and they enjoyed it. Well-written songs are well-written songs. Many of the Beatles' songs qualify, big time. And they get discovered by succeeding generations. I have yet to meet anyone who likes nothing they did. They took music from fundamental G Em C D(7) rock to material that on occasion had depth and beauty. Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, and some harder rock like Back in the USSR. I didn't ever care for Lennon, 'but oh yeah, the boy could play'. Later tunes from individuals who'd been Beatles were equally good. I think it was McCartney and Wings that did "Mull of Kintyre", and I used to put that on the record player and let it repeat, with the volume at 10.

The idea that people have to like one kind of music to the exclusion of others is a wrong one, IMO. I have no difficulty listening to some songs by various groups, and what became a hit never has anything to do with the decision to like a given song. "Horse With No Name" and "Stairway to Heaven" are two I could do without, but I feel that way about "Danny Boy" too.

Sgt Pepper isn't 'nostalgia' to me. Nor is any music, really. It either still lives or it doesn't. Glenn Miller's "In the Mood" is a good song, old and dated as it is. It still 'rocks'. So does "Donna" and "Patches" and "Chantilly Lace". Johnny Horton's "Whispering Pines" may be one of the most beautiful songs in the world, along with "Maggie". Del Shannon's "Runaway", Toto's "Africa" and "Rosanna", Eddie Schwartz (and Foreigner's) "I Want to Know What Love Is"--well, they are all songs that made it big in one way or another, and IMO they are all good songs. I'd argue that the quality of the "whole song" is as good as most of what has been written in the folk world--different to be sure, but excellent also.

Some albums are pivotal. IMO, SP was one of them. (I don't actually care for it, but that doesn't stop me from seeing how important it was to music in general.)